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Category: landscape

Throwing Shade

Throwing Shade

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No insult intended, but all shade is not created equal. There is the thin stuff you find on a warm summer afternoon. It’s accidental, created only by the intersection of building and sunlight. It’s great to find it, and I’ve even crossed a street for it, but it’s not a true, deep, cultivated shade. 

There’s a watering hole I pass on my way to the beach, a small restaurant and bar that has mastered the art of shade I remember from trips to hot, faraway places where air conditioning is nonexistent. 

This is intentional shade: deep and palmetto-fringed. Ceiling fans are whirring and large rotating fans are blowing. The place is recessed but open. Every time I pass by I’m tempted to linger in its recesses, to seek relief in its dark, cool interior.

The Quality of Sand

The Quality of Sand

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The discerning beach-walker is a connoisseur of sand. Too hard and it’s like walking on pavement. Too soft and it requires twice the effort to go the same distance. 

So one becomes aware of a tension, a balance, between moisture and dryness, tide-in and tide-out. The feet search for this balance without prompting, seeking the best path along the strand.

Sometimes they find it and sometimes they don’t. But there’s a pleasure in the process. 

Salt Breeze

Salt Breeze

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A return to the ocean and its salt breezes, to palm trees and lizards that bask in the sun. A return to the beach.

I’ve grown quite fond of the subtropical climate and what it does to the muscles and synapses. In short, it relaxes them. 

It’s tempting to end the post right here. 

And maybe … I will. 

Jollity

Jollity

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Last night under the stars, a glimpse of the planets:  At Wolf Trap Center for the Performing Arts, the National Symphony Orchestra performed Gustav Holst’s “The Planets,” accompanied by NASA photographs, with my favorite movement, “Jupiter: the Bringer of Jollity,” scoring the most applause. 

Jollity is defined as “the quality of being cheerful.” Can a planet be cheerful? Perhaps if it’s named after the king of the gods. Or if it’s a gas giant more than twice as massive as all the other planets combined. 

One reason not to be jolly: what looks in photos to be a big red eye. It’s not the result of excessive interplanetary partying, but a centuries-old storm bigger than Earth.

And speaking of Earth, the only planet Holst omitted from his piece, today at 7:15 a.m. EST is the one moment of the year when most of its people are bathed in sunlight — an incredible 99 percent of us. A reason for jollity, to be sure. 

(Photo: Courtesy NASA)

The Convert

The Convert

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The skin is an organ. But it’s an organ that blushes. No wonder, then, that we treat it differently than we do, say, our liver or spleen. Specifically — and especially at this time of year — we protect it from the sun. Or we don’t. 

For many years, I actively sought a tan. I was a member of the baby-oil-and-baking-on-a-beach crowd. I sunbathed on my towel in various parks in Chicago and New York City. I’d spend entire days outdoors daubing on only a little SPF 8. I even laid out on the hot tar roof of my Greenwich Village apartment. 

Tans made me look better, I thought. They evened out my skin tone, gave me a rosy glow. They also, through the years, damaged my skin. 

I converted to sunscreen years ago, 45 SPF or higher. But this summer, I’m redoubling my efforts. I reapply often. Sometimes, I even carry sunscreen around in my purse. I’ve become, if not fanatical, at least responsible.  And so, I enter the summer pasty and white — or make that pale and healthy.

Dry Zone

Dry Zone

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In the woods, the little bridges are still there, but the streams they cross are running dry.

In the meadows, the earth is bare, cracked, hard-packed. My shoes scuff up dust. Even the grass has stopped growing as quickly as it usually does in June.

From the looks of the sky today, though, I think we’re in for some relief. I’m imagining great sheets of rain, the ground soaking it up, the small runs flowing again. And later, how easily the weeds will give way. I’ll pull them up by the fistful.
Wandering Home

Wandering Home

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As much as I extoll the practice, walking in the suburbs is largely for exercise and mental refreshment, for perspective. It’s difficult to run errands or visit folks without jumping in the car.

But yesterday I had time to amble through the woods to meet a friend, who lives on the other side of a county forest.

On the way there I had my eye on the clock, picking up the pace to reach her house more or less when I said I would. But on the way home I savored the green splendor of the stroll, birds ruffling the underbrush, stream water pouring over and around a flat rock.

It felt like rain, clammy and portentous. I took my time, reveled in the mood and the moment. I wandered home.

Just the Same

Just the Same

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The Pacific Northwest is a city of vistas, proof of the good things that happen when water and mountains meet. 

Here on the other coast, a gentler, calmer, less dramatic form of beauty. My eyes adjust to it as they would a darkening room. 

I snap shots of one fetching curve of a favorite walk, note how trees and grasses frame a small pond. This is not the vast expanse of Puget Sound, the white-topped Olympic Mountains in the distance.  It’s a more humble, everyday kind of beauty. But it’s beauty, just the same. 

Loop Walk

Loop Walk

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Can confusion be knit into a landscape? Is there something about a particular topography, no matter how serene it appears, that can turn our heads? Would I be asking these questions if I didn’t think there was? Yesterday I took a path I’ve hiked several times before. Once again, I paused at the juncture of three trails. Once again, I chose the “wrong” path.

Or was it? This trail led me into a cool green forest along the Snakeden Branch. I took deep breaths, heard a bird I didn’t recognize. I knew approximately where I was. No need for panic. In fact, when the trail spit me out on a major thoroughfare, I realized there was circular potential.

The rails-to-trails marvel that is the W&OD was nearby, and the path I missed intersected it. If I could find that juncture, I could take a loop walk. The W&OD was sunny, and I wasn’t sure how long I would be on it. Just when I thought I’d missed the crossroads, I saw the sign and escaped through a bright meadow into deep shade.

It was a different walk than the one I meant to take, but a good one just the same.

A Benediction

A Benediction

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The first thing I notice is the scent. The air is perfumed, mid-May incarnate. Early honeysuckle? I don’t think so. Viburnum perhaps?  I inhale as I walk, which supercharges each step. 

The next thing I notice is the mud. It’s been only a few days since I last walked in the woods, but it’s rained hard since then, and paths that were packed are now spongy, pliable.  My boots leave an impression. 

The stream is gurgling. The forest has greened and expanded with the much-needed moisture. It has moved up and out. It holds me as I walk, sifts its stillness down, a gift, a benediction.