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Author: Anne Cassidy

Changing of the Guard

Changing of the Guard

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The beach was only five hours south, and I was away only four days, but I returned to a world of autumn color, more than I’m used to this time of year.  A shot of cold air must have shocked trees into turning. 

It was a pleasant surprise, a suitable homecoming for mid-October, as if while I was gone there had been a changing of the guard.

As I write this post, a shiver of wind shakes yellow leaves from the poplar and the witch hazel. The leaves are dancing as they fall, swirling to earth, covering the lawn, which has seen better days.

Yesterday I left summer behind. Now … it’s fall. 

Punctuation

Punctuation

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“I wandered lonely as a cloud,” wrote William Wordsworth. Though his cloud floated “on high o’er vales and hills,” mine was perched in a perfect blue sky above a sand dune. 

How solitary it looked, this cloud, how out of place, as if it had stumbled into the wrong act of a play. 

Where were its compatriots? There were other clouds in the sky that day, but nowhere near this one, which had dared to move inland instead of out to sea. 

Its out-of-placeness only emphasized its ethereal boundaries, its contrast of white with blue. It looked like the dot of an explanation point, punctuating a late summer day. 

White Noise

White Noise

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I write this post to the sound of waves pounding the shore. It’s a sound I never grow tired of. Nature’s white noise machine, its beating heart. 

Like a white noise machine, if you listen hard enough you find the rhythm in the randomness, the patterns in the passages. 

Like an inhale and an exhale there’s a sucking in and a blowing out, a familiar back-and-forthness. Action, pause, reaction. A rush, a rustle, the life force. 

(Gulls in the surf, oblivious to the white noise?)

Being Present

Being Present

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Having spent time on the Gulf Coast of Florida the last 10 years, I’ve been spoiled by the sunsets, so many picture-perfect ones, the great orb sliding down just before dinner, a fully awake time to be sure.

On the Atlantic coast of North Carolina, you have to wake early if you want to see the sun rise. I didn’t yesterday — but I did today. 

Rolled out early enough to see the first color streaking the sky, to wonder if the clouds would impede or dramatize the rising (the latter), to document the moment when the blood-red disc came out from behind the ocean, to feel a sense of relief then.

A line from Walden came to mind: “It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it.”

OBX

OBX

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The Outer Banks of North Carolina (known on sweatshirts and bumper stickers as OBX) is close enough that I should have visited long ago. But here I am now, which is all that really matters. It was a brisk welcome, sunny and cold, with wind that meant business and had busied itself burying the stairway to the beach.

Just a reminder of who’s in charge, as if we need it after Fiona and Ian. 

The dunes here are protected but diminished, and seeing them yesterday, proud seagrass waving, was to feel an ache for all the beautiful things that grace our lives … then disappear.

The Harbinger

The Harbinger

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It’s happened here, and no wonder. The recent rain and chill have probably driven them to it. Or maybe it wasn’t the weather at all. Maybe it’s just their time.

Whatever the reason, the dogwood leaves have begun their march to extinction, their lovely russety turning. And berries have formed, their brightness a contrast to the subdued tone of the leaves.

I look at the dogwood a lot these days, since Copper likes to stand near it while we’re outside. And it has become for me a harbinger of another season, one of burnished brightness and long, still nights. 

Dear Friends

Dear Friends

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Whenever I write a post these days I’m never far from a shelf of books. This was not the case when I worked in an office and would scramble to put some words down before my day officially began. Now I post at home, and there are walls of books throughout my house. 

I wonder sometimes what a younger person might say about these rows of books. My own children don’t count; they’ve grown up here. But someone else, someone efficient and technical who’s quite aware (as am I) that most of these books are available in digital or audio format and that in those formats they would take up a lot less space. 

Would they understand why the books themselves, the tattered covers, broken spines, dogeared pages, are so precious to me? Would they get that the books somehow become the ideas, characters and worlds they represent? Would they know how it feels to look to the left, as I’m doing now, and see not hundreds of pounds of paper and acres of felled trees, but a collection of dear friends?

Warmup Walk

Warmup Walk

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It’s unseasonably cold in these parts (it was the coolest October 4th on record here), but I’m as reluctant to turn on the heat in early October as I am to use the air-conditioning in May. The forecast is for more warmth to come; I’m holding out for that. 

Meanwhile, I’m re-familiarizing myself with the warmup walk. I took one of these yesterday, around Lake Audubon. The drizzle had stopped and waterproof-clad walkers were trudging through the late-afternoon chill, happy to be outside.

It was easy to rev up the speed, knowing that body heat is once again my friend. And it was good to know that the faster I walked the warmer it would seem when I got home. Because yesterday, that was the point of it all.

(Another way to feel warmer: picture Lake Audubon in June)

Of Hominids and Humans

Of Hominids and Humans

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I wasn’t planning to read the entire Washington Post story today about Swedish geneticist Svante Paabo’s Nobel Prize in medicine, but the more I learned the more captivated I was. Paabo’s research into prehistoric DNA, a field he’s credited with founding, has shone a light on ancient humans, including Neanderthals and a new species of early hominid he discovered, the Denisovan. 

Paabo’s work has implications for human health in 2022: a genetic risk factor for severe Covid was inherited from Neanderthals, and 1 to 2 percent of non-African people have Neanderthal DNA. 

While the early hominid science was inspiring, it was the humanity of the scientist that touched me most. The photo accompanying the article showed a laughing Paabo being thrown into a pond by his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute. Paabo told reporters that when he got the call from Sweden at his home in Germany, he thought it was someone calling to tell him his summer house there had a plumbing problem.  

And finally, he gave a lovely tribute to his mother during his remarks. “The biggest influence in life was my mother, with whom I grew up,” Paabo said. “It makes me a bit sad that she can’t experience this day.” 

(A Neanderthal skull unearthed in Israel. Courtesy Wikipedia.)

Rainy Weekend

Rainy Weekend

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The weather in my corner of the world makes me think of a slightly altered cliche — you can’t keep a good climate down. The D.C. area is rich in sunshine, low in cloud cover and, at least for the last month or so, short on rain. Which means that last weekend’s wall-to-wall showers were quite welcome.

I made soup, culled old files, and washed and dried clothes to give away. The rain and cloud cover gave me permission to stay inside. It lent a coziness to time’s passage, blurred its edges. 

A quick glance at the weather forecast tells me we’re expecting clouds and rain for the next two days. Who knows what I might accomplish?!