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Category: landscape

Moon Walk

Moon Walk

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The story last night was the moon, large and sultry and almost full. I had already walked in the morning, but when I got home last night I had to walk a little bit more, just to keep it company.

I watched it through the trees, waited for it to rise high enough to snap a shot of it free and clear.

But the chili was simmering on the stove back home, darkness was falling, and I realized I was strolling along neighborhood streets (no sidewalks, of course) wearing all black.

It was time to go home. The moon would have to wait. So I snapped a few more photos …

Then called it a night …

The Hills

The Hills

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To live in a city of hills is to know long views and low valleys. It’s to feel that pain in the back of the legs that comes from uphill climbs. It’s to know the slow trudge and the quick downhill.

It’s not always easy, but ease is not always the point.

As I prepare to leave Seattle tomorrow, I will keep many images in my heart, snapshots of a city that Celia has grown to love.

I will remember the city blocks and the flaming maples and Mount Rainier looking down on it all.

It has brought a psalm to mind — timeless, eternal source of strength: “I will lift up mine eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help.”

Kubota Garden

Kubota Garden

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It’s where Seattle goes on a sunny day … or at least it felt that way last Sunday. There were lovers and families and dog walkers. The elderly in wheel chairs and walkers. Cameras with tripods, their earnest photographers snapping shots of engaged couples and even a bride.

Kubota Gardens is an oasis of green in the midst of the city. Even a city as green as Seattle, one nestled between water and mountains, needs the relaxation potential of an urban park. Kubota satisfies all the senses: the splash of water, the aroma of autumn leaves — and everywhere, flaming foliage, artful arrangements of flower and leaf and grass.

This time of year, Kubota is a riot of reds, oranges and yellows, as the Japanese maple, euonymus and  gingko flare up in their rich tones.

I did a lot of people watching on Sunday, a lot of strolling and stopping, a lot of deep breathing. It was just the respite I needed before a hectic week.

Fading Beauty

Fading Beauty

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The wedding was at 5 p.m., but there was time to meander along a Meadowlark Garden trail toward Lake Gardiner, to see the late-summer salvia and coleus, the asters and ornamental grasses.

It had been cloudy most of the day, but the sun had come out a few hours earlier and warmed the air.

With each turn of the gravel trail the eye took in another artful arrangement of fern and grass and frond.

What a balm for the spirit is a mellow fall afternoon, the air just warm enough, the scent of crisp leaves. After the frenetic growth of summer, the fading is welcome. The beauty seems to come from the fading. And there is comfort in that.

Past is Present

Past is Present

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What would it be like to live where the past is present, where you can visit an Iron Age fort or a beehive hut, drive along ancient routes and savor timeless views?

It would feel like living here, in the west of Ireland.

Take Kilmalkedar, a 12th-century Irish church built with stones that had been around for centuries, some of them with the ancient ogham script. It was built on an important monastic site. After the roof caved in hundreds of years ago, people began burying their dead inside the church, a practice that practically guaranteed one entry into heaven.

Speaking of heaven, what would it be like to love the place you live so much that you give tours of it.  Makes me think about place and some people’s devotion to it, which very much gets me back to why I started this blog.

To walk through the landscape and write about it, and in writing about it to belong to it.

Here, that process is not as labor-intensive.

Remembering Waves

Remembering Waves

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It’s been a tough work re-entry, so this morning I’m thinking about the beach. Most of the people I saw there are back home again, too. The vagaries of chance and locale that brought us together have split us apart again.

But we were renewed and refreshed by our contact with the elemental, with forces beyond our control. We encounter those all the time, of course, but seldom are they so powerful and so beautiful and so endlessly fascinating to observe.

I don’t swim in the ocean; I just look at it. But I never tire of its patterns and moods: of calm, warm, lapping waters or dark, fast, roiling ones. Of waves that roll and stipple and soothe. I’m seeing those waves now, and will see them later when I walk through the suburbs, when I make my way through the day.

The Tan

The Tan

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When I was young, a tan was something you sought, treasured and displayed. You laid out on lounge chairs or towels. You slathered on baby oil and basically fried out there. “Did you go to Florida?” high school classmates would ask after spring break.  “No, it was just my back yard,” I’d say, enjoying the surprise on their faces.

This is because I would lay out in all weathers, tilting my face to the sun, from which flowed all strength and goodness (or so it seemed). I liked the way I looked when I was tan; brown was beautiful.

When I was older I went to ocean beaches for my tan. When no shoreline was available (and it usually wasn’t), I settled for towels spread on the well-trod grass of Lincoln Park or the soft tar roof of my Greenwich Village apartment building.

In time, grudgingly, I applied sunscreen. At first, only SPF 8. It was a pride thing. But later I tried the higher numbers. The tans, though reduced, still remained. I couldn’t imagine returning from a week at the beach without having skin that was a different color than the skin I left with.

Not anymore. This year I come back the same. I attribute this not to lack of time on the strand or at the pool — but to lavish use of SPF 50, a UV-protectant shirt I pulled on over my bathing suit and a towel draped over my legs.

I long ago realized that the “healthy glow” was not so healthy. There are wrinkles and age spots and worse.  So I was careful; I heeded the dermatologist’s warnings.

The beach vacation remains, but the tan is history.

Backward Glance

Backward Glance

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I’m big on the backward glance, on analyzing what has happened, on figuring out from it what might be to come.

This does not go away when I’m at the beach. But it softens a little, like a once-crisp cracker at an al fresco lunch beside the waves.

At the beach it’s easier to see the back-and-forth of things, the ebbs and flows; easier to trust that all will be well.

I’m always looking for lessons, even from vacations. And that’s what this beach week is showing me: Clouds will pile up in the east, will show themselves as rain-makers by the dark slant beneath them. They will come this way, will empty and pass. And then … the sun will come out again.

Shell Art

Shell Art

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If rocks and shells could talk, these would laugh, whistle and shout. Look at us, they’d say. Someone has picked us up off the beach, spiffed us up, cast us as heroes in a crazy beach novel.

Here we are telling a joke:

Here we are sharing a tale:

We have no idea why we were willed into being, what our creator has in mind for us. But for now, we are alive and transformed on this Gulf Coast beach.

Dipping my Toes

Dipping my Toes

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The sounds I heard outside this morning didn’t make sense. Were the taps and creaks from errant branches, from the building warming in the tropical sun? Only when I looked out the window did I see the rain.

It doesn’t matter; I have plenty to do inside as well as out. I brought books and notes and half-finished essays. Brain food. Things to think about and read.

A trip to the beach rests the body and the mind. So I sleep more, worry less (or try to!) and ignore weather reports. How long will it rain? The clouds are dark, but I see some blue. Did the storm break the humidity?

Only one way to find out. I’ll finish this post and my morning pages, then dip my toes into the day.