Seattle is a city of vistas: heading west to the bay and the sound, islands on the horizon, ferries and tug boats and freighters plying the deep, unfathomable blue.
Or looking east, to the lake and Capitol Hill, the muted colors of sky and clouds, small sailboats on the water and a cathedral on the summit.
One of the things I like about travel is that you move through time as well as space. You recover lost springs and leap ahead to crisp autumns.
On Monday I strolled through the Columbia City neighborhood of south Seattle. It was sunny and cool, and I snapped a photo of a gnarled and mossy tree with crimson leaves.
My head was still spinning from the flight across the country — an unusual tail wind meant we made the trip west in less than five hours — but it was alert enough to register this place, this northern place, as already ahead of us in the march of time.
Doctors are taught that when you hear the sound of hoofbeats, think horses not zebras. It’s a saying I’ve always appreciated, worrier that I am, a reminder to see the molehill instead of the mountain. But even doctors know that in some situations, it’s better to think mountains — or zebras.
This is especially true in Maryland, where five zebras escaped from a farm and 30 days later have yet to be caught. Zebras have been spotted grazing in suburban yards and dashing across suburban lanes.
Officials tell folks to be careful around the wild animals, that they cannot be caught, they must be corralled. Funny, I was just reading about zebras in the book Guns, Germs and Steel (more on this classic in a later post), how, unlike the forerunners of the horse, zebras are impossible to tame. They cannot be lassoed, and they have a tendency to bite.
The Maryland zebras are living proof of these biological and historical facts.
(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
It seemed to start with the pandemic, with the chalk art and the concerts on balconies, the way we felt during those first few weeks of the ordeal when we thought our sheltering time would be more like a long blizzard than a new way of life.
Pundits ponder how many of the changes we’ve made over the last 18 months will become permanent fixtures. Let me add one to the mix: the proliferation of yard signs.
Before the pandemic I don’t remember seeing many that weren’t advertising a house for sale or a renovation taking place. Politics are too hot right now for people to use yard signs to advertise their candidate of choice — at least in my neighborhood.
Now there are signs welcoming kindergartners and high-schoolers, banners for birthdays and even notices with desperate requests. The latter includes one from a family in the neighborhood that used the back of their PTO’s grade school welcome sign to scrawl their own heartfelt message: Open The Schools!
At least that one is down now, but I think people are catching on to the potential of yard notices in an era when more of us are at home and walking around.
Yard signs … bring ’em on.
They swooped, they swerved, they filled the sky with their acrobatics. I first spotted them as I was stopped in traffic on Key Bridge, but could only snap a faraway shot.
It was later, once I’d reached the Car Barn Building terrace, that I saw the birds again. I’d stopped to look at the river and the towers of Rosslyn across into Virginia (how cool that I leave my state for class) — and there they were, circling and swirling, making their presence known.
Were they up to no good? It was hard to tell at the time. But when I looked at the (top) photo later … well, you be the judge …
When I visited Lexington last month, Phillip drove me through the University of Kentucky campus. He wanted to show me that the twin towers were gone. Not those twin towers, though Phillip saw those come down, too. He was working in New York at the time, his office less than two miles north on Hudson. But it was the absence of the Kirwan-Blanding Towers he wanted to show me, two 23-floor dormitories that housed students for almost 50 years and that came down carefully, a floor at a time.
In the days and weeks that followed 9/11, I cooked up a storm. I made bacon-and-egg breakfasts, chopped vegetables for stews and soups. I drug out the crockpot and pressed it into service. I was making food for the bereaved and serving it to my family. It felt like a way to heal.
But that was long ago. Our problems have metastasized. The terrorism is still present but now we also have a pandemic, climate change disasters, and an ignominious end to the war we started to avenge the 9/11 attacks. So many challenges … and so little consensus on how to deal with them.
Ten years ago, I wrote that our children grew up in a different world. Now my children have children. What kind of world will they inherit?
When 19th-century statesman Henry Clay needed a respite from his life as the “Great Compromiser,” he retreated to the shady groves of Ashland, his Kentucky estate. There, as the sign tells us, he walked the trails of his beloved farm, using them for “tranquil contemplation” of the issues at hand.
For Clay, as for many of us, walking and thinking went hand in hand. Maybe these strolls reinvigorated the legislator after the rigors of rough-and-tumble politics. Maybe they inspired some of his signature moves.
But even if they didn’t, the paths Clay created remain for current-day walkers to explore. When I strolled them two weeks ago, I felt the hush of the giant oaks and sycamores. They stilled my buzzing brain.
A day’s drive out, a day’s drive back and three days in my hometown leave me in a state of addled contentment now that I’m back home. Throw in some nostalgia and amazement — from visiting with folks I haven’t seen in 10 or 20 years (numbers we toss around as we used to the single digits) — and you have a lovely way to end the summer.
Or is it ending? It will be 90 again today, the cicadas are crescendoing and the humidity is creeping up as I write this post on the deck.
Given the opportunity, I’d probably keep traveling and keep sweltering another month or two, but September is almost here — September with its call to purpose and purchase. It’s time to harvest what I’ve sown.
(Joe Pye weed in a Jessamine County, Kentucky, field)
This morning, I walked across Kentucky. Not the 370 miles from Ashland to Paducah, or the 180 miles from Covington to Williamsburg. But the two miles around the Kentucky Arboretum trail, which promises to compress all seven of the state’s geographical regions into one stroll.
I saw conifers representing the Appalachian Plateau, dogwood and coffeetree for the Knobs and tall grasses for the Pennyrile Region.
The Bluegrass Region, where Lexington is located, is the most extensive, with bur and chinquapin oaks, several types of ash tree and outcroppings of shaggy limestone.
Ambling through the Arboretum warmed me up, wore me out and educated me, too. After just one visit I can tell it will be one of my regular hometown routes.
There was Woodland Park with its baseball diamonds and picnic tables, then my old place on Lafayette, the first of several former houses I would visit today (the others I drove by rather than walked past).
I ambled down South Hanover and Fincastle, letting my mind wander, fantasizing what it would be like to live in some of these places, the grand brick colonials, the charming round-doored tudors.
Till I reached Ashland itself, the home of 19-century statesman Henry Clay, which stopped my reveries in their tracks. Ashland with its shaded walks and formal garden. Ashland with its historic pedigree and bountiful acreage. Even in fantasy, Ashland is out of my league.
