A Walker in the Suburbs

Gulf: part of an ocean that extends into land. A deep chasm, an abyss. A wide gap.

For a week I walked the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. I moved to its tides, trod sand beaten by its motion, found shells tossed by its waves.

Now I’m facing another gulf, the kind that yawns between vacations and regular life. No more palm trees and ocean breezes. No more living outside of time.

The jet’s descent left my ears so clogged that the world has been muffled and distorted since I arrived home last night. Until I walked outside and heard the cicadas this morning. Their clatter and racket pierced even my blunted hearing. They bridged the gap between vacation and real life. Listening to them, I knew I was home.

Last October, Hurricane Milton made landfall on Siesta Key, Florida, where I’ve vacationed for more than a dozen years. It sent storm water surging into bars and bungalows. Its 120-mile-an-hour winds downed trees, caused power outages and opened a pass that had been closed for 40 years.

It also reconfigured the beach, which is why visitors flock to this barrier island. Although accounts I’ve read say the damage was not as horrific as originally feared, I notice the difference as I walk the strand. There are channels where none existed before and rivulets to jump. My beach ambles require detours.

On the other hand, there’s a lagoon that’s made the place more fun. Now instead of swimming only in pool water, I can paddle around in a saltwater pond.

A door closed, a window opened? Something like that.

(Visitors enjoy Siesta Key’s most beloved attraction: the sunset.)

I do it at yoga, at bedtime, or whenever a fragrant flower is under my nose. But I breathe most deeply when I’m near the ocean, which I am now.

“Florida in July?” some people say. “Really?” But the heat seldom bothers me. And since our weather has been devilishly hot and humid for weeks, it’s even more of a moot point than usual.

At home, there’s no ocean air to breathe, no palm trees to ogle, no big sky to contemplate. Here there are all of these. Here it’s easy to breathe deeply. I’ve been doing it a lot since I arrived.

No matter how often it happens, I never learn. Even though the radio has gone silent and the house is dark, I flick the switch, expecting light. No air-conditioning, of course, but I’ll use a fan. Nope! Fans need electricity, too.

It lasted only six hours, but it was the third power outage here since February. Once again, it reminds me how thin is the layer of civilization, how quickly it all comes tumbling down.

I’ll admit I’ve been spoiled living in this land of buried power lines. It has lulled me into a false sense of security. Maybe the neighbors are right. They bought a generator years ago, and its whir rubs salt in the wound. But it would take many more outages to justify the expense. Better to do without, to learn (and relearn) the lesson, to be reminded of how powerless we really are.

(Though our trees were spared, wind gusts at Dulles reached 66 mph and some homes were without power 24 hours later.)

We head home today, down the northeast corridor on an Amtrak train. This after travel in a van, taxi, hired car, rental car, commuter train and subway.

The transportation has been as varied as the trip itself, which has featured a wedding, hikes through farms and conservation lands, and lots of visiting. We’ve seen sisters and brothers, nieces and nephews and cousins, wonderful friends and adorable doggies.

It’s the kind of travel I’m seeking now, which is not just about rekindling adventures … but renewing relationships.

It was home for almost two years, and I loved it for the light that poured in the windows and the hill across the street. We were lingering at the bottom of the steep driveway when its owner drove up.

“Sorry we’re standing here, but we used to live in your house,” I said.

“You lived here?” he asked, amazed. When we said yes, he invited us inside to look around.

For the next 20 minutes we chatted with the current occupant of our long-ago home. We walked inside and up the stairs, saw the new patio and the old fireplace. He asked us questions: was there a wall here? a door there?

I couldn’t stop thinking of the young couple who rented the house, the baby born to them there (now a young mother herself) and all the wonderful people who lived nearby. So often I imagine the rooms and contours of our old house. To see the real thing was a strange and wondrous experience.

I took dozens of picture-postcard photos yesterday. The sun was finally shining and we were back in a place I loved so long ago. There are hiking trails now and we could walk the whole day, leaving the car parked for 24 blissful hours.

We found the Nashua River Rail Trail and made our way north then south. It felt good to stretch the legs and move through space. Next, we hiked to Barcroft Castle on Gibbet Hill, which burned in 1932, leaving only the pebble-stone walls.

I was looking for the backdrop of the scene in Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women” where Laurie and Jo break up, which was filmed a mile from my old house. I think I found it, looking west from the castle across the Nashoba Valley toward the mountains of New Hampshire. I share it with you at the top of this post — and just for good measure — below, too.

It was a rainy Saturday in Boston, perfect for inside activities. So we visited the library — not just any library but the Boston Public Library, the first free municipal public library in the country. We walked up the marble stairway, past the lions and into the reading room.

Here were scholars at work, green-shaded lamps and a vaulted ceiling. Here was a temple of knowledge. The library holds 23 million items, I learn from its website, including Mozart’s scores, Shakespeare’s first edition folios and John Adams’s personal library.

The Boston Public Library serves 4 million people a year and millions more online (one of them me). It was the first public library to lend books and the first to offer a children’s room and a branch library.

I took only this one photo of the reading room. Intruding any further would have been a desecration.

It’s been a wet May. Today is too drippy to walk, but a few days ago I slipped between the raindrops and strolled through a moist and fragrant landscape. It was the ordinary world silvered into a new state of being.

Every broad leaf or outstretched bough held on its surface gleaming drops of rainwater. I had fun trying to photograph them. I was never able to capture their freshness or fragility, their glitter or gleam. What seemed like diamonds now look like water spots.

I have no illusions of photographic greatness. But snapshots jog the memory. When I look at the pictures I snapped that damp Thursday, I remember the freshness of the morning, the quicksilver beading of the raindrops, the whole sensory experience of the walk. And that’s the point of it all.