Browsed by
Category: nature

The Campsite

The Campsite

Comments 0 Comment

In 1918 and again in 1921, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Harvey Firestone camped near this waterfall in what is now Swallow Falls State Park in Oakland, Maryland. They called themselves the Vagabonds and toured the Eastern United States, popularizing automobile travel. 

Isn’t it ironic that people now journey to places like Swallow Falls for respite from the automobile? They travel great distances to pitch their tents in woods and fields, or to rent houses, as we have, and immerse themselves in an alternative landscape. 

Though the Vagabonds traveled with their own naturalist (John Burroughs) and an entourage of chefs and butlers, they must have felt as I did yesterday glimpsing the simple beauty of water falling over rock. 

It makes you want to stop and ponder, to set up camp and stay a while. 

Stop Time

Stop Time

Comments 0 Comment

The rain fell and froze last night, and now the bamboo is bowing under the weight of it. Poor bamboo! It’s a nuisance in so many ways, but it forms a lovely screen for the deck, so I hope the day warms fast enough to free the gangly plant before it snaps.

Ice storms lack the beauty of snowfalls. They hold within themselves the hard edges of winter and none of its softness. 

Still, there is beauty in the glinting and there is wonder in the way droplets are trapped in poses they had hours ago. Ice stops time in its tracks. 

Cold Training

Cold Training

Comments 0 Comment

As a chill rain falls and I curl up on the couch, swaddled in three layers, I wonder if my cold training project is working as I hoped it would. Since early fall I’ve been on a mission to be less of a ninny about winter weather, to work outside in temperatures I wouldn’t have dared to before and thus train myself, little by little, to be more comfortable in brisker breezes. 

The premise is simple. In these Covid days, to be outside is to be free. But to be outside in winter requires a tougher skin that the one I was born with. Cold training to the rescue. 

My model in this is the filmmaker Craig Foster, who began free driving without a wet suit in cold South African waters in order to win the confidence of an octopus. In the film “My Octopus Teacher,” Foster describes how he gradually acclimates himself to the water and, as a result, is able to share the life of this shy creature in a way that wouldn’t have been possible had he been more fully clad. The message: Discomfort in service to a higher ideal is not only bearable, it is noble. 

I’m nowhere near this point, of course. The most I can hope is to keep the heat set at 65 instead of 68. But, I tell myself, every little bit helps. 

Winter Sight

Winter Sight

Comments 0 Comment

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.

Two Novembers

Two Novembers

Comments 0 Comment

I knew I would catch it after yesterday’s post, waxing rhapsodic about our “two homes,” about the human need for outside time, for the comfort and the balm of nature.

Yesterday, nature was definitely without her diadem. A stiff breeze bore down on us all day, not enough to reroute the Dulles air traffic but powerful enough to “prune” the trees and make walking a trial. Copper and I ventured twice into the tempest: once in the morning and once in the afternoon.

Here’s a shot I snapped during the latter. I’ll use it to remind myself that, just as we have two homes, so also do we have two Novembers. One is warm sun on the face and the scent of dry leaves; it lures us to sit on the deck stairs and take in the scene. 

The other is what we had yesterday: raw skies and an angry wind. That November has one message for us: go inside! 

Two Homes

Two Homes

Comments 0 Comment

As the light fades, the sounds change. Instead of birds flitting through azaleas, squirrels scamper through leaves. The sound of autumn is the sound of rustling, of animals circling to find their resting places.

We humans, too, take our clues from the light. First our plants come in, then we do, too, reluctantly in the beginning but eagerly in the end. Back to these houses that are both balm and bait, which cushion our captivity with heat and comfort, with down pillows and warm baths.

Once inside, we will forget the wild world where Blue jays cry and ants crawl slowly up the pergola post. Our spirits will flag without that knowledge.

And then, one warm winter afternoon, we will sit in the sun on the top of the deck steps. We will sniff the earth again and feel stirred by the same breeze that eddies the crushed leaves. We will know then that we have two homes, and we do best when we live in both of them.

Naming Names

Naming Names

Comments 0 Comment

The late-turning trees are giving us a final burst of color. In the front yard, the Kwanzan cherry has burst into a sunny yellow that matches its spring bloom for brightness and intensity.

In the backyard, the volunteer Japanese maple is outdoing itself: its bright scarlet hue shining in the sun that is just now touching the back fence.

Closer to the house, the black gum’s final leaves flutter like tiny, opalescent flags. Their color is a magnet, drawing the eye. As I look more closely, I see two young upstart black gums right behind the tall one. How is it that I’d never noticed this before, never used the fall color not just as inspiration but as information, another clue to naming names in the natural world?  

Lessons from the Pandemic

Lessons from the Pandemic

Comments 0 Comment

We received word late yesterday that the earliest the U.S.-based employees in my organization (which is most of us) will return to the office is April 1, 2021. By then, it will have been a full year of remote work. 

As it stands now, we are well into our eighth month. Almost long enough to make a baby. In fact, here’s a thought: infants conceived at the beginning of the pandemic will soon be out in the world. The Quarantine Generation. Gen Q?
What else has been gestating? Fear and confusion, to be sure. Divisiveness, absolutely. But also, as many have noted, a renewed closeness with the natural world. 
What I was trying to get at yesterday, but didn’t quite, is that the outside office, my “deck desk,” is not just a bucolic retreat; it’s at the mercy of the elements. I’ve dashed inside to avoid raindrops, wrapped up in a blanket to withstand the cold. And soon, perhaps even today (I’m writing this an evening ahead), I will be forced inside. 
Being more attuned to the natural world is instructive, though; through it, we can better understand what the pandemic is so rudely teaching us: that we are not in charge. That can be ugly, true. But it can also be beautiful. 
Twin Branches Trail

Twin Branches Trail

Comments 0 Comment

A weekend walk reminded me of just how wild the Reston trails can be, especially the stretch between Twin Branches and the W&OD Trail, which winds along the Snakeden Branch of the Glade.

It angles up, then steeply down, crosses a stream then follows it for three-quarters of a mile. Houses are a rare sight. Instead, it’s trees and paths and creek water singing.

How easy it is to forget it’s out there, the natural world, even as the suburbs have encapsulated it. But it’s still with us, in the small parcels we’ve allowed — still with us, to heal and inspire.

Second Bloom

Second Bloom

Comments 0 Comment

The climbing roses have thrived this year, and the topmost ones are flowering again. I just snapped this shot today, attempting to capture the creamy springlike hue of the rose along with the first gold tinge of the witch hazel. 

Not for nothing are these called climbing roses. I leaned out a second-floor window to take this photograph. While I enjoy the view from on high, I miss the full effect when I’m more earth-bound. 

Every year at blooming time — the main flowering season in late May and the lesser one in September — I ponder the lesson in this. A reminder to train my eyes upward? To have perspective?

Second bloom means second chances, a bonus, what ought not to arrive but somehow, miraculously, does. In a time of year more associated with fading and dying, these flowers are just coming to life. Maybe that’s why there are second blooms — for the romantics among us who like to pretend there are messages in nature.