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Category: sky

Far Away and Close at Hand

Far Away and Close at Hand

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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.) 

What Might Be

What Might Be

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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.  

Loud and Low

Loud and Low

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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. 

The Moon

The Moon

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The moon was with me this morning as I drove to the airport, so early and so long ago now that it seems like another week. 

And the moon was with me later, a pale disc as I zoomed down I-66 on my way to school.

The moon is with me still, in this photo (not a very good one, I’m sorry to say), growing ever brighter as I walked through a darkening campus on my way to class.

The moon will be full tomorrow … but it’s hard to see how it could be any fuller.

All the Light

All the Light

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Now that winter is settling in, it’s decided to give us another dollop of snow to freshen up the batch we received on Monday. Which means I’ve been scanning the clouds.

Yesterday we had a swirled and mottled firmament, a stingy winter sky. Though it was a montage of clearing and melting, the sky kept its distance. 

At about 3 in the afternoon, between errands, I looked up and thought: This is all the light we’re going to see. It’s a sober realization but also a practical one. In weather, as in life, it’s good to know what you have. 

Looking at Clouds

Looking at Clouds

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This morning I awoke to the house at rest, a house that somehow held 22 people for a sit-down Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. 

An outside table was pulled in, borrowed chairs were tucked under it, and the best china was pulled from its sleeves, dusted off and actually used.

Today, I could do some Black Friday shopping, I could catch up with classwork …. or, I could do what I most want to do, which is to look out my office window at clouds scudding across the sky. 

Way Too Early

Way Too Early

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The Washington and Old Dominion (W&OD) Rails to Trails path was bustling late yesterday when I finally made my way to it. There were runners and walkers and cyclists, mostly the latter zooming by with a brisk warning of “passing on the left.” 

I slipped into what I always think of as the “bridle path” part of the trail, the unpaved route that runs alongside the asphalt. But due to the bridges over Herndon and Fairfax County Parkways, I couldn’t always stay on that calmer and less traveled path. 

What I could do was to focus on the scenery I passed: the changing colors of the deciduous trees. 

The subtle beauty of the shaggy undergrowth … and the sun setting way too early, once again.

Marine Layer

Marine Layer

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Sometimes it seems as if you could will away the marine layer that cloaks this city in the morning, that by walking up and down the hills, through parks and intersections, past coffee shops and markets you could build up enough heat to part the clouds and let the sun shine through.

That’s the way it felt this morning, as I ambled down Pike to Alaskan Way, and headed north … toward Alaska.

I didn’t get that far, of course. Only to Myrtle Edwards Park. But by the time I hiked back up the hill to the hotel, the sun was shining. 

Blue Sky

Blue Sky

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In group meditation, we are visualizing creativity as blue sky and a spark of clear spacious light that expands and grows until it covers the universe. 

This is easier said than done. Into the mind comes the grocery list, the calendar, the need to notify team members that I’m off today. Blue sky vanishes behind clouds of my own silly making, which is what it always does. Because clouds are almost all of my own making. 

But today I’m stepping away from calendar and duties, hoping to spend as much time as possible outside, under the real sky, which is, as it turns out, mostly blue today.

Up in a Tree

Up in a Tree

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Oh, how I love to climb up in a tree
Up in the air so blue
I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a guy could do
Scaling the trunk and sawing the branch
Till I can see all ’round
Hoping I’m belted and harnessed all right
So they’ll catch me if I fall down!
Till I get back to the Earth again
Back where the chipper chips
The homeowners cheer when I’m in the clear
Don’t they know, I never slip?!
(With apologies to Robert Louis Stevenson.)