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Category: landscape

The Summer Book

The Summer Book

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I picked up Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book because it showed up in a list of books that feature grandparents. There are precious few of these, I’ve noticed. 

Jansson’s Grandmother (she’s given no other name) is crotchety and wise and foolish and loving. She smokes cigarettes and breaks into a neighbor’s house. No cookie-baking for this grandma. She’s a renegade. But she also understands her granddaughter Sophia, pushes her and puts her in situations where she is bound to succeed. 

Grandmother also levels with herself and with others (when she’s not lying, that is). Here she is after the break-in: 

“My dear child,” said Grandmother impatiently [to Sophia], “every human being has to make his own mistakes.” … Sometimes people never saw things clearly until it was too late and they no longer had the strength to start again. Or else they forgot their idea along the way and didn’t even realize that they had forgotten.”

That’s the kind of gem Jansson strews about for us through the pages of this slim and lovely book, all of it amidst a natural world (an island in the Gulf of Finland) that is as beautiful as it is dangerous. 

Simplicity

Simplicity

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I learned from the Writer’s Almanac  that today is the birthday of the poet Mary Oliver, who lived from 1935 to 2019. I discovered her only years before her passing, reading her prose before her poetry. But it poetry that she was known for and poetry that won her the Pulitzer Prize in 1984. 

Today’s entry includes a few words from Oliver about what she needed, which wasn’t much:

“I’ve always wanted to write poems and nothing else. There were times over the years when life was not easy, but when you can work a few hours a day and you’ve got a good book to read and you can go outside to the beach and dig for clams, you’re okay.”

I will hold onto that simplicity today. 

Shooting Stars

Shooting Stars

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By 3:30 this morning the sky was filled with thunder and rain. But only a few hours earlier, it was illuminated not by lightning but by the intermittent flashes of the Perseid Meteor Shower.

Viewed from the trampoline, which allows for an upturned gaze without a crick in the neck, the stitches of light were surprising and ethereal, each one a gift I didn’t expect to receive. But the best one of all came when I’d only been at my post a few minutes. 

It looked more like a artist’s rendering of a comet, with an orange-yellow fireball and a streaking tail that flowed into the velvety darkness. It may have been an “earthgazer,” a type of meteor I only learned about today, known for its longer streak of brightness and most commonly appearing before midnight. 

Whatever it was … it — and all the shooting stars I saw last night — took my breath away. They reminded me of the great beyond. They reminded me to look up. 

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Bodies and Souls

Bodies and Souls

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The several loads of laundry I’ve done since returning home are a good re-entry point. Cleaning and folding make me feel at home. And being on the deck as my nightgown blows in the breeze helps me remember the freedom I felt at the shore.

That feeling of freedom is more important now than ever. It’s so easy to feel hemmed in by the pandemic, to think only about what we can’t do, where we can’t go.

Of course we must take care always to protect ourselves and those we love. But we must also find our own personal balance points, the tradeoffs we will or won’t make to ensure that we not only keep our bodies intact — but our souls as well.

Traveling Twice

Traveling Twice

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This year’s beach read is The Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner, a family saga as broad and as deep as the western horizon. It’s been a fine book for this year’s trip, accompanying me on the plane and on the strand.

There aren’t many readers on the beach these days. There are plenty of people on their phones, and, believe it or not in this age of air buds, plenty of people listening to portable radios loudly enough that everyone nearby can hear them, too.

But I spotted only three or four people reading books on yesterday’s walk, though the day before I happened to park myself by an entire family in thrall. But though few in number, readers stand out. There they sit in perfect communion with the printed pages, as waves break and gulls swoop. They could be anywhere — running through an airport in Bangkok or driving cattle through a freak spring snowstorm in Montana.

I like to think that these readers have discovered what I have: that when you travel with a book, you travel twice.

Beyond the Beach

Beyond the Beach

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When you’re at the beach it’s easy to be seduced by it, to think there is nothing else to see or do. But  there are other pleasures. The pool, for instance. I’ve spent many hours lazing by it, reading or writing, and many hours in it, as my body cools and my fingers shrivel.

And there is walking around the little village center here, where you can people-watch, pick up a salad for dinner and buy a souvenir or two.

Finally, there’s the mental vibe of the beach, which expands beyond the sand and surf into the light and the wind — into the words I write, the thoughts I think and the dreams I dream.

I guess that’s why I keep coming back.

Puddles

Puddles

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The last few afternoons have featured big rains with dark clouds building, sheets of water falling and palm trees swaying. These storms have left large puddles in their wake, bodies of water like small ponds, making you cross the street when you’re walking to the market to pick up the salad dressing you forgot to buy an hour earlier.

The puddles mirror the sky and the clouds that created them. The images vanish when the water meets the macadam.  I skirt them at first, but then take the time to snap a shot.

Looking at it now I see how the grain of the gravel underlies the mottled cloudscape — and the upside-down palms seem like two small brooms, ready to sweep the street of rain.

Fast Walk at High Tide

Fast Walk at High Tide

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The sun is well up in the sky, the aroma of sunscreen fills the air, all the shells have been found. It’s a fast walk at high tide.

Yes, the intentions are pure. I could imagine the early rising as I took 40 more winks, could feel myself pulling on running shoes, tying the laces, tucking my hair up in the baseball cap, heading out into a still, silent world where only a few beachcombers strolled meditatively along the shore.

Instead, I found myself hours later, dodging the breakers as they edged onto the only hard sand left, crunching the dross of smashed shells and dried seaweed.

It was hot, it was invigorating. It was a fast walk at high tide. 

Kinda Sorta Like Normal

Kinda Sorta Like Normal

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It’s not like you can forget the pandemic here. I’m aware that the virus is still raging. To get here, I wore both a mask and a face shield. And when I enter a grocery store, which is the only place I enter other than my room, people wear masks.

But on the beach, which is so broad and glorious, so built for social distancing, I can walk and look and sit and stare and pretend that life is whole once again.

In other words … it’s kinda, sorta like normal.

Change of Heart

Change of Heart

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When driving west on Interstate 66 last Monday, I thought about how many times I made that drive, countless trips from Virginia to Kentucky — all the thoughts I had, the fears I was fighting.

In later years, the trips were often in response to a health crisis for Mom or Dad, so I sought distractions wherever I could find them. The scenery out my window was embroidered with worry. But when I looked to the mountains,  I found relief.

It was that way this week, too. All of which is to say how much a change of scene can mean a change of heart.