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Winter Sight

Winter Sight

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As seasons pass, dimensions change and distances shrink. The greenery that hemmed us in only last month has thinned and drooped. Leaves have shriveled and blown away. What was once a screen is now an open book.

We hear about winter light, the low-slanting sun, but not as much about winter sight.

My woods walks lately reveal shiny new objects: small metal discs hammered into tree bark. Some trees have been tagged recently because the metal gleams and the discs swing freely on their nails. The older discs have dimmed and dulled; some you can hardly see because they have been swallowed up by bark. The trees have grown around them. Eventually those markers will seem little more than a metal eye.

While these older markers have been there all along, I saw them as if for the first time over the weekend. It was the winter landscape that drew my eyes to them, the same bare expanse that lets us glimpse a hidden stream or the outline of a hill, once shrouded in green. It is winter sight.

Long Woods Walk

Long Woods Walk

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Yesterday, I went out early for the weekly groceries, donned mask and gloves, observed social distancing, came home and wiped everything off before putting it all away and then decided …  I needed a walk. And not just any walk — but a long woods walk.

I took a Reston path that leads to the Cross County Trail. It’s a section of the CCT that I often stroll, but yesterday I went further, into a place where the first sign you see warns you of snakes in the area.

It’s a fitting intro to a wilder, more hike-like area. It was easy to imagine I was miles away not just from desk and to-dos — but also from the section of trail I just covered.

I nodded to a father and two sons jogging down the trail; to a man and his children who were exploring ants on a log; and to several others out enjoying the sun and pretending this was an ordinary spring Friday.

The music in my ears seemed redundant, so I pulled out the buds and listened to woodpeckers and robins. I stopped on a bridge over the Snakeden Branch Stream and heard the water talk to itself. How lovely and clear it looked as it tumbled over rocks, all white and frothy as it landed.

It was almost two hours later when I got back to the car. The walk had turned into a hike. The day seemed larger and brighter than it had before.

Underland

Underland

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Like the underworlds Robert Macfarlane plumbs in his book Underland: A Deep Time Journey, there is much going on beneath the surface in this marvelous new offering by one of my favorite authors. 

And there would have to be to combine prehistoric cave art, Parisian catacombs, the “wood wide web” (the fungal and rooted connectedness of trees in the forest), underground rivers, sweating icebergs and burial sites for nuclear waste — all in one book.

One theme that ties them together, besides Macfarlane’s exploration of them (no one is better than he at describing fear) is a growing recognition of the Anthropocene, the geologic age that experts have come to accept we are living through, one defined by human influence on the environment.

To comprehend the enormity of this designation, Macfarlane brings many tools to bear — literature, myth, science, philosophy and language, always language. “Words are world-makers — and language is one of the great geologic forces of the Anthropocene,” Macfarlane writes. But of the many terms for this “ugly epoch,” only one seems right with Macfarlane — “species loneliness, the intense solitude that we are fashioning for ourselves as we strip the Earth of the other life with which we share it.” 


“If there is human meaning to be made of the wood wide web,” he continues, “it is surely that what might save us as we move forwards into the precarious, unsettled centuries ahead is collaboration: mutualism, symbiosis, the inclusive human work of collective decision-making extended to more-than-human communities.”


And so the image at the heart of these pages, he explains, is that of an opened hand — extended in greeting, compassion, art — the prehistoric hand prints in ancient cave paintings and the touch of his young son’s hand. 


I know I will write more about this wonderful book; this is a start.

We Brake for Trees

We Brake for Trees

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I can’t remember how we discovered Snicker’s Gap, the Christmas tree farm in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. But I do know that Claire (pictured below with her puppy Bella; her beau, Tomas; and their older doggie, Reese) was in middle school. So it’s been a few years.

And in those few years, a few other people have caught on that trekking out to the country and felling your own fragrant Douglas fir provides more seasonal cheer than driving to the shopping center at the corner and choosing a tree from the parking lot. We did that often, too, when the children were younger. But Snicker’s Gap has been the tradition for 15 years now.

What’s become abundantly clear, especially since yesterday, is that many others have made the same calculation. We waited 30 minutes to get into the place. The lesson for next year: Leave earlier, arrive later … or find a nice tree in a lot somewhere.

Forest Bathing

Forest Bathing

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Shinrin yoku — Japanese for forest bathing — is the practice of immersing one’s self in a forest or other natural environment to relieve stress. Practitioners walk slowly through the woods, marveling at the shades of green.They aren’t there to bike down a hill or hike up a mountain. The journey is their destination. It is enough simply to be outside, to inhale the scent of pine.

I like the imagery involved, the idea that one can slide into a forest as if into a tub of warm water.  That its beauty will surround and calm and lift up.

A walk in the suburbs is not always a bath in the forest. It’s too fast, too purposeful. Often, there are no forests involved.

But even the briefest and most cursory stroll works its magic. I leave the house with fists clenched, brow furrowed. I return renewed and refreshed, reminded that we are not just creatures of rooms and screens. That after all, we are born of earth and will return to it, that every visit there is going home.

Adopt a Spot

Adopt a Spot

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Walking home yesterday from Metro I noticed a sign. “Adopt a Spot,” it said. This is new to me. Adopt a highway, yes. But adopt a spot?

How good to know that spots have  clout, too. That a clump of trees, a curve of trail, a stand of meadow grass could be noticed, claimed, taken to heart.

I think about the spots I love, places I pass daily, corners worn smooth by passage, roads ridden and paths walked. A new boardwalk in the woods. A nubby stump in the forest. A block of sidewalk in the city, pavement stones ragged.

These are the textures that become dreams, that take hold of us and won’t let go.

Do we adopt the spot — or does the spot adopt us? 

Summer Day

Summer Day

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Yesterday was the perfect summer day. I thought this even on the way to the dentist, and if you notice it then, the impression must be valid.

The air was weighty and warm and filled with the sound of cicadas. There was no rain (this was key). And the morning held the promise of just enough heat.

In late afternoon, when I was walking Copper in the woods, a couple of big frogs were bellowing from the creek. They plopped in the water as we walked by. The katydids were chirping slowly, as if they could barely be roused from their dreamy, midsummer naps.

Spiders had been busy and webs were strung between the trees like tiny Buddhist prayer flag ropes. When they caught a leaf it waved cheerily in the breeze.

Solace

Solace

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Last evening Copper and I ran down Folkstone Drive, reversed course at Blue Robin Court and returned via the woods trail. The path was still damp from last week’s rains, and I was glad I wore my old tennis shoes.

It didn’t take long for the woods to work its magic, for my shoulders to drop and my breathing to slow, for my pace to adjust to a non-asphalt stride. I thought about the woods of my childhood, building forts, feeling vaguely disobedient, straying too far, staying too long.

I thought about how long the natural world has brought me comfort, a lifetime of solace in the out-of-doors.

It was as if I had always been walking, always been inhaling the fragrance of smooth, clay-packed soil and marshy creek water. The aromas had been closer to my nose then, since my nose had been closer to the ground. But if I inhaled deeply enough, I could smell them still.

Not So White Shoes

Not So White Shoes

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As I was saying, I love my white tennis shoes, took great pride in finding a pair that is not fluorescent pink or day-glow orange. The beauty of white shoes is that they’re white — but that’s also their problem. One is tempted to keep them always white. But that would mean keeping them always in a box.

I started out with good intentions, switching to my old shoes whenever I was going off road. But I don’t always know where my feet will take me. Sometimes I start on pavement but return home a different way.

Yesterday’s ramble took me into the neighborhood of South Field, where I thought I could pick up a path that meandered back to Folkstone. The path never emerged, and before long I was bushwhacking through downed trees and brambles. Ahead of me was a creek (there is always a creek around here; though we call them runs), so I searched the bank to find a narrow place to cross.

As you might expect, it wasn’t quite narrow enough.  I slipped and doused my right foot in creek water, then stepped back into a couple inches of  mud just for good measure.

I’m reminded of this quotation by John A. Shedd: “A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are for.” The same could be said of white tennis shoes!

The Promise of Spring

The Promise of Spring

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The clouds moved in yesterday as Copper and I took a leisurely stroll through the woods. Clouds at sunset confuse the rambler, take away the visual cues of angled light. So we wandered farther than I intended, deep into the forest where the skunk cabbage borders tadpole pools.

I peered at the tiny creatures darting in the shallow water, thought about the frogs they will become if nature gives them a chance.

At this point in the season, all is potential. Nowhere is this clearer than in the woods. Here there are clusters of violets and carpets of spring beauties, but there isn’t the color and greenery you see in suburban yards. There are no flowering cherries here, no tulips or phlox. I did spot a couple of Virginia bluebells but those were in the community meadow.

For parts of our walk, we could have been ambling through late winter. But we weren’t. There was a freshness in the air, a humidity and promise. It was spring all right.