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My Heart With Pleasure Fills

My Heart With Pleasure Fills

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I’m thinking of that poem, the one we learned in elementary school, the one that seems jaded and obvious — until you stumble upon it in real time.

The other day I rounded the corner of a paved path and there was my own “host of golden daffodils.”

Or not my own, actually. That was the beauty of it. They were for everyone, were wild and free, glorifying not just a single backyard but a widespread and well traveled community woods. Tucked among the oaks and maples and just a few feet away from the skunk cabbage.

I slowed my pace as I strode beside them, wanting to savor their beauty as long as possible. Other amblers did the same that sweet spring morning. There was a hush in the air, a reverence for the blossoms.

I did not wait for “the inward eye, which is the bliss of solitude.” I took no chances. I used a camera. And now, as I look at the photograph, I remember the flowers’ surprising presence in that parceled suburban landscape. The words flow into my mind before I can stop them: “And then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils.”

In Their Glory

In Their Glory

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On Saturday morning I took one of my favorite walks — through the Franklin Farm meadow, around a lake, through a woods and back home. It is a varied terrain of shade and sunlight, and the day was so warm I could feel the old earth turning and sending its shoots skyward. Geese were grazing on deadnettle and other early spring flowers.

I’ve walked this way for years now and no longer see just the path ahead of me, the rough fields on either side. I see what has been and what will be again, the tall grasses of midsummer, the chicory and Queen Anne’s lace. I hear the crescendo of cicadas. The meadow soil has a memory, and so do I.

The walk was so lovely that I went back later with my camera. The setting sun slanted across the pond and lit up the cattails. I found a spot under a Bradford pear where I could snap meadow, pond and woods. All these humble sights that I look on in my wanderings, that have made me feel connected to this place, they were transformed in the mellow light of early evening. I saw them in their glory — and captured them that way.

Landscape, Still

Landscape, Still

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“Landscapes are, in general, one of the few predictables we have.”
Deborah Tall, From Where We Stand

As I walk and write and think about the place we live, about its texture and topography and my ability to bond with it, I enjoy collecting the thoughts and experiences of others who have made similar journeys.

Deborah Tall moved to Geneva, New York, to teach, and From Where We Stand is the story of her becoming connected to that place. She does it through coming to know and love the landscape, particularly the lake, and she does it through learning the history of its people.

The Finger Lakes Region has made her its citizen by throwing her back on the land, she says, “instead of distracting me with urban amenities.”

In the suburbs it is easy to be distracted with urban amenities. Here we are only 10 minutes drive from one mall and 15 minutes from another. Our landscape is mostly hidden from view by large houses and strip malls.

But get out of the car, cut through back yards, find the hidden trails, and you will find landscape. It is still here.

The Old Route

The Old Route

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Yesterday I left the house early, and as the sun rose I was walking an old route I hadn’t been on in years. Some of the houses had additions, but other than that the scenery was just as I remembered it. The yards were just as deep and forgiving, the trees as lofty.

And the route itself: There was the same rise to the straightaway, the expansive section in the middle, the one that was such welcome shade in the summer, it made me happy in the winter, too.

I didn’t walk long, but I felt as if I had been on a brief vacation. Such is the power of landscape to reset the mood.

Environs

Environs

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As our tree now sits all glittery and ornamented in a place of honor in our house, I think back to where it comes from. It’s nice to have a tree whose family you know, whose environs you remember. A placed tree, I guess you’d say.

I wonder if our tree carries within it any memory of that north-facing slope, or the faraway view of the Blue Ridge it had once — and lost. Now it looks serenely over our living room, and, if it turns its head a bit, the kitchen, too. It can also look out the windows and French doors, see other trees still rooted and attached to the ground that gave them life.

Well, if the tree can’t remember, I can. When I look at it I see a place where the land rolls and houses are tucked into the folds of it. I see a place where beauty is not forgotten.

The Glade

The Glade

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Yesterday the sun rose blood red between the dark trees, and swirls of frozen fog lingered in the low parts of the land. It was a good day to leave the neighborhood and walk the Glade trail.

The Glade. I’ve always loved that name. It sounds like something out of Thomas Hardy’s Wessex. And I have great affection for this path since it’s one I’ve walked off and on for years.

But the Glade is not the place it used to be. A stream restoration project has elevated and opened up the creek bed, and what I noticed most was the gurgling of the water. Whereas before the creek was overgrown, muddy and still, now it is broad, open and brisk.

It was a lively place to be on a cold Sunday morning.

Haying Time in Franklin Farm

Haying Time in Franklin Farm

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On Friday’s walk I spied two monster tractors motoring back and forth across what remained of a meadow quadrant, cutting down everything within reach. It was a brisk, efficient business, abolishing in minutes what it took months to build: the waving golden rod, the spindly stalks of Queen Anne’s lace, the nettles, the Virginia creeper and the chicory.

It is haying time in Franklin Farm, which means not the cutting, drying and bundling of grass to nourish animals through the lean months, but rather a tidying up of the suburban landscape. Franklin Farm is a subdivision, after all, and this is not the mowing of a lawn but of the common land, a place set aside for recreation and beauty, a tip of the hat to the dairy farm that was here before, and as such, a place I like to walk because (despite the paved paths and center-hall colonials), it has some sense of the genuine about it.

I’m almost afraid to walk past the meadow today. Will the entire swath of grass-carpeted land have fallen to the blade? If it has, we will all be the poorer for it. We will miss the beauties of first frost on tangled briars, a seasonal transformation made possible only by negligence, by leaving alone the delightful chaos of nature.

500, and Once Again, Topography

500, and Once Again, Topography

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I’ve written 500 posts since I began A Walker in the Suburbs in February 2010. And many of them have been about the land.

I’m thinking again about last week’s flood, because I’ve had a chance to walk the streets that were rivers on Thursday. Though the waters have receded, they have left behind a moraine of gravel, sticks, acorns, matted grass. This effluvia lines our streets, roads and sidewalks. In the woods, a pedestrian bridge heaved up by the fast-moving water fell back down again in a slightly different place. Subtle signs — but signs just the same.

More than other natural occurrences, a flood makes you aware of topography: whether you live on a ridge or in a hollow; whether you live on high ground or low.

Willow Rill

Willow Rill

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The word “rill” has been on my mind. I thought of it one day when I was walking, savored the quaintness of it, the smallness of it; how it sounds like what it is: a small brook or stream, water running quickly across a bed of rocks, mud or beaten grass. The word is linguistically kin to “rivulet” and is also close to “run,” another word for creek in southern places.

We drove past Willow Run in Emmitsburg, Maryland, over the weekend, and I was delighted to see the word in print. Not knowing why I thought about “rill” in the first place, here was a rill in real life. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

But all I could glimpse of Willow Rill was the bridge that led across it. So now I see the creek in my mind’s eye, a stream of clear water flowing beneath a curtain of green, not as raucous as a brook, slower and more meandering, slight-banked. There is a lilt to its passage through the landscape (the word “rill” is mighty close to “trill”). It sings as it courses down the mountain.

Vista

Vista

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What does the eye appreciate, the eye that evolved to spot antelope across a distant horizon, the eye that often looks no farther now than the tiny screen of a smart phone?

It likes the greensward, the open expanse of turf, like the swelling savannahs of our evolutionary past. And there, where earth meets sky, if not an animal of prey then an emblem of our ambition: a city to conquer and admire.

I once spent time in this place, the Sheep Meadow of Central Park. In fact, I once lost a set of keys somewhere on this vast lawn. I walked by the meadow daily and mediated on this vista. It is a uniquely American view, embracing our love of cities and of countryside, promising both peace and prosperity. It is a sigh of relief, a gasp of delight.