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A Walk Recorded

A Walk Recorded

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I took a stroll late yesterday through the gloaming, the exquisite though way-too-early gloaming — I was walking between 4 and 5! — then came home and wrote these words:

The late fall light is draining quickly from the sky and a bright near-half moon showing itself. There are the most delicate of evening sounds: a few hardy crickets, the bird that says “Judy” (did I determine that’s a wren?) and various human-caused sounds — a pinging that could have come from a small forge but was likely a kid banging on a pipe — the distant downshift of a passing truck. But none of these sounds disturbed the peacefulness of the landscape. They only enhanced it. 

Some of the shorter shrubs have lost most of their leaves. Those that remain seem to be offering themselves for viewing, like golden coins on a platter. Back on my street, the russets and scarlets of the maples and oaks shimmered in the twilight. 

Night falls fast this time of year, but when it’s warm, as it has been today, that doesn’t seem to matter as much.

Charting Time

Charting Time

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It’s only a baby habit, just getting started, but I’ve decided to keep a time chart, noting on my (paper) calendar what I’m doing and when. 

Time flows differently these days, it eddies and it stalls and sometimes it swirls by so quickly that I barely see the ripples it leaves behind. 

So rather than wondering each day, where does the time go, I will try to chart it as it flies. 

A noble experiment, yes? 

We’ll see. 

The Piedmont

The Piedmont

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Although you might not think it, there are hills around here, inclines that push walkers and cyclists into overdrive. These are not the hills of Seattle rising like cartoon mountains, making a hazard of rolling suitcases and winding the faint-hearted in just one block. These are more subtle gradients, but gradients just the same.

It dawned on me lately while walking up a steep rise that it’s the piedmont at work. The land we inhabit here on the western edge of Fairfax County is just past the fall line of the Potomac. Virginia hunt country lies nearby. 

We live in the northern Piedmont region, literally at the foot of the mountains, those mountains being the Blue Ridge, which you can see rising like gray ghosts a quarter mile from here if the weather is clear. 

It’s comforting to think, as I chug up a steep grade, that I’m not just out of shape … I’m hiking the Piedmont.

Mirror of the Moment

Mirror of the Moment

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So many walks to choose from these days, paths around ponds and through forests. Trails in the morning, chaste of footfall. Paths in the afternoon, littered with leaf bits from all the walking.

On Tuesday I passed two ponds, a bright one with cattails and a shady one rippled as if a fan were blowing on it. 

The water was meditative, brisk, a mirror of the moment. 

Marine Layer

Marine Layer

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Sometimes it seems as if you could will away the marine layer that cloaks this city in the morning, that by walking up and down the hills, through parks and intersections, past coffee shops and markets you could build up enough heat to part the clouds and let the sun shine through.

That’s the way it felt this morning, as I ambled down Pike to Alaskan Way, and headed north … toward Alaska.

I didn’t get that far, of course. Only to Myrtle Edwards Park. But by the time I hiked back up the hill to the hotel, the sun was shining. 

Saturday Morning

Saturday Morning

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It’s cool and crisp today;. The witch hazel and the weeping cherry are starting to turn, but most trees are green, and pools of shade and light still dot the lawn. 

Along the fence row, the ornamental grasses have settled in, grown up and out. They catch the light, their tassels gleaming. And the ferns, replenished by rain, are verdant again.

In between feeding runs, a hummingbird perches on the slim twig of the climbing rose, which bends slightly with its tiny weight. 

I have the feeling I often have when struck by natural beauty — that I’d like to hold it, inhale or imbibe it, anything to keep it here. 

The Shore

The Shore

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I’m home now, looking out the window of my office, staring at the
trees that aren’t palm, the greenery that’s not tropical. 

Yesterday I took a walk along familiar streets, nodding at neighbors, noting the changes even a week can bring, the house that’s up for sale, the fall clematis that’s about to bloom. There was much rain while I was gone. Not enough to rescue the parched ferns but enough to green the grass that now clogs the mower. 

It’s lovely, it’s my home. But I miss the big skies above the palms, the limitless white sand, the confab of shore birds that hung out at a tidal flat near where I would go. I see in my mind’s eye the small crescent beach only reachable at low tide and the alternating blues and greens of the Gulf water, lighter above the sand bar. 

What a magical place! How grateful I am to have gone there again!

Summer Storm

Summer Storm

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One of the things I like about going to the beach is, strangely enough, the rain. Not  the steady, all-day showers but the late-afternoon thunderstorm. 

In this subtropical climate you’re pretty much guaranteed to have two or three (or more) summer days a week with skies darkening after 3 or 4 p.m., the uptick of stickiness in already-humid air, the low rumble of thunder and then, with a release that matches the heat of the day, a lovely, brief torrent.

There was a downpour like that yesterday, a fitting way to say (sigh!) … goodbye to the beach. 

Off-Beach Walks

Off-Beach Walks

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Maybe it’s the Red Tide. Maybe it’s the shade. Or maybe it’s just my frame of mind. But for some reason I’m taking walks off the beach-beaten track this year. And I’m finding …

Spanish moss …

lush greenery,

and quiet canals.

All just steps away from the sand and surf. 

The Canals

The Canals

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The west coast of Florida is not only sun-kissed and sugar-sanded but some of it (my part of it, at least) is laced with a series of narrow canals that make for crazy walking but lovely viewing.

I ran into these canals the other day on the way home from the beach. Thinking I could take a shortcut I found myself going in circles on what was, in effect, a peninsula, bounded on all sides by these watery avenues. 

No cut-throughs here. Instead, languorous streams tucked behind walls of palmetto, elephant ear, bougainvillea and birds of paradise. They move slowly; I’m trying to learn from them.