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Category: weather

Overlay of Cheer

Overlay of Cheer

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Strong gusts bend the bamboo beside our deck, riffle the hollies, berry-less this year. The sky is an angry purple except for a white strip along the horizon. Christmas is riding in on the west wind.

Yesterday’s last-minute shopping meant parking at the far end of town and backtracking to the bookstore. No gloves for some reason, so I crammed one hand into a pocket, used the other to hold the bags. It was almost dark by the time I got home;  Reston Town Center was all decked out for the season.

Now I sit in warmth, willing myself to stand, walk upstairs and dress warmly enough for a windy walk. But first I notice how our tree lights are reflected in the window. They’re an overlay of cheer on a gray and unforgiving world.

Wintry Mix

Wintry Mix

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They’re forecasting rain and snow today. But it’s still autumn, I silently protest. It’s not even December yet. Let’s just say rain and hope for the best.

Weather is neither kind nor vengeful. I know this. Yet I must harbor some ancient belief or prejudice that makes me permeable to the meteorological mood.

One reason I like the climate of Washington, D.C., is that, despite its muggy summers, it’s a surprisingly sunshiney place. If a “mix” is predicted (like today), it’s more likely to be rain than snow, sunny than cloudy.  That’s a mix I can live with.

The Shenandoah Valley, snapped from I-81 on Saturday, when no wintry mix was forecast.

When Fog Obscures

When Fog Obscures

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Today is winsome and gray. 
Our backyard is covered with leaves, and they soften the landscape, too.
Early autumn is a time of sharp contrasts as the sun drops lower in the sky. But as
the season deepens and the weather changes, I take comfort in a blurring of
vision.
I remember a week of warm, foggy days one
November when I lived in Chicago. This was before global warming. November was
winter in the Windy City (maybe it still is). We’d already had some cold nights
that year and the warmth was a gift, a gift that I think Chicagoans
appreciate more than most, so steeled are they to shiver five months a year.
In those days I had no car, and I met my ride to work by taking a bus down Clark Street and walking a few
blocks to our meeting place. I remember strolling down Deming and Wrightwood
and other streets in the neighborhood where I’d eventually (and now could not
afford to) live, the fog revealing only tantalizing bits of homes and stores
and churches. I imagined I was ambling through some Cotswold village. (What can I say? I was an English major.)
The point is this: When fog obscures, imagination endures. It’s a pleasant trade.
Resignation

Resignation

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The first day of winter is still weeks away, but this feels like the real thing: Cold and light earlier than usual, the low temps not part of the night but part of the day. Just so there can be no mistaking.

I notice the silence. The robins and jays have left us; the juncos have not yet arrived.

The shutters are closed, but I spy through cracks the flicker of branch stir outside, as a brisk breeze sets treed leaves a trembling.

Here in this quiet hour, clocks ticking again on standard time, I think, resignation is much like this — to crave long days and fireflies, yet know even in my longing that this is what must be.

Under Water

Under Water

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When constructing my fantasy life I often get hung up on location. The suburbs are out, and a pied-a-terre is a given (after all, I still have to earn a living); the confusion comes with the country retreat. A cabin in the mountains? A cottage on the shore?

After Sandy, the answer is clearer. After Sandy, the mountains are starting to look pretty good. After Sandy, I wonder: What happens when the places I love are under water?

There’s Venice. But of course with Venice it has always been part of that city’s doomed charm.

And there’s Chincoteague. As the wind and rain pounded us Monday I thought of my time there this summer, the stillness of the refuge, the beach that goes on forever. Does it still? 

And now there’s New York City, too. Sea water coursing through subway tunnels, lapping at the steps of the Stock Exchange. Apocalyptic visions.

People perish; place endures. Or at least it used to. I’m not so sure anymore.

(Lower Manhattan from the Brooklyn Bridge.)

Post Sandy

Post Sandy

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Sandy walloped us yesterday, but far fewer trees came down than expected and with new siding and windows we spent the day in relative silence. The battering and banging we used to hear during storms giving way to a muted roar as 50- to 60-mile-an-hour winds gusted outside.

Inside: a pot of chili, a stack of books and, more to the point, electricity.

Today, as the storm continues to send rain, snow and high winds our way, my thoughts head north, to New York, New Jersey and other Sandy-ravaged areas.



(It’s hard to imagine Times Square empty, but last night it was.)

Waiting for Sandy

Waiting for Sandy

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I grew up in the middle of the country, not right in tornado alley but close enough. So hurricanes are not part of my birthright. They are, however, something I’ve gotten used to living on the East Coast. What sets them apart for me is not the strong winds (those were worse with the derecho we had in June) or the copious rain, but the fact that you know they’re coming.

Tornadoes catch you unaware. A sultry spring afternoon, a strange light in the sky, and before you know it you’re huddling in a stairwell while your roof is blown off.

Hurricanes are charted and observed. We woke up today to this photograph in the Washington Post. As I write I think of what we still need to do: fill up the cars; charge the phones, laptop and iPod (heck, even the toothbrush); secure the deck furniture.

Time to prepare — and also time to worry.  I remind myself that — all talk of hybrid cyclones aside, headlines that call this the storm of the century — at the end of the day there’s often more hype than hurricane.



What will these waves look like a few hours from now?

Rainscape

Rainscape

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The summer stroller finds much to appreciate in an occasional rainy day. Along moisture-blackened creek bridges and past the errant sprig of sagging bamboo, today’s amble left me with wet hair and soggy shoes but other than that none the worse for the wear.

Today’s rain is slight, slender, sparse enough to walk through. When the
trail is canopied, as mine was, you can slip through the drips and
drops as if sidestepping them.

I passed people weeding, walking and running in the rain. The wet day didn’t bother them either.

Downed Trees

Downed Trees

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As I walk on familiar trails once again the extent of last month’s storm is evermore clear. Limbs down in almost every yard, the sound of chain saws and chippers and, what I noticed especially today, the tall trees in the forest that have been completely uprooted, whose roots lie exposed and bare.

With what deep tentacles do these oaks cling to their soil. Ferocious dedication to their plot of land. They didn’t give up without a fight, but 80 mile-an-hour winds make it difficult for even the hardiest to hang on.

In the long run, it was largely a matter of angle and placement. The downed trees are laid out in one direction. The wind came sweeping in from the west and the trees most directly in its path toppled down to the ground. But they still cling to the earth, even with their roots exposed and their trunks strewn across the forest floor.

Moderation in Motion

Moderation in Motion

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I begin the morning on foot. Down the suburban street, across a tiny wooden bridge over a culvert and through a parting in the trees. It’s where we walked last night, a short and winding path that leads to the wider rail-to-trail that runs between Baltimore and Annapolis. The spiders have been busy overnight and I brush the sticky webs off my arms.

Once on the main trail I hit my stride. I haven’t walked to work since I lived in New York more than two decades ago. And I’m not really walking to work now. Only making my way to the commuter bus. But there is no car involved, and that means I start the day in a calm and ancient way. With movement and foot fall and time for thinking as I stroll.

The downed trees I see make me think of our recent storm, our erratic weather, of global warming and what we’re losing with it, which is moderation. I ponder moderation for a minute, the peace it brings and the difficulty of achieving it these days. Walking is itself a moderating activity, isn’t it? It’s not the stop and go of vehicular locomotion but something that — because it’s limited by blood and bone and muscle — keeps us true to ourselves. Walking, then, is moderation in motion. It’s the temperate response to these extreme times.

What I used to see when I started the day on foot: the East Side glimpsed from the reservoir path.