Browsed by
Category: nature

The Naturalist

The Naturalist

Comments 0 Comment

Lately it has been cool and dry enough to throw open the windows and door. Yesterday I worked on the deck in the late afternoon light, feeling that perfect balance of temperature and air weight that makes humans feel content, at home in the world.

Other creatures were out there with me. The crickets chirped, their music blending with the tinnitus that has become so much a part of my background noise that I seldom notice it anymore. The hummingbirds sparred and fed. Copper wandered in and out the open door. A squirrel landed on a branch of our neighbor’s tree, bending it with his tiny weight.

I was thinking the other day that working at home may turn me into a naturalist. Working outside, taking breaks in the woods instead of at the water cooler — for these reasons and many others I’ve gotten on myself for not knowing more about the trees I see, even the weeds I pull. 

For now, there’s little time for this … but when the impulse is there, the action may follow. Or at least that’s what I hope.

Wild Things

Wild Things

Comments 0 Comment

On yesterday’s walk I marveled at the wildflowers — the daisies and clover and honeysuckle — how they hemmed the sidewalk along West Ox where I was huffing and puffing in the late afternoon humidity.

Last night, I fell asleep to a chorus of frog song, as the critters enjoyed a dousing in the thunderstorms that rolled through our area after dark.

Then this morning, Copper and I saw a fox cross the road in front of us. The creature trotted confidently through our neighbor’s yard, turning his head occasionally to stare at us, as if to ask, what are you doing here?

We live in a tame suburb of Washington, D.C. — but we are surrounded by wild things. And yes, they make everything groovy.


(A tip of the hat to the Troggs and their great one-hit wonder.) 

Dearest Freshness

Dearest Freshness

Comments 0 Comment

I noticed yesterday morning that the witch hazel had begun to bloom, and by mid-afternoon I caught a glimpse of two male cardinals in the tree. Of all the perches they could choose, they picked the ones closest to spring.

By the time I trained my camera on them, one had flown away. The symmetry of the shot was gone. But you can get a taste of it here.

There’s the splash of yellow flowers amidst gray limbs; the dab of red from the bird. It was a hopeful scene on a solemn day, a sign there is a “dearest freshness deep down things,” as Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote.  I’m clinging to it now.

The Trees

The Trees

Comments 0 Comment

I read over the weekend of a dispute among neighbors over a stream restoration project in Hollin Hills. One side believes it’s imperative that Fairfax County fix the damaged stream and the polluted runoff that infests it. The other says that it’s doesn’t need to go about it in such a scorched-earth way.

One big difference between the two sides: preserving trees. As a walker in the suburbs, I know what it feels like to have a beloved woods opened up and hollowed out. Nature alone is doing such a grand job of this that it seems a shame for humans to be helping.

In our woods it sometimes seems as if there are as many downed trees as there are upright ones. Drought has weakened many of the old oaks and high winds have brought them down. The woods are open and airier than they used to be.

While this is just part of the cycle, I miss the denser, more all-encompassing woods that were here when we arrived. I miss the sense of enclosure, the way the light looks filtering through a dense canopy. All of which is to say that if I lived in Hollin Hills … I’d be fighting for the trees.

The Hawk Next Door

The Hawk Next Door

Comments 0 Comment

This morning I saw in a neighbor’s tree the unmistakable silhouette of a hawk. A wild thing partially tamed, this bird, because the neighbors (who hunt with bow and arrow) leave hunks of deer meat about for it to chew on.

If it sounds like I live in the woods or up a mountain, be assured that this is indeed the suburbs. But such is the wide array of residents here that this hawk sits hunched in contemplation, looking as if he owns the place — because he thinks he does!

I love that he’s nearby, though I’m glad I have no small cats to tempt him. But the presence of this bird of prey, his cries in the morning fog, remind me of the wild world that waits just outside my door. A world I’m just about to walk in…


(Couldn’t find a photo of a hawk, so an owl will have to do.)

Hot Spot

Hot Spot

Comments 0 Comment

I’ve gotten away so far and so thoroughly that I almost thought I wouldn’t be able to get online long enough to write this post. As it is, I will make this one quick because I’m using my phone’s “hot spot,” and I’m not sure how long it will last.

The little cabin where I’ve escaped prides itself on lack of connectivity. There’s even a cellphone lockbox where you put away the pesky item while you roast marshmallows over the fire and look at the stars.

Alas, though I am not addicted to the internet in general, I have become pretty attached to writing this blog, so I have circumvented the cabin’s best intentions and have gone online anyway — but gone online only to extol the pleasures of being away from things, out of the loop, disconnected.

It’s ironic … but true!

Highs and Lows

Highs and Lows

Comments 0 Comment

A few weeks ago, the Arkansas River, which now flows placidly less than a quarter-mile from my hotel, rose and raged and overflowed its banks.

I was trying to imagine the flooding last night as I strolled along the river walk. There was a large hose, some matted greenery, but nothing else to give away the inundation that was. Instead, there was sultry air, graceful bridges, crepe myrtle in full bloom. 
It made me think about the changeability of the natural world, its highs and lows, of what Emily Dickinson described when she said:  “Nature, like us, is sometimes caught without her diadem.”
Good Fortune

Good Fortune

Comments 0 Comment

Though I call this blog A Walker in the Suburbs, my feelings about suburbs are decidedly mixed. I appreciate the greenswards, the sound of spring peepers in the night air, downy woodpeckers at the bird feeder. I chafe at the driving culture, the isolation, the lack of community.

Alice Outwater’s Wild at Heart (mentioned last week, too) is reminding me why the suburbs once seemed like Shangri-La. In the late 19th-century, human waste was stored in cesspits and removed by horse-drawn wagons. The horses that pulled those wagons produced millions of pounds of manure, which collected in the streets.

“In 1900 there were well over 3 million urban horses in the U.S., and those city horses deposited enough manure to breed billions of flies, each one a potential vector for disease,” Outwater writes.

No wonder people moved out of the cities into what must have seemed like heaven. Grass, trees, manure that was manageable. Walking Copper this morning, I reflected on my good fortune.

Walking Wordsworth

Walking Wordsworth

Comments 0 Comment

I knew the Romantic poet was a walker, but not the extent of his rambles. According to Alice Outwater in a new book called Wild at Heart, William Wordsworth spent much of his day walking. He would compose poetry as he strode along gravel paths, which he favored over the bushwhacking preferred by his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge. (I’m with you, Wordsworth.)

Wordsworth covered roughly 10 miles a day, an estimated 175,000 miles in his lifetime. He and his sister Dorothy walked so much and at such odd hours that the local people suspected them of being French spies.


According to Outwater, Wordsworth’s perambulations were inspired by his meeting John “Walking” Stewart, an English philosopher who hiked from India to Europe. Wordsworth, 21 at the time, was especially interested in Stewart’s philosophy on nature.

And it was in nature, not sitting passively in it but walking through it, that Wordsworth found his life and his inspiration.

(Dove Cottage, near Grasmere in England, where Wordsworth lived with his sister Dorothy. Photo: Wikipedia.)

Can’t Wait

Can’t Wait

Comments 0 Comment

An early walk this morning through a damp May morning. Peonies hang their heads, roses, too. Iris stand upright, beards glistening, and grasses gleam with moisture. I tip the heavy planter where the new impatiens are struggling to root; they’re almost floating in water, we’ve had so much rain.

It’s the time of year when everything seems most alive. Cardinals sing and swoop. Copper comes inside drenched from rainwater he’s picked up from scooting underneath the azalea bushes.  Honeysuckle scent wafts from a tangle of greenery down at the corner. I inhale deep whiffs of it coming and going.

How nice it would be if I could follow this day through its moments. If I could walk, run, bounce and pedal through it. If I could be present for its drowsy afternoon.

Instead, I clean up and drive, walk, Metro and bus to the city. I write these words in a clean, calm office building made of steel and glass. The buzzing, blaring natural world seems far away.

I can’t wait to get back to it.