Browsed by
Author: Anne Cassidy

Turning a Corner

Turning a Corner

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The horses this Derby aren’t up to speed, I’ve read. Foreigners (“furriners”?) have bought the best mares and sires and whisked them away. They are breeding now on other shores, their progeny are bypassing American tracks; they are racing in Europe and elsewhere.

I don’t compare times. When the horses pound the back stretch and round the final turn, they always seem fast to me. But I wonder if there is a collective failure of nerve, an unwillingness to take risks. I wonder if we’ve stopped looking for the bright eyed foal who can’t behave himself. If we are too enamored with ease.

Lettuce!

Lettuce!

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We bought our house for its luscious old trees and we learned the hard way (tomatoes, peppers) that we’ve didn’t have enough sun to grow vegetables. But in the last few years, enough old oaks have tumbled and enough light peeked in that I decided to plant some lettuce seeds in the garden. Besides, lettuce is an early crop; it sprouts before the trees leaf. I would have a semi-shadeless backyard on my side.

Still, on the blustery March day when I planted the tiny seeds, I had little confidence that they would sprout. I’m skeptical of vegetables, surprised and pleased when the ground produces, well, produce.

But a few weeks ago the miracle happened — seed, soil, water and sun made food — and the last few nights I’ve stepped outside and picked a few bright green sprigs of leaf lettuce to add some crunch to our club sandwiches. It’s a simple pleasure. But sometimes a simple pleasure is enough.

What Else We Found

What Else We Found

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Yesterday I wrote about searching for morels. Today the story continues. When we looked for morels we found other treasures, too: shag bark hickory, sassafras root, wild oregano, a luna moth just emerging from its cocoon, a hog-nose viper that could curl itself in a circle and play dead, three box turtles and a huge wild turkey.

Part of it was that we put ourselves in a large wild woods where these plants and creatures grow and play; another part was that we were training ourselves to see.

When I walk I’m often lost in thought. I’m not looking for food; I’m certainly not looking for hog-nose vipers or box turtles. I wonder what is coiled in the leaves and slithering through the ferns in our own suburban woods. Maybe nothing as exotic as what we found in Brown County Indiana, but surprises, still.

(No box turtles were harmed in the taking of this picture. This little guy was admired and then sent on his way.)

Searching for Morels

Searching for Morels

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Whether by plan or by accident, our brief stay in Indiana came during morel season. And Tom’s brother Phil is one of the most hawk-eyed morel-hunters around. We went for a hike with Phil on Saturday and came back with more than a quart of the wild mushrooms. We cleaned the morels, soaked them and sauteed them in butter. Then we served them with steak and salad.

The morels tasted musty and rich. Eating them was like eating the woods. Every time I took a bite I thought about how precious they were, how they took so much effort to find, but how rewarding it was to discover them tucked up under a pile of leaves or hiding next to an old decaying log. Wild food. It tastes good.

(Photo by Phil Gardner)

Old News

Old News

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We went to Indiana last weekend for a gathering of Tom’s family. And it was there, by the shores of a rain-water-swollen Lake Monroe, that we heard the news of Osama bin Laden’s death. We had just begun to realize that our cache of Scrabble letters was far more than the board (or our attention span) could use when we got a call telling us the news. Those of us with Blackberries and iPhones (this does not include me) found news sites were crashing from all the hits. So since the cottage has no television or wi-fi, we cranked up the radio in the old stereo receiver.

As we bent toward its sound, I felt we were drawn not only into a new, post-bin Laden era, but also into the past. We were like the people in “The King’s Speech” listening to George VI rallying his fellow citizens, minus the sonorous soaring of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU03byh6O1M

We strained to hear the scratchy sound coming out of the box, the narrow frequency fading in and out during the president’s brief announcement. We were startled from our lethargy, hungry for information, searching for a community in the airwaves.

Royal Wedding

Royal Wedding

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As I write this morning my eye is trained on a ceremony happening thousands of miles away. I listen to the men and boy’s choir sing a hymn. I marvel at the vivid reds of the robes and of the carpet that extends down the length of Westminster Abbey (different red carpet above but the best I can muster).

I remember visiting the place, the sacred ground, the poets and the leaders who are buried there, the ceremonies that sanctified the walls and windows and every inch of the air.

In the front of the altar stand a woman in a long white dress with tapering lace sleeves, and a man in a smart red jacket. They are special, these people, but their marriage, like any other, will rise and fall on their own efforts, on how much they can give, on how much they can receive. “Every wedding is a royal wedding,” they are told.

As the ceremony ends the congregation inside the Abbey and everyone outside it sing “Jerusalem,” a favorite of mine since I first saw the movie “Chariots of Fire” many years ago. I take that as a good omen!

Fear and Comfort

Fear and Comfort

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In the last few months our dog, Copper, has become afraid of thunderstorms. He is a plucky little guy with strong shoulders and haunches and otherwise unfazed by the world around him. But now he trembles and races for the lowest, most protected ground when he hears a rumble of thunder.

Copper makes me think about fear, the irrationality of it, how it comes unbidden and unbound; how it makes us its own. When I see him like this I want to sit and hold him all day. But even if I could he would have none of it. Fear makes him restless, too.

These twin impulses, to fear and to comfort, they are buried deep down in all of us. So deep that they are often obscured. They dress up in other clothes, they parade around as silliness or ambition or pride or addiction. But they are there. I’m sure of it.

Stewardship

Stewardship

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Passing through the woods last evening on a quick walk before dinner, I crossed a bridge that Tom built. It’s a very humble plank bridge (not the one above) that took him no time to throw together.

He did it to help us (and other ramblers) over a slippery crossing near Little Difficult Run. Other neighbors have mapped the paths, cleaned the creek and taken chain saws to downed trees, leaving the logs neatly stacked along the trail.

I think of a line from Frost: “Whose woods these are I think I know.” The forest paths we traipse are either neighborhood common land or Fairfax County stream valley park. They belong to all of us. But they belong more when we care for them. The bridge wasn’t about craftsmanship; it was about stewardship.

Rooted

Rooted

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The other day I cleared a three-foot square patch of ground to plant a crepe myrtle we bought over the weekend. I’ve wanted crepe myrtle for years, admired the pluck and the late summer color of the tree. We may not have enough sunlight for the plant but we decided to take the plunge anyway. All we have to lose is a few dollars and the time we spend planting and watering.

The plot where we planted the crepe myrtle is a three-foot square in front of our deck, a spot once inhabited by bamboo. I didn’t know just how inhabited until I started to dig and found root after root after root — although to call them roots does not do them justice. They are actually runners with roots attached, and they claim the soil with a vengeance.

I shoveled and yanked, pried and sliced; I struggled an hour and a half with a job I thought would take me 15 minutes. And the whole time I was thinking: So this is what rooted means. Not just planted or anchored, but bound to the earth with every fiber.

Easter Monday

Easter Monday

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In much of the world, the day after Easter is a holiday. In the Washington, D.C., area, it’s the day of the White House Easter Egg Roll, which was one of those things I always meant to do when the children were little but never quite had the energy to pull off.

I wondered this morning, is Easter Monday known for anything other than being the day after Easter?

Turns out, it is. In Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, Easter Monday is Dyngus Day or “Wet Monday,” a day when boys wake girls by pouring water over the heads. There’s a large Dyngus Day celebration in Buffalo, New York, too, involving polkas and squirt guns.

This reminds me of another holiday. The festival of Songkran in Thailand is when people pour water on your shoulders or head (or sometimes blast it at you from a fast-moving truck) to wish you a happy new year. Tom and I spent our honeymoon in Thailand and for seven days were dowsed every time we walked outside.

I’ll spend Easter Monday as I spend most Mondays — writing, editing, reading, walking and doing laundry, which is about as close to ritual purification as I’ll get today.