The Port of Savannah is the third largest in the U.S., plied day and night by colossal container ships. But when I snapped this shot it seemed to be holding its breath, and the Talmadge Bridge seemed delicate as lace.
Today we leave this city for its cousin across the river — Charleston, South Carolina, with its French Quarter, waterfront and Rainbow Row.
We may take another span to get there, but a bridge will be involved, just the same.
(As it turns out, we took this one.)
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 crane seems like a stunt double from The War of the Worlds, a 100-plus-foot behemoth that takes up most of our suburban lane. It was brought in as reinforcement when two men and a chainsaw were unable to complete the removal of dead limbs from a lopsided oak last week.
In a move that has gotten our carbon footprint off to a bad start for the new year, I’m afraid, the crane and two other large vehicles pulled up to the house early this morning. After 30 minutes of waiting for the crew to assemble, the real show began, duly recorded for two-year-old Isaiah.
First, the crane operator slowly raised the contraption’s arm, extending it high before swinging it over the neighbor’s house to reach the troublesome tree. Next, in an act of derring-do seldom seen outside a circus, one of the guys who had been calmly putting on gear was hoisted up into the air.
He hung suspended for what seemed like hours but was only a minute or two before reaching the tree, chainsaw swinging from his belt. A few minutes later, he was joined by another acrobat. Together they’ve been slicing the deadwood away from this (knock on wood) still-viable oak.
I write this post from the basement, the only sensible place to be. I can hear the grinder machine whirring. Most of the branches are down, I think. The show is almost over.
(I generally prefer horizontal shots, but this post cried out for a vertical.)
“To take a walk at night in a city that has settled into silence and a darkness that has become far too rare is to return to something precious, something lost for so long you’ve forgotten to miss it.”
Thus does Renkl describe the days after tornadoes ripped through Nashville in March 2020, bringing the city, already Covid-bound, to its knees.
(Photo: Wikipedia)
The low light was shining directly into my eyes during part of today’s trail walk. But it’s all part of the package on the shortest day of the year.
For some reason now, as I write this post, a funny little glob of a rainbow has appeared. I don’t recall seeing anything like it before: an ordinary sky except for one cloud bleeding yellow and orange light. We’ve had no rain; the sun is lower in the firmament.
I’m sure there’s some sort of scientific explanation. But I’m going to consider it a solstice miracle.
(P.S.on February 2, 2023: I just learned that my “solstice miracle” is called a sundog.)
Yesterday was rainy and gray from start to almost finish. At 3 p.m. it was dark enough that I had to check the clock to be sure it wasn’t 5.
But only minutes from sunset, the clouds blew away and left a window for the light. It slanted in clear and bright and contained, more like the illumination from a half-shaded window than one thrown off by our nearest star.
I’ve seen this phenomenon before, this last-minute light. Some days it feels like a reprieve, other days a cheat. But it’s hard to complain when it leaves an afterglow like this.
Still thinking of the sunrise I saw on the beach. By this time the clouds would be pinking and purpling, the “rosy-fingered dawn” expanding her reach. We are only minutes away, sunrise at 7:32 this morning and now it’s 7:26.
What I thought earlier in the month when I was observing the phenomenon in person was how anthropocentric we are: sunrise. Shouldn’t it be earth turn or earth set?
But we name things as we see them, and to us the sun does rise, although it may seem to flatten and split in the process.
I’m seeing it again, the miraculousness of it all. It’s 7:32. I’m pushing publish.
Since witnessing sunrise on the beach last week I’ve been thinking how nice it is to have a view of the horizon. It doesn’t have to be the Atlantic through a scrim of dune grass. I’d welcome any view that took me out of tangled green.
Be careful what you wish for, though, I tell myself. Spending time in bare, flat places makes me realize how soothing is the company of trees, how subtle but important is the rise and fall of the land on which we find ourselves.
How lovely it would be to have it both ways, to have the openness of the horizon and the coziness of trees — the greensward and the den, the faraway and the close-at-hand. It just occurred to me that I grew up in such a place, the natural savannah land of central Kentucky, the Bluegrass. No wonder I want it all.
(The sun slants low over the Osage orange trees on Pisgah Pike in Woodford County, Kentucky.)
I begin the day with moonlight, a bright waning gibbous that cracks a sweet gum branch in two as I glance at moon and tree through this window I call my own.
How companionable it seems, this moon. Not the cool, pale orb of rounded perfection, but a heavenly body that looks at bit battered around the edges. Knocked down, but still there.
Meanwhile, daylight is gaining on it. Soon it will fade to a translucent disc. The sun will rise, strengthen, send shards of light through the prism, make rainbows on my wall.
But I’m starting early, in the cold darkness, and this is just a glimpse of what might be.
When the winds howl, the planes fly loud and low over the house. I snapped this photo yesterday while on a breezy walk.
Throughout the length and breadth of the neighborhood I was the only soul out for a stroll.
Call it cabin fever or just plain stubbornness. Whatever it was, it put me in place to snap this shot.
