A Walker in the Suburbs

On days I work at home I watch the house slowly empty. First Celia, early, so early, for high school. Then Tom with bike and helmet. He’ll ride to work today. And next Suzanne, off to her job in Arlington.  A parade of goodbyes and then, finally, silence.

I pour myself another cup of tea. I read a few pages from a favorite book. And then I place my fingers on the keyboard, willing the words to come, hoping they will flow smoothly today.

Copper lounges by my side. Partings are hard for him, too. But he doesn’t need to process them.

A walk can be a passage out of time, a way to move from the world of clocks and calendars into a suspension of schedule and duty, so that I attend only to what is under my feet and before my eyes.

Today, reading The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane, I found a poet’s explanation for why this is so. Macfarlane seeks out wild places, moors and islands and ridges that are remote and dangerous to reach. He plumbs them for their beauty and lessons. In a valley on the Isle of Skye, he finds a sanctuary, “the allure of lost worlds or secret gardens.”

“Time in the Basin moves both too fast and too slowly for you to comprehend, and it has no interest in conforming to any human schedules. The Basin keeps wild time.”

The reason, he reckons, lies in a quotation by a nameless source: “Landscape was here long before we were even dreamed. It watched us arrive.”

Even in the suburbs, the deep creek beds and tall oaks predate our arrival. I seek them out for their separateness and their nonchalance. They put my world in perspective. They keep their own wild time.

This morning’s drive was a return to darkness, and yesterday’s walk was strangely lit. The shadows slanted more steeply and the sun hovered closer to the horizon.

It was surprising for a moment until I remembered we had set our clocks forward. Mornings are inky now and after dinner-walks a distinct possibility. We have taken matters into our own hands. We are living on borrowed time.

The woods awakens, sends green shoots from leaf loafs, muddies ponds with tadpole eggs, raises our hopes — only to dash them in a brisk wind or a sudden chill. At this point, spring is more a whisper than a promise, the slim strong arms of a young girl.

I hold my breath that it will once again unfold.

Photos: Tom Capehart

An early morning walk today revealed an island I’d never noticed before. Hidden, but hidden in plain sight. Hidden only in that from the pond’s shore it wasn’t, at first, clear that the knoll was surrounded by water.

Once I realized what I was looking at I stared more closely at that piece of earth, its small tree and the moss that ringed its banks. How dignified it looked, its solitary state more noticeable in the quiet, gray morning.

An island offers peace and retreat. A stillness that flows from location. More than wanting to be on the island, I wanted to be the island.

Until a few days ago, I hadn’t seen a movie in a theater for months, but it’s time now for my yearly binge. Monday was “Descendants” and last night “War Horse.” If I’m lucky I’ll work “The Artist” and “Hugo” into the next few days.

Thanks to Netflix, I watched “Midnight in Paris” and “Moneyball” at home. I caught “The Help” when it was out earlier this year. And the rest of the nominated films (I’ll never get used to having more than five in the top category) I can live without seeing. Unlike last year with “The King’s Speech,” this year I have no clear favorite. Which makes it more fun.

A film binge is a nice way to see out what is usually (though not this year) the winter doldrums: sitting in a darkened theater, losing myself in the sounds and lights. It’s too early for March Madness. I’ll call it February Madness instead.

Photo: Wikipedia

When we first moved to the Washington, D.C. area from New England, I was surprised at the fall planting of pansies. Won’t they just be clobbered by snow and ice? Isn’t it tempting fate to assume the winter will be warm?

One year I planted ornamental cabbage, the white kind with a sweet lavender center. That was as close as I’ve come to winter plantings.

But this year pansies have flourished. In fact, they’re in danger of being overrun by the early blooming of daffodils and witch hazel. Winter is taking a nap this year.

Our neighbors found a property marker the other day. At first, they didn’t know what it was. Surely it couldn’t have remained hidden almost 23 years. But that is exactly what it was — and exactly what it had done. We looked at our original plats and deeds — and we are now the proud owners of a few feet more prime Virginia clay soil, another 70-foot oak tree. And every fall (the best part), we now must rake and bag hundreds more bushels of leaves.

In other words, we didn’t welcome our new acquisition. And we’ve joked about how long it will take us to turn the lush, well groomed strip of land into a bumpy, grass-bare parcel.

I’m reading a history of Fairfax County and learning how often the same land was deeded twice. Deciding boundaries kept surveyors and courts busy for decades. Sometimes property lines were intentionally ignored, but other times the confusion came from surveyor error. Trees or rocks were used for landmarks — and then the trees or rocks would disappear.

Makes me feel better about our little suburban boundary confusion. And just to think, we settled it without a surveyor or court.

Today is the birthday of the writers Muriel Spark, Langston Hughes and Galway Kinnell. It is also the birthday of my mom, a writer who is less well known, whose pad and paper were often put aside to tend to a child or pay a bill or wait until the world was calmer before picking them up again.

But she read Shakespeare to us and talked to us of worlds beyond the one we knew. And now we are out in those worlds and she is encouraging us still.

We encourage her, too. It’s calm enough to write now, Mom. You can pick up that pad and pen. The coast is clear.

Today, before I signed in to write this entry, I was taken to a page where the new Google privacy policy was on display. I was assured that life would be easier with the new ease of transference between YouTube, Google searches and Gmail. These changes will take place March 1, Google explained, and there will be no way to opt out of them.

I had already noticed the ads Google tailored to my blog posts. They’re often funny. I might be reminiscing about our trip to Vienna two years ago and up will pop a Danube River Cruise. Doesn’t Google know that we’re still paying off our 2010 trip? (That it doesn’t is good news, actually; apparently Google does not yet have access to our bank records.)

Surely, though, it’s only a matter of time. Google has already been collecting information from my searches and YouTube viewing and from the blog posts I write here. And in little more than a month — in the name of creating a “seamless” environment — Google will be able to share all the bits of information it has collected to serve (and plumb) our deepest selves.

It’s enough to drag me back to the 20th century — or maybe the 19th.