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Category: landscape

Return

Return

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Back home in the early morning light, I wake automatically at my near-accustomed hour. Gone is the beach vibe and the beach pace. I think about how different it is to have nothing to do and nowhere to go, to live beyond schedules.

And how shocking it is to move from one world to another. From beach walks and languor to office and checklists.

Luckily I’ve had help in this endeavor. Flying home catapults the relaxed vacationer headlong into tightly parceled time. Only worse than that — it’s tightly parceled airline time. Hurry up and wait. A parody of real life, which makes the return of schedules a comfort in comparison.

Metro is in my future; the beach is in my heart.

After the Storm

After the Storm

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A dousing overnight, a sudden storm that flooded the street in front of my motel. This morning I dodged puddles on the beach, noticed the enlarged pools and lagoons that came in the wake of a large tide and persistent rain.

A beach is always the same and always different, shaping and reshaping itself from day to day, wave to wave.

Maybe that’s the source of its power. Maybe that’s what gives us stillness — the presence of constant change and motion in a form we can understand and enjoy.

Adopt a Spot

Adopt a Spot

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Walking home yesterday from Metro I noticed a sign. “Adopt a Spot,” it said. This is new to me. Adopt a highway, yes. But adopt a spot?

How good to know that spots have  clout, too. That a clump of trees, a curve of trail, a stand of meadow grass could be noticed, claimed, taken to heart.

I think about the spots I love, places I pass daily, corners worn smooth by passage, roads ridden and paths walked. A new boardwalk in the woods. A nubby stump in the forest. A block of sidewalk in the city, pavement stones ragged.

These are the textures that become dreams, that take hold of us and won’t let go.

Do we adopt the spot — or does the spot adopt us? 

7,800 Miles

7,800 Miles

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It is 7, 214 miles from Washington, D.C., to Kigali, Rwanda, where Tom has gone on a business trip. In less than an hour it will be 7,800 miles — just a few hundred more — from Nasa’s New Horizons probe to Pluto.

Earth meets space, the Kuiper Belt, that which lies beyond our solar system in what surely deserves to be called terra incognita (except that it isn’t terra!).

Early pictures show an orange globe with a crown of methane and nitrogen ice and craters the size of the Grand Canyon. By tonight we will have more photographs of this celestial body, photographs that may help scientists decide whether to call it a planet or a dwarf planet.

What we have right now is a tantalizing glimpse, a collectively held breath — and of course, the wonder. 

Water, Water Everywhere

Water, Water Everywhere

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A rainy Monday, so maybe not the best day for a post about thirst and the lack of public water fountains. But an article in yesterday’s Washington Post made me think about this endangered feature of communal life.

According to the International Plumbing Code, the number of public drinking fountains required in new buildings is down by half, the article says. There are a few causes. One is the consumption of bottled water, which has quadrupled in recent years. Another is fear of contamination, which ironically has grown since the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974 began requiring municipalities to notify their residents immediately of any problems with their water.

But the lack of clean, safe public drinking water has actually hurt American’s health by driving young people to consume more sugary drinks, the article argues. And a preponderance of plastic water bottles is hurting the environment.

This article explains why I have to hunt longer to find a public water fountain. And it also makes me remember the water fountains of my youth. The one at Idle Hour Park, which made a deep whirring sound and produced a trickle of water that seemed to have been drawn up from the depths of a nearby swamp. And the one in the hall of my grammar school, which we would be allowed to stand in line and use on warm spring afternoons. Imagine 400 to 500 kids drinking out of the same fountain! Still, nothing has never tasted as good as the water that flowed from that cool — and I’m sure unsanitary — tap.

Summer Day

Summer Day

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Yesterday was the perfect summer day. I thought this even on the way to the dentist, and if you notice it then, the impression must be valid.

The air was weighty and warm and filled with the sound of cicadas. There was no rain (this was key). And the morning held the promise of just enough heat.

In late afternoon, when I was walking Copper in the woods, a couple of big frogs were bellowing from the creek. They plopped in the water as we walked by. The katydids were chirping slowly, as if they could barely be roused from their dreamy, midsummer naps.

Spiders had been busy and webs were strung between the trees like tiny Buddhist prayer flag ropes. When they caught a leaf it waved cheerily in the breeze.

Solace

Solace

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Last evening Copper and I ran down Folkstone Drive, reversed course at Blue Robin Court and returned via the woods trail. The path was still damp from last week’s rains, and I was glad I wore my old tennis shoes.

It didn’t take long for the woods to work its magic, for my shoulders to drop and my breathing to slow, for my pace to adjust to a non-asphalt stride. I thought about the woods of my childhood, building forts, feeling vaguely disobedient, straying too far, staying too long.

I thought about how long the natural world has brought me comfort, a lifetime of solace in the out-of-doors.

It was as if I had always been walking, always been inhaling the fragrance of smooth, clay-packed soil and marshy creek water. The aromas had been closer to my nose then, since my nose had been closer to the ground. But if I inhaled deeply enough, I could smell them still.

That May Morning

That May Morning

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When the weather is exquisite, most any walking path will do. I put this philosophy to the test a few days ago and did not find it wanting.

I started from a Target parking lot, a paved path around a containment pond where there was immediate gratification in the form of a trilling mockingbird. The bird perched on the lower limb of a small, low tree, which gave me a chance to stand and watch (as well as listen to) his performance. I almost clapped when he was done.

The path led to a new concrete sidewalk along a two-lane road. It was the kind of area we have many of in the suburbs, the kind you drive past on your way to somewhere else, the kind filled with self-storage units and auto body shops.

A sad little road if you were traversing it on a gloomy March afternoon. But on a sparkling May morning, the water spurting up in the sterile office park pond could have been the Trevi Fountain. That’s how intoxicating it was to be alive and walking on this late spring day.

(Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Not So White Shoes

Not So White Shoes

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As I was saying, I love my white tennis shoes, took great pride in finding a pair that is not fluorescent pink or day-glow orange. The beauty of white shoes is that they’re white — but that’s also their problem. One is tempted to keep them always white. But that would mean keeping them always in a box.

I started out with good intentions, switching to my old shoes whenever I was going off road. But I don’t always know where my feet will take me. Sometimes I start on pavement but return home a different way.

Yesterday’s ramble took me into the neighborhood of South Field, where I thought I could pick up a path that meandered back to Folkstone. The path never emerged, and before long I was bushwhacking through downed trees and brambles. Ahead of me was a creek (there is always a creek around here; though we call them runs), so I searched the bank to find a narrow place to cross.

As you might expect, it wasn’t quite narrow enough.  I slipped and doused my right foot in creek water, then stepped back into a couple inches of  mud just for good measure.

I’m reminded of this quotation by John A. Shedd: “A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are for.” The same could be said of white tennis shoes!

The Promise of Spring

The Promise of Spring

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The clouds moved in yesterday as Copper and I took a leisurely stroll through the woods. Clouds at sunset confuse the rambler, take away the visual cues of angled light. So we wandered farther than I intended, deep into the forest where the skunk cabbage borders tadpole pools.

I peered at the tiny creatures darting in the shallow water, thought about the frogs they will become if nature gives them a chance.

At this point in the season, all is potential. Nowhere is this clearer than in the woods. Here there are clusters of violets and carpets of spring beauties, but there isn’t the color and greenery you see in suburban yards. There are no flowering cherries here, no tulips or phlox. I did spot a couple of Virginia bluebells but those were in the community meadow.

For parts of our walk, we could have been ambling through late winter. But we weren’t. There was a freshness in the air, a humidity and promise. It was spring all right.