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Category: perspective

Sleet!

Sleet!

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The fluffy white stuff we were (sort of) promised yesterday has turned out to be a bunch of crunchy ice crystals instead. It’s a sleet storm, not a snow storm, that’s greeting Fairfax County this morning. 

So what to do? You can’t sled on it, can’t walk through it, can’t drive in it, can’t even admire it as it falls. 

To put on my optimistic hat (oh my, it’s getting a lot of wear these days, since I only pull it out when natural optimism fails to respond), we are not getting freezing rain, which is what pelted us all day Saturday. Sleet does not coat tree limbs and bring them down. 

Let’s praise sleet then not for what it does … but for what it fails to do. 

(A photo of what we don’t have this morning.)

Seven Degrees

Seven Degrees

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If there are seven degrees of separation, then are there not seven degrees of isolation? I’m thinking about the world as we know it: working remotely, separated from friends, too cold for outside get-togethers … and now further set apart by rain, snow, sleet and an anticipated ice storm.

I suppose it’s easier in one sense. We now have multiple reasons for staying at home. But that doesn’t warm the heart when the heart is accustomed to the stimulation and richness of a life fully lived.

What is called for, I suppose, is seven degrees of patience: hoping, praying, reading, writing, baking, cleaning — and of course, dancing. You can’t forget about that last one. It’s the most important of all. 

Eleven Years

Eleven Years

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Eleven years ago today, on another snowy Super Bowl Sunday, I started this blog. It was something I’d been meaning to do for years, but the windfall of time made possible by a weather disruption gave me the space I needed to make the resolution come true. 

I still remember sitting on the couch, setting up the blog account, finding it easier than I thought. I had the title in mind, and a rough idea of what I wanted to say (though it would take months to learn how to size the photos), but it came together with the ease of something that was meant to be.  It seemed to me then, and on good days still seems to be … magic. 

Magic occurs when ideas have the room and reception to put down roots and grow. “Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest,” writes the author and memoirist Elizabeth Gilbert. “And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner.” 

For eleven years, I’ve partnered with the idea of A Walker in the Suburbs, writing about walking and place and books and family life. I’m glad it came to visit me, this idea. But most of all, I’m grateful I chose to welcome it. 

Leaving a Trace

Leaving a Trace

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I noticed them the minute I stepped out of the house on Sunday. There was no evidence of humans making their way through the newly fallen snow — but a world of animal tracks greeted me on that still morning.

Tiny bird footprints, the skittering marks of a squirrel or chipmunk, and the more dog-like paw prints of our local fox. Whether hopping, scampering or loping, these animals left their marks.

We think of snow as a covering, coating the verges and leaf piles, making smooth the weed-strewn and the bald-patched.

But snow reveals as well as conceals. It tells us who was here and, if we pay attention, how recently. It’s a blank white slate on which movements make their mark. 

Brush Strokes

Brush Strokes

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A bit of painting over the weekend has me thinking about brush strokes, about the rhythm and the touch of them, the way you angle the brush to feather the strokes. 

I paint as little as possible, so the arm is rusty, but, like riding a bicycle, it comes back quickly. 

In painting, as in life, you must be both tough and gentle. You must know how much pressure to apply and when. Push too hard and the paint splatters, too lightly and there’s no coverage.

Painting is also comparable to life in this fact — that by the time you get the hang of it, it’s time to stop. 

Painted Bunting

Painted Bunting

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Yesterday’s paper brought the typical onslaught of bad news, but on the front page of the Metro section was a wondrous story about the rare sighting of a painted bunting. 

It’s one of those “lifetime birds” for birders, who flocked to a Maryland park to catch a glimpse of this tiny creature.  With its normal habitat far south of here, the bird’s presence represented a once-in-lifetime chance for many to see it. “Magical” is how some of them described it.

Even reading about it was enough to lift my spirits. That a tiny bird could stir up such a ruckus in a town more likely to respond to the latest scandal than to the presence of beauty in our midst is further proof of what we’re coming to realize is a silver lining of the pandemic: a greater realization of the beauty and balm of nature. 

All I can add is … what a great way to start the new year! 

(Photo: Wikimedia)

Focus

Focus

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In the Headspace journey I’m taking courtesy of a program at work, we just finished a 30-day course on finding focus. We learned that focus in not something you must learn and strive for; it’s something you already have. 

Finding focus means attending to the moment, losing yourself in the here and now. It’s like an image used at the beginning of the Headspace program, one of blue sky and clouds. Blue sky is always there, but clouds hide it, just as the stresses of daily living block the natural calm that can be ours if we learn to still ourselves. 

This morning we take another, more advanced course on mindfulness. I’m grateful for these opportunities — because there’s never been a better time to master the art of living in the here and now. 

Gratitude 2020

Gratitude 2020

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The rain has cleared out, the sun is peeking through the clouds. It’s warm enough to have an al fresco Thanksgiving meal — if only we had known that a couple weeks ago. But that, like so much else lately, is out of our control. 

Thinking of thankfulness today, as many of us are. All signs point to the moment as the source of gratitude and wonder. The moment indivisible, the moment extinguishable, the moment which is all we have so we must live fully in it.

A tough lesson to learn. But grateful I have another day to try. 

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.

The Wake-Up Walk

The Wake-Up Walk

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I woke earlier than usual this morning, woke to a cotton-wool world all blurry around the edges. Perfect for a wake-up walk, one where you start off half asleep and the walk itself is what brings you fully to consciousness. I took sunglasses because there’s a brightness beyond the fog and I wanted to be ready for it.

I began with Dan Fogelberg’s “To the Morning” in my ears, because its quiet start and slow crescendo mimics a day opening its eyes and stretching its arms. At the halfway mark I switched to chants from Anonymous Four.

As it turns out, I didn’t need the sunglasses. The day has yet to brighten as I think it will. All the better for a wake-up walk, one where footfall is stilled and thoughts along with it, where the hours begin their slow unfurling with dignity and grace.