A Walker in the Suburbs

Though I used to pass Arlington National Cemetery on my way to work, the national cemetery I’m thinking of this Veterans Day is Camp Nelson, tucked away in the rolling hills of central Kentucky. My parents are buried there.

Visiting their graves has opened my eyes to the beauty and value of our veterans cemeteries. There are 170 of them in the U.S., most managed by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Though I’m not sure of their current upkeep (have they been affected by the shutdown?), every time I’ve visited Camp Nelson I’ve been impressed by its beauty and precision.

This is not your romantic, moldering cemetery. There are no tall oaks or mossy stones here. Strict rules govern the placement of flowers or flags. National cemeteries are regulated, spit-polished. They are about community and esprit de corps.

Through the years, I’ve found this more comforting than I thought I would. After all, death is our common fate, the great democratizer. National cemeteries don’t hide that fact. In fact, they celebrate it.

I had only enough time to do the two-mile loop in my neighborhood, the most pedestrian of pedestrian experiences. It was mid-afternoon, and warm. My feet were dragging. And then I thought to look up.

The sky was shockingly blue, so much bluer than the sky you see in this photo, and the foliage so much greener. The orange tree, which I notice turns earlier than the others every year, added contrast.

I caught my breath at the loveliness of it all. What palettes lie hidden in even the most familiar landscape? I could have been staring at the luminous hues of an Impressionist garden or the weathered face of a Dutch master.

It’s not like I don’t look up when I walk. But this time, it was a revelation. It was as if I hadn’t seen the sky before or the trees framing it.

It was just an ordinary walk, but I looked up, and that made all the difference.

Yesterday, sitting at the best desk ever, I looked up and saw a hummingbird. It was only there a minute, making several passes at the feeder, perching briefly on the thinnest of climbing rose twigs, before flying off to parts unknown.

Was it a straggler? A johnny-come-lately? A bird passing through from more northern climes? I don’t know. But I did relish the chance to look again at this amazing creature, to marvel at its bravery and its derring-do.

I thought then, as I often do, that you never know. I thought hummingbirds were gone for the year, that I wouldn’t hear that distinctive whirring sound until next April. But I heard it days later.

You never know when you might look up and see a rainbow or a hawk in flight. You never know much of anything, really.

The season has turned, mornings are cooler, but I still haul my laptop out to the best desk ever. That would be the glass-topped table that’s tucked under the rose arbor on our deck.

It may not be the place to sit when deep concentration is required. There’s too much to look at and listen to: the poplar whose leaves are just starting to turn at its crown, the liquid sound of blue jays calling to each other, the hawk crying from the oak next door. During rose season an errant petal may float down and land on my lap. But I love sitting here. I feel inspired and enabled. I seem to draw strength from the green, growing things around me.

I’ve worked in cubicles and carrels, at wide tables, and once, for a few months, in a converted closet. My office desk, where I park myself when it’s too cold to sit outside, has a similar view — more expansive since its higher up but less immersive since it’s inside.

But today, and I hope for a few more weeks, I’ll be working at the best desk ever.

There were sizzles and crackles and booms. There were shrieks and giggles and applause. It was a simpler Fourth than usual, closer to home. Not crowding on a ridge in Arlington, angling for a glimpse of the big downtown fireworks, but standing at the end of a driveway in the outer ‘burbs, as neighbors shared their Roman candles and sparklers.

But to the children in our midst it could have been the fanciest fireworks in town. They oohed and ahed, they laughed and clapped. They enjoyed every last sparkle to the fullest. They were completely in the moment, captivated by the bright lights in the darkening sky.

They’d seen the big fireworks last year, but from such a distance that it had no meaning to them. Theirs is a more immediate existence — and a more joy-filled one because of it.

I still read an actual newspaper, hard-copy person that I am. And I always have tissues on hand, usually a wad of them stuffed in my purse. But I don’t always associate the newspaper with the tissues. Today I did, though.

I needed the tissues as I read about Christmas in June for a 9-year-old cancer patient who may not live until December.

And I needed them again when I read about two Idaho firefighters killed by a sniper. Who ambushes firefighters?!

These stories as well as the usual barrage: bombings, famine, ICE raids.

I’m wary of the newspaper these days. I ignore many articles and balance my reading by listening to podcasts. But sometimes the accumulated heartlessness of the world, which the newspaper so faithfully records, makes Kleenex a necessity.

Two forms of paper, neither sanctioned. I have both; I believe in both. Sometimes I wish I didn’t.

Breathe in, breathe out. What could be more essential to meditation, yoga or life? But most of us hold our breath when the going gets tough. The inhale gets stuck, the exhale falters. The held breath tightens the muscles, interrupts the flow.

This universal tendency is not unlike clinging, the habit of mind that meditation addresses. We crave attachment; we can’t let go of people or places or things. We can’t even let go of our breath.

But the simple act of breathing can help us learn to let go. To live, we must breathe out as well as in. Each exhale reminds us of that fact. To grow as humans we must also learn to let go. “Necessary losses” Judith Viorst called them in a book by that name.

I’m a fledgling yoga student, but when my instructor pointed out this connection last week I had one of those aha moments. We end each class with “namaste” … not “namastay.” I’ll try to keep that in mind.

Classes are over for the semester, so it was my first free Wednesday evening (not including vacations) since last summer. I made good use of it by sitting on the deck until darkness fell.

These are days that beg us to linger and look. Days of leafing and blossom when it is enough, I think, just to witness, to be part of the human race.

Looking won’t keep the azaleas in bloom all summer, or the lilac scent wafting from the bush. Looking won’t halt the leafing of the trees or the greening of the grass. But looking makes these small miracles mine — at least for a time.

(A poppy’s eye view of the yard.)