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Suspended

Suspended

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When I traveled to Kentucky regularly I’d hit the road early and be in Lexington by mid-afternoon. But now when Ellen and I drive together we leave late on a workday, drive partway and stay overnight. Traveling becomes less a duty and more a road trip.

Last night we pulled off in Fairmont, West Virginia, and are now cosseted in a roadside hostelry. How sumptuous these places have become! A gym to die for. Bowls of fruit and raspberry tea. Soft lighting. High-thread-count sheets. This is not your grandfather’s no-tell motel!

A funny feeling takes over in these places. You are not quite here, not quite there. You are comfortable, You are just off the road or about to hit it. You are … suspended.

Mountain Light

Mountain Light

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Days of rain and clouds broke up yesterday just as we were leaving the West Virginia mountains, and I got to see light from all angles and perspectives: the way it pooled on roads and hillsides. How it filtered through leaves.

Here it is in the woods and on the trees.

And high up in the canopy.

Mountain Walk

Mountain Walk

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Less than two hours west is a different world, one bound by green and dripping boughs. Chalets on the hillside, mountain paths, water trickling over rocks. I won’t glorify these trickles by calling them waterfalls. But the water sings as it flows over stones and through leaves, so these trickles have an aural presence.

Some of the lanes here are paved and some not. Foot paths cross them, heading up the mountain. I may tackle one of them today. But yesterday was a get-acquainted stroll. The end of a long week.

I marveled as I strolled at how much difference a walk can make. And a mountain walk makes even more.

Almost Done

Almost Done

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It’s the 11th hour, an unusual one for me to write. The day is almost done instead of just beginning. But the house is as quiet as morning; the same clocks are ticking.

Tomorrow will be a weekend family getaway. I’ve loaded the car with groceries and will pack the perishables in the morning. Monopoly and Scrabble are going, and a deck of cards.  The dog and the thousand-piece puzzle are staying home.

You can’t wait for the perfect time; you grab the time you have and make it work. That’s how I’m feeling now, knowing that gratitude will well up soon, it always does.

Continuity and Change

Continuity and Change

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It was a weekend of reconnecting, revisiting and reminding myself why I do what I do.

There was the “World Room” with its stained glass window, the stairs that were always quicker than the tiny elevator, especially if you were racing to turn in a story by a 5 p.m. deadline.

There was Broadway, with its jumble of stores and restaurants and Cafe Milano where Mama Joys’ used to be. There was the campus quad, with libraries on either end and a new coffee shop in the journalism building. In other words, there was both continuity and change, as there should be.
Walking the Apple

Walking the Apple

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In a few hours I’ll board a train that will take me up the Northeast Corridor to a journalism school reunion. Well, it won’t take me directly there. I’ll land at Penn Station, hop on a subway to 96th Street, check into the hotel, then walk, walk, walk wherever my feet will take me.

Maybe to Central Park, which should be lovely this time of year.  The Reservoir Path is nice, or I could dip south to the Sheep Meadow. There will be the castle and the Great Lawn and the arbor and the Ramble.

Later there will be lectures and panels, receptions and dinners. There will be classmates I haven’t seen in years.

But before that, there will be the walk.

View from a Ramada

View from a Ramada

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Driving from Tombstone to Bisbee last week the wideness of the West really hit me. Not the wildness but the wideness. The openness. It’s what I crave when I’m here in Virginia.

But when I was there, I felt exposed. Where were the trees, the hollows; where could I sit quietly and take in all this grandeur?

If shade does not come naturally, then it must be created. And so it is. At the Desert Museum I learned a new meaning for the word “ramada.” In the Southwest, a ramada is a open shelter, a roof with no walls. Made of reeds or brush or wood, it is the native way of putting a layer between one’s self and the sun.

I snapped this shot from a ramada in Tucson. It gave me a frame, a vantage point — a cool, sequestered way to take in the day.

 

 

Sky Islands

Sky Islands

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A sea of grass and plain. A valley of succulents. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, a mountain. And not just any mountain, not a rolling hill like those in the East, but a pointy-topped peak that shouts its difference from the surrounding terrain.

I’m still absorbing the sights of a week in the geological region known as Basin and Ridge, an area that takes in all of Nevada, much of Arizona and parts of Utah, New Mexico and California. It’s caused by tectonic plates sidling rather than colliding — or at least that’s what I can remember from Tom Clancy’s explanation (not Tom Clancy the novelist but Tom Clancy the Ramsey Canyon tour guide).

What matters now are the memories I have of those sky islands, the panoramic view off the ridge of Geronimo Pass in Coronado National Memorial or the piney forests of Mount Lemmon, forests made of trees that could not survive if they were plopped two thousand feet down at the same latitude.

It’s a lesson both expansive and tender, that we need what is immediately at hand but also what is far away, beyond the valley, where the next peak rises.

Altitude

Altitude

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Attitude is everything, the self-help books tell us, and in many ways they’re right. But in the West, altitude is everything.

On Saturday, we drove to the top of Mount Lemmon, 9,200 feet. From a start in the Sonoran Desert, all prickly pears and Saguaro cactus, we ended up in a cool pine forest, with a few dead tree trunks thrown in from the Aspen fire, which happened more than a decade ago.

Every 1,000 feet gained is like traveling 300 miles north, said the helpful sign at the top of the trail. By that reckoning, we were somewhere near Banff, Alberta, Canada.

Not bad for a morning’s drive.

Desert in Bloom

Desert in Bloom

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Yesterday at the Desert Museum, I saw more beauty than I could imagine: macro beauty and micro beauty. Should I go for the long shot or the short one? Simple: I go for both!

I shot pictures of javelinas (sleeping under the bridge), a bobcat, a Mexican jay — and every kind of cactus under the sun. And a powerful sun, too by the way, which makes its presence felt in every frame.

I have to leave the desert today, the desert in bloom. But I have hundreds of photographs and a few ideas riding home with me.