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Category: landscape

Night of Shooting Stars

Night of Shooting Stars

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Tonight we await the Perseid Meteor showers and I remember 2020, the year I watched them with Celia on the trampoline.

She and I talked of many things, including the baby her sister was expecting, who showed up right on schedule the next day, our first grandchild. After that, Celia moved to Seattle, where she’s lived happily with her husband ever since.

I’m a lucky mom to have two of my grown daughters nearby. But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss the one who lives on the other side of the country. Sometimes she seems as far away as those specks of light streaking across the sky.

But then I remember the conversation we had that special night, or any number of other times we’ve visited here or there, chatted for hours on the phone, or otherwise shrunk the miles. Those times are like meteor showers, spectacular light shows that boost my sense of wonder, that remind me how good it is to be alive.

(No great star shots. Last month’s full moon is the best I can do.)

A Riddle

A Riddle

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What stands and runs but does not walk? This riddle came to me on today’s stroll through Franklin Farm. Riddles do not usually come to me, whether I’m moving or stationary, so I’m eager to share this one.

The answer (groan) is water. Water stands — I saw proof of that today as I jumped over puddles. And water runs — in streams and faucets, rivers and sewers. But water never walks.

It certainly seems to, though. Water that flows at a slower pace, a turgid and murky creek, for instance, certainly seems to be walking rather than running.

I doubt the concept of walking water will catch on, though. It’s a little too close to walking on water and its many connotations. So for now, it will remain … just a riddle.

(A river carved through brown hills in Pomeroy, Washington, shot from the air in October 2018.)

Last Morning Hours

Last Morning Hours

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First, the anxious tedium only an airport can supply, followed by passage on the sleek silver bird. And then, in what seems the blink of an eye, a return to normal life. Leaving behind the deep relaxation of beach time, of staring up at palm trees, impossibly slim, impossibly tall, a profusion of growth and greenery.

Then, there is finding the place I live to be new again. Even the old familiar walk, the up-and-back of the neighborhood thoroughfare, seems shiny and bright.

It is full-bore summer here. The night is rich with insect sounds, the mornings full of crows cawing and blue jays calling. Another trip is coming in a few days, a family vacation full of little people. There is plenty to do. But now, for these last morning hours, I want to pause and let it all sink in.

‘Great Warehouse’

‘Great Warehouse’

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The natural world is never far away when I’m at the beach. I stroll beside the ocean, inhale the scent of seaweed, hear the cry of gulls, tremble at the power of waves that rise and fall and rise again.

In A Poetry Handbook, Mary Oliver notes that “these days many poets live in cities, or at least in suburbs, and the natural world grows ever more distant from our everyday lives. Most people, in fact, live in cities, and therefore most readers are not necessarily very familiar with the natural world. And yet the natural world has always been the great warehouse of symbolic imagery. Poetry is one of these ancient arts, and it began, as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth.”

Being here, amidst this wildness, is not only relaxing for the body, it is recharging for the soul. It puts me back in touch with the “great warehouse of symbolic imagery” that I too often neglect to tap at home.

Gulf Forecast

Gulf Forecast

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I’m in Florida on my annual getaway. I’m savoring once again that unique combination of sea air, palm trees and sugar-white sand that makes this part of the Gulf Coast both relaxing and energizing.

Before leaving I looked up the weather. Would I need to pack a sweater? Yes, but only for inside. An umbrella? Not really, because I don’t mind getting wet at the beach.

Of course, I didn’t need to check the forecast to know what the weather would be. Sunny, hot and humid with warm mornings, sultry afternoons, and a thunderstorm to clear the air before nightfall.

It’s a forecast as familiar to me as this special stretch of Florida landscape.

The Weight of It

The Weight of It

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I felt differently about yesterday’s snow after being out in it. I felt the weight of it. Though it lacked the heft of snowcrete, it was heavy and wet, which is why it clung so fetchingly to limbs and branches. After shoveling it for 30 minutes, I could feel it in my back and legs.

This is more observation than complaint, proof that the landscape has its way with us — that it marks us, just as we mark it. Before I breached the white surface with my orange shovel, I noticed the tracks: fox, I believe, and a disturbed area around the ground cover, pawed by deer hungry for foliage.

We all wanted something: food in the animals’ cases and a clear driveway in mine. Movement and sustenance — twin aspirations that drive us all.

The World Outside

The World Outside

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A thaw has begun. Today is warm and damp with bird song in the air. Yesterday, I spotted a flock of robins in the yard next door. When I stepped outside to bounce on the trampoline it felt like another world. And in fact it was another world: the world outside.

For the last several weeks, cold temperatures and seasonal duties have kept me inside. I had almost forgotten about the world outside with its fox and deer. I had definitely forgotten about the hawk, who swooped low and lean across the yard and perched directly above me.

I told him not to get any ideas. I’ve tangled with him before and have a healthy respect for raptors. In time, he realized I was not what he wanted and flew away.

Meanwhile, I listened and bounced. I noted how tall the ornamental grasses have grown, and how full the hollies. It was cloudy with a tinge of pink on the western horizon. How good it felt to be back again in the world outside.

(View from the trampoline)

Solstice Sunset

Solstice Sunset

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I was driving south as the sun set on the shortest day of the year, which meant I couldn’t ogle the sky as much as I would have liked. I certainly couldn’t take a picture. But I did see on my left a sunset of rare beauty.

Unlike the one above, snapped seven years ago in Williamsburg, this one was primarily yellow-orange in hue. Crepuscular rays radiated from the horizon like spotlights. The afterglow was warm and radiant. It took my mind off the biting wind we’d had all day, off the shortness of the day itself.

Winter offers spectacular sunsets. If I better understood meteorology, I would know the scientific reason for this. Instead, I see it as a form of compensation. Winter owes us this, I think. It takes our light and tests our mettle, but if we pay attention, it offers revelatory moments. Last night’s solstice sunset was one of those.

La Bella Luna

La Bella Luna

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Whenever I see a big moon I think of the movie “Moonstruck,” one of my favorites. “La bella luna,” the characters say, when an impossibly large moon beams through their windows in Brooklyn.

Last night an impossibly large moon beamed through my windows in Virginia. It shone in a near-cloudless sky. It stole the show.

I thought of other moon viewings, of how this heavenly body can comfort and caress us.

The good folks at the Capital Weather Gang explained that this year’s Harvest Moon appears large — is in fact a super moon — because it is both full and as close to the earth as it can be. It is at its perigee, a scientific term that contains an exclamation.

“Gee!” is right. It was quite a moon. And it will be almost full for the next two nights.

Exitalgia

Exitalgia

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There should be a word to describe the emotion one feels leaving a place when the most beautiful day of your stay is the day of your departure. Exitalgia, perhaps?

Exitalgic was the way I felt yesterday leaving the house we rented. I stayed a few minutes after the others to make sure the place was ship-shape and found a small green beach rake toy in the gravel driveway. It looked so forlorn sitting there. I was already missing the chubby little hands that held it.

But soon there was nothing to do but leave, so I drove past the red barn, skirted the bright lake and took a left on Sand Flat Road, its new-mown fields rolling up to forested hills. I thought again about my affinity for this part of the world, largely unexplored on this kid-oriented visit, but still present, there to enjoy in the future, I hope.

An hour or so later, I was traversing a more dramatic landscape: Route 48 through the West Virginia highlands. My phone location service tells me that I snapped the top photo near Keyser. When I turned the other way I had a closer look at the behemoths you see below. Hilltop wind turbines have become a beacon on the drive to Garrett County. When I see them, I know I’m almost there.