Browsed by
Author: Anne Cassidy

Dry Zone

Dry Zone

Comments 0 Comment

In the woods, the little bridges are still there, but the streams they cross are running dry.

In the meadows, the earth is bare, cracked, hard-packed. My shoes scuff up dust. Even the grass has stopped growing as quickly as it usually does in June.

From the looks of the sky today, though, I think we’re in for some relief. I’m imagining great sheets of rain, the ground soaking it up, the small runs flowing again. And later, how easily the weeds will give way. I’ll pull them up by the fistful.
Wandering Home

Wandering Home

Comments 0 Comment

As much as I extoll the practice, walking in the suburbs is largely for exercise and mental refreshment, for perspective. It’s difficult to run errands or visit folks without jumping in the car.

But yesterday I had time to amble through the woods to meet a friend, who lives on the other side of a county forest.

On the way there I had my eye on the clock, picking up the pace to reach her house more or less when I said I would. But on the way home I savored the green splendor of the stroll, birds ruffling the underbrush, stream water pouring over and around a flat rock.

It felt like rain, clammy and portentous. I took my time, reveled in the mood and the moment. I wandered home.

As the Smoke Clears

As the Smoke Clears

Comments 0 Comment

As the smoke clears, there are shadows once again, and colors, not just a haze of gray. 

As the smoke clears, the outdoors comes into its own, a place to walk and talk and read, not scenery on the other side of glass. 

As the smoke clears, children walk to the school bus. Later they’ll gather by the basketball goal and rope swing to play.

There will be dinners al fresco, dogs barking, the neighbor yelling at his sports team through an open window— small wonders made possible by a shift in the wind, a passing shower. 

Cars in Clothes

Cars in Clothes

Comments 0 Comment

The Jeep caught my eye, not because of its sleek lines or elegant design, but because of the perky bow on its spare tire. 

Why do people dress their cars, give them antlers in December and bunny ears in spring? Is it because they spend so much time in their vehicles that the autos are an extension of themselves? An attempt to humanize the vehicle so we act civilly around it? Or is it pure whimsy that drives this practice? 

I’m going with that last explanation because it makes me smile.  To celebrate this Jeep’s “attire,” I snapped a shot while stopped at a light. 

There’s a twist to this story, an amazing one too, given the number of cars I pass in this auto-dependent suburb. Four hours later, I spotted the same car, miles away from where I saw it the first time. 

Car clothes aren’t just fun then, they’re a powerful identifier. The moral of this story: Dress your car if you must, but be sure it behaves itself. 

Just the Same

Just the Same

Comments 0 Comment

The Pacific Northwest is a city of vistas, proof of the good things that happen when water and mountains meet. 

Here on the other coast, a gentler, calmer, less dramatic form of beauty. My eyes adjust to it as they would a darkening room. 

I snap shots of one fetching curve of a favorite walk, note how trees and grasses frame a small pond. This is not the vast expanse of Puget Sound, the white-topped Olympic Mountains in the distance.  It’s a more humble, everyday kind of beauty. But it’s beauty, just the same. 

Smoke and Booms

Smoke and Booms

Comments 0 Comment

Did you hear the boom, was the question on everyone’s lips yesterday.  It was a sonic boom caused by the scrambling of fighter jets to pursue a private plane that had wandered off course and into restricted airspace. I watched videos of people enjoying a quiet Saturday afternoon, gardening, doing chores — when they suddenly looked up and around, ran outside if they were in and inside if they were out. 

It’s been decades since I heard the sound, and I didn’t recognize it at first. But when I read yesterday’s newspaper (old school, I know), it all became clear.

What hasn’t become clear are our skies, filled as they are now with smoke from Canadian wildfires. 

We may think we’re living our own little disconnected lives, but the smoke and the booms are reminders that, in many ways, we are one. 

Morning Room

Morning Room

Comments 0 Comment

I write from a room that has no name. Once, it was the dining room, then a playroom, finally an office. For the last few years, though, it was Copper’s room. 

Silly to give a dog a room, but this old house has been most elastic through the years, bursting with children at one point, letting them go, welcoming back when they needed to land here for a while. Now it’s just the two of us, so there was space enough to give our pooch a largish doggie bed here, especially since he was no longer able to jump up on the couch.

So this odd little room with doors on two sides and windows on the third, so impractically sized and now without its primary occupant, awaits its next assignment. Will it be a library, a den, a music room? Perhaps all three. 

But I have another idea. This space with its tall front windows is the first to catch the early light. It sounds like something out of a 19th-century novel, but, at least in my mind, I’ll call it the morning room. 

Loop Walk

Loop Walk

Comments 0 Comment

Can confusion be knit into a landscape? Is there something about a particular topography, no matter how serene it appears, that can turn our heads? Would I be asking these questions if I didn’t think there was? Yesterday I took a path I’ve hiked several times before. Once again, I paused at the juncture of three trails. Once again, I chose the “wrong” path.

Or was it? This trail led me into a cool green forest along the Snakeden Branch. I took deep breaths, heard a bird I didn’t recognize. I knew approximately where I was. No need for panic. In fact, when the trail spit me out on a major thoroughfare, I realized there was circular potential.

The rails-to-trails marvel that is the W&OD was nearby, and the path I missed intersected it. If I could find that juncture, I could take a loop walk. The W&OD was sunny, and I wasn’t sure how long I would be on it. Just when I thought I’d missed the crossroads, I saw the sign and escaped through a bright meadow into deep shade.

It was a different walk than the one I meant to take, but a good one just the same.

A Pile of Petals

A Pile of Petals

Comments 0 Comment

The climbing rose has come into its own, has come into and gone past it, if you want to know the truth. But it hung in there long enough for me to see it, even after I had the audacity to spend 10 days away during its peak blooming period. 

I attribute the rose’s survivability to scant rain and wind — and maybe, even to profusion: with so many buds to bloom, the process takes time.

Now comes the season of deconstruction, of light pink petals falling gently to the deck, the railing, the glass-topped table, even into the dregs of my morning tea. 

I keep a pile of petals beside me as I work. From time to time, I run my fingers through them and feel their velvety softness.

(The climbing rose seen from above and the pile of petals I kept beside me as I work.)


That Kind of Year

That Kind of Year

Comments 0 Comment

A birthday of note this year, but aren’t they all? Isn’t every one of them precious proof that we live another day?

This morning I woke up to greetings from family and friends, dear ones I’ve known for decades. What richness! What a privilege to reach this, “the furthest exploratory tip of this my present bewildering age,” in the words of Annie Dillard. Even if it’s bewildering, maybe even because it’s bewildering.

I think of Kathy, Cathy and Gerry, good friends taken too soon. With their lives and the lives of all the people I love in mind, gratitude is the only emotion allowed on this day. But truth to tell, I would probably be feeling it anyway. It’s that kind of morning, that kind of month, that kind of year.