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Photo Finish!

Photo Finish!

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A photo finish was just what we needed yesterday, or at least just what I needed. A chance to lose the self in the moment, the moment being the “most exciting two minutes in sports,” the Kentucky Derby. 

In this case, those two minutes were followed by several more minutes of uncertainty as judges studied a photograph of the race’s conclusion, the first time since 1996 that such a move has been necessary. When the ruling came down — Mystik Dan by a nose — the crowd erupted. The 18-1 shot had bested Sierra Leone (9-2) and Forever Young (7-1). 

To see those three thoroughbreds thundering to the finish line, looking for all the world like a single unit, was to see grace in motion.

(A 1953 photo finish of the first triple dead heat in harness racing. Photo: Wikipedia)

Treasures from the Vault

Treasures from the Vault

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I returned from Lexington with something I absolutely need no more of, and that would be books. 

But who could resist the Annie Dillard compilation (even though I have these books in other forms), the Bread Loaf anthology or This Trembling Land, by a Kentucky author whose father owned the farm where I rode horses as a young girl?

There’s also a workbook (covered in a brown paper from a grocery bag) that dates back to my first-grade class. These are the kind of goodies that can still be found in what was once my parents’ and is now my brother’s home. I think of them as treasures from the vault.

Grounding

Grounding

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When I try to name it I come up short. Is it depth that I feel here in my hometown? Is it community? 

In so many ways, I don’t know this place. Like any healthy city, it keeps growing and changing. And for most of my life, I’ve done my growing and changing somewhere else. 

But when I visit Lexington, when I stroll down Central Avenue or Ashland or South Hanover, I’m walking through layers of personal and family history.

If I lived here, these layers might weigh me down. But since I don’t, they ground me. 

Sold Out at Singletary

Sold Out at Singletary

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In Kentucky for the weekend, I take in a sold-out concert at the Singletary Center for the Arts, including a spirited performance of the Mozart Requiem. The stage was packed with the orchestra and combined choirs of the University of Kentucky. 

The last time I was at this venue I was on the stage. Last night I was (gratefully) in the audience. And what an audience it was: attentive, respectful, spirited, just what the excellent music deserved. When the final notes sounded, the audience leapt to its feet for a standing ovation.

Though I love attending musical events in the D.C. area, I especially enjoyed last night’s performance. There was a communal feeling to it, a sense of togetherness among musicians and listeners, as we all fell under the spell of the Lacrimosa, said to contain the last eight bars of music Mozart wrote. 

Witnessing

Witnessing

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Walking is witnessing, a way to be present in movement and in time. 

Yesterday’s stroll took me from the oldest part of Reston to the newest, from a community center to a commercial plaza, from a small cafe to a bustling bakery.

And all along I’m thinking spring. The dogwood, the azalea, the first green of the oaks and poplars. How lovely it is to see it unfold along familiar paths, how grateful I was to witness its unfolding.

Anywhere People

Anywhere People

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I’m making my way through Neil King Jr.’s American Ramble at a walking pace. I’m enjoying it so much that I don’t want to rip through it, much as I would prolong a stroll on a perfect spring morning. 

King walked from Washington, D.C., to New York City in the spring of 2021 and wrote a book about what he found along the way. I’m more than two-thirds of the way through King’s report — he’s about to cross the Delaware — but I’m still musing over thoughts he had in Lancaster County. 

“There are today at heart two American stories: the story of those who stay, and the story of those who go. … Some of us still wander from place to place, and many others of us don’t. We have the Somewhere people, who are very much of a place and rooted there, and we have the Anywhere people, who have a faint sense of belonging wherever they are and if they ever had a place, they left it behind long ago.”

What happens, I wonder, when the scales are tipped, and a society has too many Anywheres and not enough Somewheres? And can walkers turn Anywheres … into Somewheres? 

Friends on the Trail

Friends on the Trail

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Yesterday a long walk took me through Reston’s Vernon Walker Nature Center, over a small bridge and up a trail to South Lakes Drive, then along to the cut-through where I caught the Lake Audubon Trail. 

The wind picked up a bit as I strolled around the lake, not enough to stir whitecaps but enough to make me stuff my hands up my sleeves. 

The last leg of yesterday’s amble was on the Glade Trail. I was picking up speed, thinking of things yet to do at home, when I ran into a new acquaintance, someone from yoga class. She introduced me to her friends and we all chatted for a few minutes. 

It was small talk, really, but fun to find friends on the trail. It warmed the walk and changed my day.

(Reston’s first naturalist, Vernon Walker. More on him and the Nature Center in future posts. Photo: Reston Museum)

Split Rail

Split Rail

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A frosty walk this morning, a split-rail fence beside me part of the way.  Surely this is fencing lite, only the barest barricade, I think, as I amble beside one of the more open models (two horizontals). 

Though now they now seem more decorative than anything else, split-rail fences have a long history in this country. They were used to mark property boundaries, protect crops and livestock, and, during the Civil War, troops burned them to keep warm. 

In my neighborhood, split-rail fences are the only kind allowed in front yards. In the back you can go wild with a picket or other plank styles, but the front must be open, natural — much like the snippet of yard I photographed this morning. 

It’s a fence … but barely. 

Beauty and Bane

Beauty and Bane

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December dawns gray and cold. A new month. I began the last one in an old house by the sea. I begin this one in the two-story suburban home I’ve lived in for decades. A garbage truck trundles by as I write. It’s the third garbage truck I’ve heard this morning.

Ah, the suburbs! The beauty and the bane of them. I love the trees and solitude. I deplore the sameness and isolation.

But that’s an old story. The new story is this: Here I am. 

Jackson

Jackson

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When I’m falling asleep now, I imagine I’m on Jackson, one of my favorite streets in Port Townsend.

I make my way down the hill from my house at the foot of Artillery Hill in Fort Worden, stroll along the brow, listen to the surf surging below.

From there it’s up one hill and then another. But at the top of that second hill, huffing and puffing, I see all of Admiralty Inlet spread out before me.

I snap photos. And in fact, I snapped plenty of them. But they never did it justice, never captured the openness and the light.

No matter — it’s in my mind now, and in my bones and sinews, too.