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Category: landscape

Peepers

Peepers

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I heard them last night, the tiny, vocal frogs we know as spring peepers. Their chorus is a sure sign of spring.

They’re late this year, the little guys. Waiting for warmth, I imagine. We all are.

But who among us makes such music of our contentment?

If I read about peepers (and I think I did long ago) I would learn that their sounds are mating calls — not some existential expression of delight.

Still, after a long winter, in the just-dark of a warm spring evening, existential delight is what I hear.

Old Vine

Old Vine

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Lexington is an insider’s town. The one-way streets, the unmarked country lanes, the walled gardens — they come from long knowledge.

I noticed this yesterday as I was driving a route I hadn’t driven in years and on a hunch found the way to Old Vine. Not new Vine, the yin to Main Street’s yang, but Old Vine, which veers off its namesake at an improbable angle.

Inner cheers when I found this shortcut. The raised fist of victory. But I knew it wasn’t my superb navigational powers that led the way. It wasn’t a hunch as much as it was a long-buried map of the city that I carry around inside me.

I found Old Vine because I grew up here.

Landscape of Childhood

Landscape of Childhood

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In My Life in Middlemarch, Rebecca Mead writes:

“[George] Eliot found regenerative inspiration in the remembrance of the landscape of her childhood. Her love for the deep green England of Warwickshire was the foundation of her belief that the love we have for the landscape in which we have grown up has a quality that can never be matched by our admiration of any environment discovered later, no matter how beautiful.”

Mead quotes Eliot from The Mill on the Floss:

“These familiar flowers, these well-remembered bird notes, this sky with its fitful brightness, these furrowed and grassy fields, each with a sort of personality given to it by the capricious hedgerows — such things as these are the mother tongue of our imagination …”

And later, this line, which I quote in my own book: “We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it.” 

I read these passages on a bumpy flight to my hometown, sick at heart, sick in stomach, but imagining the balm that awaited me — my own “furrowed and grassy fields.” And knowing there would be some comfort there. And as always, there has been.

Mottled Sky

Mottled Sky

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Most color has drained from the earth. Now that our white snow cover is gone (though not for long perhaps?), we are left with brown leaves, gray trees — a monochromatic world. On walks these days my eyes are drawn toward the sky, source of light, source of color.

Here, from yesterday, a swirl of blue and white, which brings the word mottled to mind. Splotched, blotched, swirled, streaked.

I like the word mottled, mostly because it reminds me of soft skies like these. But also because I like how the word sounds. Like marbled, which reminds me of sleek granite or fine paper. And rhyming with coddled, as in egg, or child.

But mostly the word, like the sky, stands on its own.

A View in Mind

A View in Mind

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Cold and snow have hemmed in my walks and runs, have kept me close to home. But yesterday I broke free. Not that it was much warmer than it has been, but it wasn’t snowing or sleeting (yet) so I left the neighborhood for a familiar route.

I darted across the busy street to the trail on the other side, the one with cut-out hedges, the one that always makes me feel like I’m in a maze or a tunnel of English hedgerows. When that trail ended I was at the crest of a rise, where I can see for miles on a clear day.

It wasn’t clear yesterday, but no matter. I have that view in my head. I could see the Dulles control tower, the blue hills beyond it. I could escape the immediate and enter the faraway.

Winter Morning

Winter Morning

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Gray, leaden skies today and snow in the forecast. I’m remembering a warmer morning, with open skies and a spectacular sunrise. One I almost missed until I spotted a streak of orange out the front windows and walked out on the deck.

It was the big show that morning, skies streaked orange and gold, clouds purpled at the horizon. Birds were at the feeder, grackles and chickadees, and in the distance the sounds of other birds, crows cawing, the cackle of a pileated woodpecker.

Everything was alive and singing — the birds, the wind stirring the winter brambles, even the sky, changing by the minute, the sun impatient to start the day.

This Other Life

This Other Life

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The flight left at 5:30, which seems insanely early even for an airplane, creature of the sky that it is. But powered by humans, of course, humans who must sleep.

Still, it did leave and it did arrive, and before 9 a.m. I was already where it normally takes me all day to reach by car. And so into my life the gift of time has fallen.

What have I done with it so far?

I’ve written, read and snapped some photos. I’ve looked at snow on mountaintops and marveled at the thin pink line where earth meets sky.

I’ve seen my hometown from the air — there’s Keeneland Race Track on the right.

I’ve slipped quietly into this other life.

Twin Contrails

Twin Contrails

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Gray skies today but last Monday, on a warmish morning (40s instead of teens), I took my cup of tea out on the deck, wrapped up in a blanket and watched the birds at the feeder.

There was a softness to the air, and I could hear the sound of traffic from a busy road miles away. As the day warmed and brightened, I looked to my left. And there, emerging through the trees, twin contrails.

I bet they’re around most every morning. The 7 a.m. flights out of Dulles. I let my eye follow those white streaks as they emerged from behind the trees. I imagined I was aboard one of those jets, looking down at the rolling Virginia countryside, heading west.

Mountain Views

Mountain Views

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This morning is blustery and cold. I look out the French doors into the backyard, with its dusting of snow, its wind-bent boughs.

It’s a familiar view, a treasured view. But for some reason this morning I notice how the bare tree branches across the street come together to resemble a peak. If I didn’t know better, if I looked quickly, I could be staring at a mountain.

So now I’m dreaming of mountains I’ve seen — and the views they’ve given me.

Moon Alone

Moon Alone

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Yesterday’s lunar encounter happened later than Monday’s. I found the orb higher in the heavens, no trees or clouds to hide it.

A thick fog was swirling up from the ground, but it didn’t obscure the sky. So when I went outside after dark, the moon (the “wolf moon” I later learned), was throwing striped shadows across the backyard. There were bars of darkness and light and I stepped through them, like rungs of a ladder lying flat on the ground.

Venus was rumored to be in the neighborhood, but I didn’t see it. Only this moon, alone in a field of black.