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Category: landscape

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.

Nature’s Way

Nature’s Way

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Sometimes I think the Perseid Meteor Showers are nature’s way of getting us house-dwellers outside at least one night a year. The annual event is not a particularly good way to see shooting stars, at least not in our light-polluted corner of the world.

But this morning I woke early, threw on a white hooded sweatshirt and padded outside. First I walked to one end of the block but house lights and flood lights took away what little darkness there was. Then I ventured the other direction, to the meadow.

There’s an old baseball diamond there and I sat down on home plate, then reclined on the grass, hands laced under my head, eyes scanning the heavens. I looked and looked and looked. A couple of times I thought I saw a flash of light, but I decided it was just a twinkling star or a lightning bug.

It didn’t really matter, though. It was enough to gaze at the stars, to bask momentarily in the immensity of space.

Moonscape

Moonscape

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I was after the moon and I thought I could find it. Our neighbors, Nancy and Peter, were out for an evening stroll. They told me they’d seen the moon at the end of our street. And so I walked down in the darkness to the closest corner.

I could see the halo first, and when I finally got to the moon it was fuzzy yellow and perfectly framed between the shaggy trees that line Folkstone Drive. It was every bit as commanding as the sun, this moon; it was sultry and beguiling and utterly at its best. It stopped me short. I memorized its haze, its lumpy surface. I thought about beauty, its medicinal qualities, and how they are especially useful before bedtime. Like a mantra or a stanza, the moon satisfied. Just by its very being.

On a Clear Day

On a Clear Day

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There is a slight rise on one of my walking routes that allows for a tolerable if faraway view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. If the weather is clear and the humidity is low, those old hills rise ahead of me with promise and mystery.

They are puny when compared with the Rockies or Sierras or even with themselves if I were 3o miles west. But I treasure them just the same because they hold out to me a life beyond this one. When I see them as I did yesterday on my walk, I understand why tired, hungry people followed wagons more than two thousand miles across this land. It is the frontier. It is beguiling. It is, and always will be, a second chance.

Aurora

Aurora

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The sky shimmered last night in response to Tuesday’s solar flare. I missed it, but I heard it was like heat lightening on steroids.

It reminds me of the only time I have seen the northern lights. We lived in Groton then and our friend Kip knocked on the door after 9. “Look,” he said, pointing up. And there, across Martin’s Pond, was a surreal display of greens and purples. It was beautiful and strange and ultimately unsettling. I’ve never forgotten it.

We were about to leave Massachusetts and I took this as further proof that we shouldn’t go. I know that Kip did. He was a native New Englander and not used to having people leave. As it turns out, Kip left us. He died from cancer in 1997. All of Groton mourned. There wasn’t a spot left to stand in the old Congregational Church at his memorial.

Somehow Kip and the aurora borealis have gotten all mixed up in my mind. When the night sky dances, I think of him.


Photo: NASA

A Meadow Begins

A Meadow Begins

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Is it a matter of omission, the simple act of not mowing? Or is there something else involved, some sowing of seeds? I’m wondering about meadows and what makes the one I visit so kind on the eyes.

It is not the regularity of the plantings. There are no rows of tulips, no artful arranging of azalea and dogwood. No, it’s the very randomness that appeals to me, I think. The buttercups, the chicory, the tall grasses gone to seed, the flat blades and thin blades, even the occasional cat tail — all mixed up together. Like a bouquet of wildflowers that draws its beauty not from any one blossom but from all of them mixed together.