A Walker in the Suburbs

Yesterday I drove Celia to campus after a quick Easter visit. We left before dawn and I was back in my home office as the work day started.

A drive that early seems almost not to have happened. As the hours passed, as I wrote and edited and answered e-mails, snatches of those highway moments  slipped into my brain unbidden, like the vaporous trails of dreams scarcely remembered upon waking.

Was I really just rounding the curve after the split? Did I zoom over the Patuxent River, which I vow to explore more thoroughly every time I cross it? Was that lumbering car trailer alongside me for far too much of the way? The tunnel, the straightaway, the toll booth? Yes, yes and yes.

But by nightfall those early hours had left a weariness in my bones. The morning drive was real, for sure. Today, just the usual jaunt on Metro, a much tamer way to start the day.

(This is not the road to Baltimore.)

I’ve always loved birds but have never wanted to be a bird watcher, someone in sensible shorts
with binoculars around the neck. As I’ve learned more about Ira Gabrielson and the extensive bird lists he kept throughout his life, though, I’ve begun jotting down the birds I see at the winter feeder.

It’s easy to spot the cardinals, bluebirds and jays, and the Audubon Field Guide to North American Birds has helped me identify the others. The black-and-white-striped bird with a red-streaked head, the one that clings expertly to the deck pilaster, is a hairy woodpecker. But wait, there’s another, smaller bird, quite similar but without the red streak. I consult the bible. Ah, I see, it’s a female hairy woodpecker.

There was another bird that had me stumped until yesterday. A sweet little thing with a gray body and white breast that enjoys both the thistle and the other feed. At first I thought nuthatch, then a vireo. Yesterday, with the bible’s help, I solved the mystery. It’s a junco. Of course. I had identified juncos a couple years ago but had forgotten some key details.

I’m a long way from scientific. Will never spend hours in the muck waiting for a glimpse of a yellow-bellied sapsucker. But I am starting to pay closer attention to our feathered friends. Am I a bird watcher yet? I hope not. Just call me a bird noticer.


(Bluebird enjoying the suet block.)

Almost March, and winter shows no signs of waning. I look for signs of spring, but buds are tight-furled, crocus biding their time.

I find a place in the mind whee I can be warm and free. Where I can walk for hours without tiring. Where I can be myself.

I feel the sun on my skin and the sand between my toes. I savor the freedom of the beach, its great gift, that it calls us to be who we are, no layers, no pretenses. It scours us clean and leaves us open to sound and light — and always, above all, to possibilities.

A journal can be a rumination, a venting, a hymn of praise. Or it can be a list, an outline, a series of observations.

For the last two days I’ve been reading the diaries of the late Ira N. “Gabe” Gabrielson, first director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and noted conservationist.

In 1966, Gabrielson sold his home, garden and lovely bamboo-fringed pond to the Fairfax County Park Authority. He and his family continued to live in the house for years, but after his death the property became a tiny tucked-away park called Gabrielson Gardens. I stumbled upon it this fall and have been interested in learning more about Gabrielson ever since.

This week I visited the Smithsonian Archives and began to read Gabrielson’s diaries. There is much to learn about the man. But one thing struck me immediately: In his journals he lists the vegetables he harvested and the birds he spotted. I think about the thoughts, ideas and feelings I write in my own journal. It’s another model. Both are time-honored. But this morning, after my usual entry, I noted that two bluebirds and a red-headed woodpecker perched on the deck railing and nibbled some suet.

If it was a child it would be getting ready for kindergarten, grasping one of those fat pencils with a chubby fist.

If it was a dog it would finally be settling down, chewing fewer slippers, ruining fewer rugs.

If it was a house it would be settling into its foundation, growing into its lot, needing a fresh coat of paint on the trim.

But it is instead a blog, a body of work, an electronic oeuvre — and I’m not sure what it’s ready for, other than continuing.

I began A Walker in the Suburbs on February 7, 2010. Happy Birthday, blog!

Our bus trip took 12 hours, then we took a bush taxi. We saw elephants, hippos, baboons, a cheetah. The beach was deserted, and the hotel looked like an antebellum mansion, complete with Spanish moss.

After a while, a trip becomes the stories we tell about it. What we say, what we omit. What we remember, what we forget.

Here are the cotton fields, the market, the red striped cathedral, the old bridge and the pigs rooting beside it.

What was once a place alive and breathing, filled with wood smoke and goat bleats, is now a sheaf of digital images — and the stories I tell about them.

 

Twice in the last few days I’ve dashed out for a stroll wearing one layer less than I should. I forget that it’s not summer anymore. The wind whistles up my sleeves, makes my teeth chatter.

As the weather grows colder, my walks get faster. In fact, they turn into jogs. I run to warm up and  slow to a walk only when I stop shivering.

 I’ve never been much of a cold-weather person, will never be one.

But every fall I remember this: A bitter, blustery day is less formidable once it’s been endured. Going out in all seasons is good for the soul.

I spotted these trees on a walk two years ago and have never forgotten them. The way the living tree flames out behind the dead ones. The promise of new life hidden in each glowing leaf.

As leaves fall it is easy to be melancholy, but I remind myself that until they do, the new ones cannot grow.

What this tells me is that each end is also a beginning. That there is no season without hope.