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Category: walking

Wandering Home

Wandering Home

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As much as I extoll the practice, walking in the suburbs is largely for exercise and mental refreshment, for perspective. It’s difficult to run errands or visit folks without jumping in the car.

But yesterday I had time to amble through the woods to meet a friend, who lives on the other side of a county forest.

On the way there I had my eye on the clock, picking up the pace to reach her house more or less when I said I would. But on the way home I savored the green splendor of the stroll, birds ruffling the underbrush, stream water pouring over and around a flat rock.

It felt like rain, clammy and portentous. I took my time, reveled in the mood and the moment. I wandered home.

Just the Same

Just the Same

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The Pacific Northwest is a city of vistas, proof of the good things that happen when water and mountains meet. 

Here on the other coast, a gentler, calmer, less dramatic form of beauty. My eyes adjust to it as they would a darkening room. 

I snap shots of one fetching curve of a favorite walk, note how trees and grasses frame a small pond. This is not the vast expanse of Puget Sound, the white-topped Olympic Mountains in the distance.  It’s a more humble, everyday kind of beauty. But it’s beauty, just the same. 

Loop Walk

Loop Walk

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Can confusion be knit into a landscape? Is there something about a particular topography, no matter how serene it appears, that can turn our heads? Would I be asking these questions if I didn’t think there was? Yesterday I took a path I’ve hiked several times before. Once again, I paused at the juncture of three trails. Once again, I chose the “wrong” path.

Or was it? This trail led me into a cool green forest along the Snakeden Branch. I took deep breaths, heard a bird I didn’t recognize. I knew approximately where I was. No need for panic. In fact, when the trail spit me out on a major thoroughfare, I realized there was circular potential.

The rails-to-trails marvel that is the W&OD was nearby, and the path I missed intersected it. If I could find that juncture, I could take a loop walk. The W&OD was sunny, and I wasn’t sure how long I would be on it. Just when I thought I’d missed the crossroads, I saw the sign and escaped through a bright meadow into deep shade.

It was a different walk than the one I meant to take, but a good one just the same.

On the Fence

On the Fence

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A family in the Phinney Ridge neighborhood of Seattle has come up with a whimsical way to depict the immensity of space: they’ve turned their wooden fence into the solar system. 

On these planks you’ll see the sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars and Earth plus our moon. Far enough down the block that my phone camera couldn’t capture them in one shot are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. 

A final panel reads “Where is Pluto? Pluto would be across our neighbor’s driveway,” followed by a discussion of Pluto’s status as dwarf planet, a fact about which some scientists are “on the fence.” 😊

It’s not the sort of thing I’m used to seeing on my neighborhood walks. But isn’t that point of travel — to take us away and shake us up and help us see our world, even our universe, with fresh eyes? 

Magnificent Forest

Magnificent Forest

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“You are entering a fragile, ancient forest,” the sign read. “Please stay on the trail.” So we entered the woods with reverence, walked quietly along the path, and guessed the age of the towering trees. 

To be old growth, a forest must contain trees more than 250 years old. Seattle’s Seward Park has them, though many of its specimens are “only” in the 200-year range.  But the Western Hemlocks are dying, the sword fern too.

How to protect them, to understand and prevent their demise? How to keep this “Magnificent Forest,” as it’s called, as dark, mysterious and magical as it is now? Researchers are working on it. And yesterday, we did our part: we looked, we marveled, we stayed on the trail. 

Another Word for Travel

Another Word for Travel

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We spent much of yesterday in Discovery Park, exploring Capehart Forest, the West Point lighthouse and a steep trail that connects the two. A bald eagle soared above us.

West Point is one of 18 active lighthouses in the state, and the point of land it sits upon has been a gathering spot for thousands of years. As the largest park in a city of vistas, this place offers a stunning array of views to contemplate. 

What an apt name for a place of long history and tradition. Discovery: to be discovered, to find something unexpectedly in the course of a search. Another word for travel.

On Foot to the Sound

On Foot to the Sound

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Yesterday, the reprise of a walk I remember taking years ago: through Seattle’s Carkeek Park to Puget Sound. We started on a trail that my friend Peggy designed and helped bring about. From there we entered a woods so deep, light-filtered and northwestern that I wanted to bottle it and bring it home.

There were meadows and wildflowers and an old orchard. Pipers Creek was our constant companion. 

Shortly before we reached the water, we walked across a high bridge that straddled a railroad track. A freight train was moving through, car after car.  The view took on motion then, and the water glittered in the sun. 

A Benediction

A Benediction

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The first thing I notice is the scent. The air is perfumed, mid-May incarnate. Early honeysuckle? I don’t think so. Viburnum perhaps?  I inhale as I walk, which supercharges each step. 

The next thing I notice is the mud. It’s been only a few days since I last walked in the woods, but it’s rained hard since then, and paths that were packed are now spongy, pliable.  My boots leave an impression. 

The stream is gurgling. The forest has greened and expanded with the much-needed moisture. It has moved up and out. It holds me as I walk, sifts its stillness down, a gift, a benediction.  

I Brake For Goslings

I Brake For Goslings

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It’s not just drivers who have to swerve, hit the brakes and, of course, stay on their side of the road. Walkers have similar obligations. 

When I’m hoofing it on the W&OD — a bike/hike trail frequented by walkers and cyclists and yesterday, strangely, by a motorcycle going 60 miles an hour — the key is to avoid sudden changes of “lane.” There are signs that remind us of that fact: “Be alert and predictable,” they say.

Last week, on a Franklin Farm stroll, my goal was to stay clear of mother goose and her adorable goslings. Luckily, she let me get close enough for a photograph.

Feeling the Pull

Feeling the Pull

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Writing and weather has kept me mostly inside for the better part of two weeks, and I’m feeling the loss of woods and sky and birdsong. 

Late yesterday’s walk was a reminder of just how much. The bamboo forest. The creekside trail. Everything green and glowing from the rain and chill. A new tree down to clamber over. 

It was a pleasure to tromp through it all. And this morning, as I watch bluejays dart and a fox scamper home, as sunlight pools in the shady yard, I feel the pull of the outdoors again. 

(No, this was not taken in the Virginia woods. It’s an Irish robin posing on the isle of Inishmore.)