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Author: Anne Cassidy

Split Rail

Split Rail

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A frosty walk this morning, a split-rail fence beside me part of the way.  Surely this is fencing lite, only the barest barricade, I think, as I amble beside one of the more open models (two horizontals). 

Though now they now seem more decorative than anything else, split-rail fences have a long history in this country. They were used to mark property boundaries, protect crops and livestock, and, during the Civil War, troops burned them to keep warm. 

In my neighborhood, split-rail fences are the only kind allowed in front yards. In the back you can go wild with a picket or other plank styles, but the front must be open, natural — much like the snippet of yard I photographed this morning. 

It’s a fence … but barely. 

The Books Themselves

The Books Themselves

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Last night was my book group’s annual book picking, held at a local bookstore cafe. It was fun to meet in person and catch up on news. But as usual, the stars of the show, the books themselves, were in short supply. Since we discuss each book we suggest and pass it (or a description of it) around, this was a problem.

I’d spent an hour or so finalizing my suggestions earlier in the day, printing out a page each for Bittersweet and The Book of Charlie. This was a good move because the bookstore didn’t have the former, a 2022 bestseller just out in paperback, and had to search high and low for the latter, just published and chosen as a best book of 2023 by the Washington Post. 

I’d also printed out the book list of a fellow member who emailed us her regrets at the last minute. The 2022 bestseller Solito was another challenge for the sales clerk to locate, but she finally found one copy.

On one hand, I’m grateful to the bookstore for letting us sit in their cafe and chat for 90 minutes. On the other, I wish the ratio of books to toys and accessories was slanted more heavily in favor of the books themselves.

(No lack of books in this bookstore.)
New Town Square

New Town Square

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I’m not a numbers person, but these numbers impress me: In 1986 there were only a few hundred miles of rails-to-trails in this country. Now there are more than 25,000. 

“We want trails that are connected in ways that are similar to roads or streets or that connect individual trails to places people want to go, be it shopping, schools or other activities, ” said Ryan Chao, the president of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, in a recent Washington Post article. 

Chao sees these trails as the new town square. And why not? Trails connect people, too. 

Philadelphia has 400 miles of them and plans to double that. You can travel the Great Allegheny Passage from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Maryland, then pick up the C&O Canal Trail to cruise into D.C. 

You can take the Katy Trail across Missouri. You can cross much of Ohio on trails and big chunks of Illinois and Iowa, too. One of these days, you’ll be able to take the Great American Rail Trail from here to Washington State. No rush to get in shape for that trek just yet … but one of these days!

(The Capital Crescent Trail in Maryland, part of the future Great American Rail Trail.)

Creeping Jenny

Creeping Jenny

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It’s Advent, the season of waiting. But waiting for what? The birth of Christ, the gathering of the clan, the arrival of yet another box from Amazon? Or for a contentment I long for but can’t explain.

Advent is also the season of preparation, not just wrapping gifts and baking cookies but preparing ourselves spiritually. For me, the best way to prepare is to stop waiting and bask in the moment.

Today’s moment is noticing the jaunty upward growth of the Creeping Jenny plant. I’ve been neglecting it, putting it on top of the bookshelf in my office so it would trail down from on high in romantic tendrils, like wisps of hair escaping from a Gibson Girl bun. 

But it gets no sun there, so I moved it yesterday to a free corner of my desk. It already looks healthier, greener, more in sync with its surroundings. I want to be like that plant: well placed and pointing toward the sun.

Dependable Distractions

Dependable Distractions

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I spot them from my second-floor aerie, and I spot them more easily now that trees are bare. They are perched high on the poplar or closer to earth (and to my window) on the black gum tree, where there is also a squirrel’s nest.

They seem little more than dots on horizontal branches, hard to detect until they fluff their wings or scratch their beaks and the movement gives them away. Sometimes they rustle in the bamboo and send a shower of leaves to the ground. 

Always when new seed fills the feeder they swoop down to claim it. I see one of them now, a cardinal resting in the azalea between feedings. 

Birds are my companions in thought, my most dependable distractions. 

(One of my favorite bird photos, taken on the way home from work long ago.)

Foggy Morning

Foggy Morning

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I woke up to a lovely fog: a world of softened edges and limited horizons. 

Gone is the street behind me, and the house with the long drive beyond. Front and center are the particulars of my yard: the leaf piles at the back, the twisted trunk of the volunteer cherry, the covered garden bench.

Fog makes us all myopic. It takes away the forest and gives us the trees. It provides an excuse for seeing only what is close at hand. 

Sometimes I need that.

Beauty and Bane

Beauty and Bane

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December dawns gray and cold. A new month. I began the last one in an old house by the sea. I begin this one in the two-story suburban home I’ve lived in for decades. A garbage truck trundles by as I write. It’s the third garbage truck I’ve heard this morning.

Ah, the suburbs! The beauty and the bane of them. I love the trees and solitude. I deplore the sameness and isolation.

But that’s an old story. The new story is this: Here I am. 

Extending Thanksgiving

Extending Thanksgiving

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If Thanksgiving lasted a week instead of 24 hours, this would be its final and most celebratory day — the last verse of the hymn, when voices sing louder and the organist pulls out all the stops. It would be the  gratitude you feel after sickness, relief tinged with wonder that the body can be again as it once was. 

The last day of a week of gratitude would be a crescendo of thanks, cymbals crashing, timpani rolling, a fanfare of trumpets. 

And because this week of thanksgiving would be ending on the birthdays of two people dear to me — a daughter and a brother — there would be a special surge of gratitude for the presence of these two people in my life.

Come to think of it, a week of thankfulness might prove so invigorating that next I’d need a month of it. 

 

Jackson

Jackson

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When I’m falling asleep now, I imagine I’m on Jackson, one of my favorite streets in Port Townsend.

I make my way down the hill from my house at the foot of Artillery Hill in Fort Worden, stroll along the brow, listen to the surf surging below.

From there it’s up one hill and then another. But at the top of that second hill, huffing and puffing, I see all of Admiralty Inlet spread out before me.

I snap photos. And in fact, I snapped plenty of them. But they never did it justice, never captured the openness and the light.

No matter — it’s in my mind now, and in my bones and sinews, too.

Warming Up

Warming Up

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Cold weather moved in yesterday. It wasn’t frigid by winter standards, but by the gentler measures of late fall, it was significant. 

The wind and cold reminded me how hard it can be to drag myself out of a warm house into a brisk breeze.  But it also reminded me that the body is a furnace stoked by motion. The colder I am, the faster I walk.  

Yesterday I was almost running. 

(One place where I wasn’t cold yesterday: a sunny bank full of warmth and glare.)