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Long Distance

Long Distance

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My vocation demands close work; I seldom have the
opportunity to look at the horizon. Here I’ve done little else. Whether it’s wondering
if it’s a ship I see on the last curve beyond the furthermost whitecap of the
Atlantic Ocean or looking for an egret across vast tracts of swamp, one way or the other I’m casting my eyes to the faintest, most faraway speck I can see.  
Surely this must be good for one’s eyes — to say nothing of one’s soul.
Long distance — what the eagle spots from his perch on the
highest dead tree in the refuge. 
Long distance — what the birder tries to obliterate
with his binoculars.  
Long-distance vision — what
the pilgrim hopes to bring back from the shore.
Tenderness

Tenderness

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To belong to a place means that you feel tender toward it.
You are concerned for its welfare. When you return to this place after an
absence short or great, you are surprised by the feelings it evokes in you. You
were not aware that you missed it, but you did.
The little things you
notice now, the parade of ducks that create a traffic jam because motorists
wait for them to pass (and this doesn’t irritate you), the sea grass
that waves in the breeze, the antics of the sandpipers, the lugubrious horseshoe
crabs (are they living or dead?), the egrets that look like an Egyptian
hieroglyphic, the section of the beach that is sealed off by ropes to allow sea turtle eggs
to mature in peace (and this doesn’t irritate you, either) — all of these
familiars are made precious by repetition and knowledge.
And that view from the bridge, it still brings a gasp of delight. But now you look forward to it — because you know it is there.
Island Time

Island Time

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It’s after 11 and I feel like I should be somewhere. The beach, maybe? Turns out I’ve already been there — to watch the sunrise early this morning. For most of my almost two-hour walk (I always do this — walk so far to one end of the strand that it takes me forever to get back) it was just me and the shorebirds.

And when I returned, a book beckoned. I just now finished it, looked up and noticed the time.

Remember, you’re on “island time,” the inn brochure says. But isn’t “island time” absence of time? Or transcendence of time?

Today, I’ll take either one.

Refuge

Refuge

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It was not an auspicious way to leave for a beach vacation, pelted by rain, a tornado watch blaring from the radio, wind buffeting the car — but it was what I could salvage of summer when my work was finally done, a few days at the rag-tag end of August.

But ah! It brought me here to the Refuge. Just me and a bag of books, a bike, a bathing suit and towels.

Refuge: a place of safety, a protected place, a sanctuary.

It is what we hope to find at the end of a weary year. Insects humming, surf pounding, gulls crying. But all of these sounds mingling somehow to a dull, peaceful background roar. A place of rest. Active rest, but rest just the same.

Picture Postcard

Picture Postcard

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I am a sucker for the post card shot. The off-center, the too-close, the out-of-kilter — these do nothing for me.

When it comes to landscapes, I have a middle-brow sense of composition. Give me blue skies, puffy clouds (see yesterday’s post), a road winding in the distance, fir trees in the foreground, and I’m happy. Even if there’s a bit of blurring (because, say, the picture was taken out of a car window at 50 miles an hour).

This is a photograph of Glacier National Park, snapped on a vacation there  a few years ago. It made me catch my breath then. It still does.

What We Did on Our Summer Vacations

What We Did on Our Summer Vacations

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As one’s children grow up and out, as friends and boyfriends become a center of gravity, as one’s own career demands make travel difficult, there comes a point — often unknown till it’s past — when the family vacation is over.

This does not mean it will never come again (she tells herself optimistically). But if it comes again it will be in a different form, often atomized (two of us visiting a third) and not all of us together again until people are older and more settled.

So for now, for us, the family vacation season is over and the just-for-two vacation season hasn’t yet begun. It makes me sad to admit this, but I can’t complain. We’ve had a good run. Together we’ve seen much of this country, have sampled Canada and even once ventured across the Atlantic. The glories of the Grand Canyon, Big Sur, Yosemite (where Claire turned 16) and the Maine Coast (where Claire turned 17 — ah, the inconvenience and the privilege of the summer birthday) were all ours to share.

This summer two of us went to Montana, another went to Africa and one is leaving today for the beach. We’ve made quick trips to Kentucky and Indiana. But all together, well, the last trip we all made together was going out to dinner at Reston Town Center. We sat on little chairs and ate our food off short tables. We laughed and talked about the “cougar bar” across the street. It was a good vacation.

Plane Spotting

Plane Spotting

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A walk yesterday along the George Washington Parkway path took me to Gravelly Point, just shy of National Airport. It’s where you go to see jets take off and land. I’ve heard of this place for years but never visited. September 11, 2011, made the sight of low-flying airplanes considerably less palatable for most of us. But once I  put those associations out of mind, it was hard not to be impressed with the power and the presence of the giant birds.

You hear them before you see them — the roar of their engines as they zoom in from the west. But more impressive even than the sound  is the surreal sight of them overhead, creatures of air approaching land. If you spot them when they’re still miles away, you see them dwarfing the Washington Monument, which has been lessened by distance to an insignificant obelisk.

But quicker than seems possible, they are above you, and (if you are an inexperienced amateur photographer with a slow-shooting camera) you’re trying hard to take the picture at just the right moment — when the plane is immediately overhead, blotting out the sky; when you, this puny earthbound human, are spellbound, filled with joy at the improbable sight.

Sometimes you catch it. And sometimes you don’t.

To Be In Benin

To Be In Benin

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Today Suzanne visits the town of Toura, Benin, West Africa, for the first time. It’s in the far north of the country, in the Alibori region near Banikoara and close to an elephant migration route. She’ll be teaching English to middle-school students there for the next two years. It’s the first time a Peace Corps volunteer has served at this school.

The purpose of the visit is to meet people, visit her hut and see what she’ll need to order or buy to make herself at home in Africa.  Then she’ll return to Porto Novo for more language study and training before she starts teaching in September.

One of the big questions on Suzanne’s mind is how far the well pump is from her hut. She’ll have no electricity or running water so this is not an insignificant question. Already I’ve been turning on the tap less often, reusing sudsy water, thinking more about what goes down the drain. There’s no way to ship it to her, of course. It’s purely sympathetic. A futile attempt to be in Benin with her.

When I do a Google image search on Toura, what comes up most are pictures of wells (water portals) like this one. Image: watsanportal.org.

ISO Map

ISO Map

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August 1. A new month. And by any measure, the last month of summer. It hasn’t been much of one for me. All work and little play. No mountains, no shore. The creative juices barely flowing.

I find myself studying maps of the country, looking for the best route to North Dakota. I could go through Chicago into Wisconsin and then up 94 into Minnesota. Or drive straight across Kansas to 29 and follow the Missouri River north.

It’s armchair travel at this point, and the only map I could locate last night showed me just half the country — the eastern half. But there are other maps out there.

Even imaginary adventures require a little graphic inspiration.

Map: Info Please

Red and Blue

Red and Blue

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It’s the middle of the summer, with mountains of work to do and no relief from the heat. My Metro car was offloaded before 7 a.m. to fill the platform at Ballston with even more perspiring bodies clinging valiantly to some semblance of morning cool.

It’s time for . . . a virtual vacation.  What will be, I imagine, the first in a series.

My brother- and sister-in-law are visiting Tom’s cousin Dan and his wife, Ann-Katrin, in Sweden now. So I’m taking myself there today, to their lakeside bungalow with the terraced yard and the charming little guest house in blue and red. To the back porch with the deck chairs and lake view, to the pansies and the pumpkin plants, and, in the distance, the cuckoo bird — the real thing, not our loud clock replica — sounding faintly, faithfully, through the woods.

On a walk from their house the first day there we came across these two boats moored companionably next to each other. I snapped a shot. It’s still one of my favorite pictures.