Browsed by
Category: place

West Wind

West Wind

Comments 0 Comment

Any walker will tell you which way the wind blows. Whether it roars in from the west or brushes up from the south, all soft and warm. 

Often it makes the difference: How long I walk or how far.

On a route I’m getting to know here in Lexington, the west wind smacks me in the face every time I turn a corner. I know my directions here, so that helps. But I think I would know the west wind anywhere. It is not timid or subtle. It takes my breath away.

But oh, the joy of having it at my back. It pushes me all the way home.

Old Vine

Old Vine

Comments 2 comments

Lexington is an insider’s town. The one-way streets, the unmarked country lanes, the walled gardens — they come from long knowledge.

I noticed this yesterday as I was driving a route I hadn’t driven in years and on a hunch found the way to Old Vine. Not new Vine, the yin to Main Street’s yang, but Old Vine, which veers off its namesake at an improbable angle.

Inner cheers when I found this shortcut. The raised fist of victory. But I knew it wasn’t my superb navigational powers that led the way. It wasn’t a hunch as much as it was a long-buried map of the city that I carry around inside me.

I found Old Vine because I grew up here.

This Other Life

This Other Life

Comments 0 Comment

The flight left at 5:30, which seems insanely early even for an airplane, creature of the sky that it is. But powered by humans, of course, humans who must sleep.

Still, it did leave and it did arrive, and before 9 a.m. I was already where it normally takes me all day to reach by car. And so into my life the gift of time has fallen.

What have I done with it so far?

I’ve written, read and snapped some photos. I’ve looked at snow on mountaintops and marveled at the thin pink line where earth meets sky.

I’ve seen my hometown from the air — there’s Keeneland Race Track on the right.

I’ve slipped quietly into this other life.

Company Town: Closed

Company Town: Closed

Comments 0 Comment

Living in a company town produces some funny situations. Like today. The federal government is closed and so is my university. No complaints there, although deadlines being deadlines, I’ll be working anyway.

The funny thing is the unanimity of opinion. And the reliance on experts, in this case meteorologists. There’s not a flake of snow flying but we’re all hunkered down. The reason, of course, is traffic. In the last few years late-breaking snow storms have produced jams of biblical proportions, people arriving home seven, eight hours after they left for what they thought would be an hour-long commute.

So we’re taking no chances. We’re playing it safe. We’re grinding the wheels of government and commerce to a halt. We’re calling it a snow day.

Now all we need is the snow!

Keeneland

Keeneland

Comments 0 Comment

Walking the roads and paths of this suburban land, I think often about belonging, about whether I do or do not. At this point, it’s a moot point. I belong, whether I “belong” or not! Our children have grown up here; this is their “hometown.”

But still, I often compare the way I feel about my home in northern Virginia with the way I feel about my hometown of Lexington, Kentucky. No matter how many walks I take, shortcuts I learn or people I know — this place will never be that place, the place where I grew up, where I first came alive to the world.

On Monday, the last day of a week-long trip to Kentucky, I spent a few minutes snapping photos at Keeneland. I remember going to this gem of a racetrack as a little girl, smelling the beer-and-cigar-laced air of the cool, dark area under the grandstand, watching the jockeys mount their horses in the paddock, joining the throngs screaming at the rail as a 99-1 shot pulled off the impossible.

Seeing it alone, in midwinter, stripped of the crowds and the thoroughbreds that bring it life could have been a melancholy experience. But it wasn’t. I have Keeneland right where I need it to be; it’s part of me now.  

Old Guard

Old Guard

Comments 0 Comment

The Bluegrass region of Kentucky is a natural savannah land, and trees here are in short supply. The old oaks, the ones that have been here 100 years or more, are gnarled and magnificent.

They stand sentinel in fields. They rise handily above young maples or pines. 

Because trees are scarce here, I notice them more. To come upon one now is to see what a tree can be.

Needlework

Needlework

Comments 0 Comment

The other day I sat in on a preview of a Supreme Court oral argument, a job perk as unique as the program it represents. I’m bound by confidentiality to say nothing of what I heard — but that’s not what I want to write about anyway.

I want to write about needlework. I want to write about the woman who sat beside me for two hours, and as complex legal arguments flew across the room — a room designed to look exactly
like the real Supreme Court, right down to the color of the drapes, the
style of the clock and the pattern of the carpet — her fingers flew, too.

She was knitting a sweater of warm burgundy wool, cable stitch. And every time my eyes would glaze over with strategies and counter-strategies, I would glance down at her hands, the surety of every knit and perl. I watched the sweater as it grew. Work of the hands, not of the head.

It was precious time for the petitioner, taking his strategies out for a test drive just days before facing the black-robed justices themselves. But it was precious time for the knitter, too, for the sweater that advanced several rows that morning — and for the person who will be wearing it soon.

Walking Lake Anne

Walking Lake Anne

Comments 0 Comment

The other day, looking for some adventure, I ambled around Reston’s Lake Anne. I started at the landmark Heron House, the
16-story condominium building that was the epicenter of Robert Simon’s bold bid
for urban density in suburbia. Lake Anne Plaza doesn’t feel very urban today — or
very dense for that matter — but I know it’s a work in progress. I find a path that hugs the lake, cross a little bridge and walk past town houses adorned with native plants, witty sculptures and small fountains.

In the distance, I hear the clang of
a metal ladder as it’s leaned against a house. Someone is painting. I stroll
along South Shore Drive, steel blue water winking between the trees, and imagine what it must be like to live beside a lake, to take a daily measure
of its moods and colors. From the looks of the canoes and kayaks
along the shore, this lake is not just observed; it is experienced.

Before
long I’m at the far end of Lake Anne — and Wiehle Avenue, which I thought was
farther east. Foot travel often surprises me this way, showing me connections
that car travel cannot. As I swing around to the
northern shore, I catch a whiff of simmering grains and the sharp-sweet scent
of cinnamon. Rice pudding? My stomach rumbles, and I walk faster, back to my car. It’s never far away in
the suburbs.
The Parade

The Parade

Comments 0 Comment

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade just ended — with all its balloons, bands, commercialism and faux cheer. Still, I had it on in the background as I baked the pies, made the stuffing and popped the bird into the oven.

As I heard the familiar tunes, salutes to the latest toys and cartoons (all of which I’m blessedly oblivious to now!) and, of course the obligatory salute to the Big Apple (“It’s up to you, New York, New York”), I couldn’t help but think about the part the parade played in my childhood.

Was it the parade that made me fall in love with Manhattan long before I had a chance to live there? Was it the parade that filled me full of Big City dreams?

It certainly played a part.

Today I’m thankful for family and friends, for health and warmth and work. I’m also thankful for dreams. They may never quite measure up to reality. But that’s not what they’re for.

November in the City

November in the City

Comments 0 Comment

Walking up the Metro escalator into the gray light of a D.C. morning, I see a woman with a turban, perched regally atop a folded box. Another woman, less regal, warms herself on a grate, hood over her head and, on her feet, impossibly high platform shoes.

I see the gray felt blankets from the homeless shelter abandoned on street corners. Chicken bones and cigarette butts blown up against the walls.

Around the trees are pansies the color of dark blood. In the distance, a car alarm sounds. And closer by, an ambulance.

Commuters walk quickly. Their shoes click briskly on the pavement. They don’t want to linger here. 

“It’s so much better than it used to be,” say old-timers of the neighborhood.  And I believe them; really, I do.