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Place, Unexpected

Place, Unexpected

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So I’m reading along in Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies, a re-telling of the last months of Thomas Cromwell’s life, riveted by her story of intrigue in the court of King Henry VIII, not expecting a discussion of place, when I find this:

He [Cromwell] is buying land in the lusher parts of England, but he has no leisure to visit it; so these farms, these ancient manors in their walled gardens, these watercourses with their little quays, these ponds with their gilded fish rising to the hook; these vineyards, flower dens, arbours and walks, remain to him flat, each one a paper construct, a set of figures on a page of accounts: not sheep-nibbled margins, nor meadows where kine stand knee-deep in grass, not coppices nor groves where a white doe shivers, a hoof poised; but parchment domains, leases and freeholds delimited by inky clauses, not by ancient hedges, or boundary stones.

 Here is a longing for place that is ancient but real, the pull of the city-dweller toward the bucolic retreat, the dream of land when land is owned but not possessed.

How many of us moderns feel the same?

Liftoff and Letdown

Liftoff and Letdown

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Yesterday I had the pleasure of going through airport security twice for the same flight. I’d left something in the car. Later in the day, while waiting for a connection in another airport, I walked past an even busier security checkpoint, people rushing to lace up their shoes, stuff toiletries in bags, zip laptops into cases.

That flying is an exhausting, dehumanizing experience is news to no one. But you forget just how exhausting and dehumanizing when most of your trips are by car.

In exchange for the miracle of flight, we have the humiliation of full-body scans, the inconvenience of unpacking what we just packed and stuffing it into gray bins, the thrill of padding barefoot along the airport floor.

A reminder that even though we soar through clouds, our fears and troubles usually keep us earthbound.

Big Sky

Big Sky

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There is the Big Sky of the West, mesas hulking in the distance, red rock, cloudless sky, the tang of  wild sage.

But what I had forgotten is that there is also the Big Sky of the beach, the vast horizon beyond the breakers, the vistas north and south, clouds looming in the late afternoon sky — seeing the weather before it arrives.

Here too is a vast panorama, scenery that takes me out of myself, the curve of the earth implied but not stated.

Sun on Water

Sun on Water

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The sun rises and sets every day, of course, but in my regular life I don’t see it.

It’s an everyday miracle hidden behind hills and houses and daily routines.

But here at the beach I have time to watch the sun as it moves through the sky. Faraway star, morning beacon, evening entertainment — it disappears, finally, behind banks of clouds. But first a light show, late rays on water, glorious, best viewed in silence.

Blue Ridge

Blue Ridge

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We live an hour from the Blue Ridge, but there are places near here, places so near I can walk to them, that give me a tantalizing glimpse.

A smudged line in the distance. A bank of green in the foreground.

So pleasing to the eye, this mixture of green and blue, of meadow and mountain, of the up-close and the faraway.

Perspective

Perspective

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A view from on high. It’s what we get from airplanes, towers, mountaintops, rooftops and other lofty places. It’s perspective. Our world grows smaller when measured against the immensity.

It’s a necessary corrective, an antidote to most craziness. It can also be lots of fun.

Today the indoor parakeets are spending some time outside with me as I work. To say they are excited is putting it mildly. They haven’t shut up since I brought them out here. A moment ago a baby bird landed on the table beside me, attracted by the exotic chirps of these unfamiliar creatures.  A change of scenery for them, too, that of the wild beside the tame.

What has the birds so excited? The same thing I’ve been treasuring recently — perspective.

Perigee Moon

Perigee Moon

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I saw the moon rising as I rushed to the store on a last-minute errand. It was almost 9 and still light. I pulled the car to a stop at the corner and snapped this photo, which makes the moon look small and faraway instead of large and in-your-face, which is how it appeared outside the view finder.

This morning I learned from the weather guys that this is a perigee moon (closest to earth in its orbit), and the full perigee (also known as a super moon) appears 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter than the apogee (farthest away in its orbit) moon.

I’m not a big statistics person but from the look of last night’s show, I’d say that’s about right.  And it was 40 percent more beautiful — at least.

But just to be sure I’ll be gazing skyward tonight and tomorrow, when the full perigee will once again bridge the gap between heaven and earth.

Half a Meadow

Half a Meadow

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To reach Franklin Farm I clamber over a fence and into a greensward bisected by a paved path. Most summers the flanking land is left to its own devices. Queen Anne’s Lace, oatgrass, milk weed and timothy spring out of the clay-packed soil, and by midsummer these grasses sway waist-high in the breeze. I look forward to the meadow as I would an old friend.

But this year the mower is much in evidence. Though patches of land are still wild and free, most of it is tidy stubble. At first I thought it was just the first strafing of the season or that it was growing more slowly than before. But now, well into June, the truth is evident. What we have in Franklin Farm is half a meadow — and that’s generous.

Is the neighborhood safer without swaths of tall grass through its heart. Maybe, though I doubt it. It is quieter without the buzz of insects and chirp of the red-winged blackbird. It is less arresting to the eye. And it is, sadly, less a place.

Still, half a meadow is better than none at all.

State House Dome

State House Dome

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On Monday, a rainy afternoon gave way to a clear evening, and a walk along Annapolis’s main street after dark gave us this view.

It’s the Maryland State House dome. Completed in 1794, it’s “the oldest and largest wooden dome of its kind in the United States,” a fact sheet tells me.

But on that early summer night, as it shone between the other, darkened buildings, it was a thing of beauty most of all.

Grass Moon

Grass Moon

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It’s not green, not blue, either. It’s a brilliant white, brighter than any recent winter moon. It’s the Grass Moon, a springtime orb, arriving just as the grass is starting to grow again and the mowers are humming and before we’ve grown tired of that weekly ritual.

 I learned of the Grass Moon by reading my favorite go-to weather site, the Capital Weather Gang. It will be a beautiful full moon tonight, the “Gang” told me, the Grass Moon. So I tiptoed out the front door at 9:30, trying not to rouse the dog, and stared at the moon peeking through the branches of the dogwood tree.

It was doubly framed, this moon, first by the tall oaks and then by the white blossoms of the tree. The moon shed enough light that I could make out each separate flower, could notice the details of branch and bloom, could have probably (if I’d wanted to) knelt down and counted each blade of grass.

It was a moon that brought the rest of spring into focus.

Wikimedia Commons: Fir0002/Flagstaffotos