The Perch

The Perch

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A glimpse of winter sky through a tangle of arching branches might first bring thoughts of winter’s starkness and simplicity. 

But a closer look reveals that these limbs are full of life. Soon, the sap will start to flow up from the ground through the trunk and into the twigs, where it will nourish the new leaves once they bud. 

Even in the dormant season, though, the branches offer rest and recharging, a perch. I’ve been watching the black gum tree, observing how birds alight on its limbs while awaiting their turn at the feeder or suet block. 

They are mostly patient, these birds. They will sit still as statues until there’s an opening, then they will swoop in and gobble up the seed or suet. 

I snapped a photo of two birds this morning. They are barely discernible amid the long black fingers of the gum tree. But they are there, biding their time. 

Balls in the Air

Balls in the Air

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After writing yesterday’s post I started thinking about how, if 2010’s Snowmageddon offered a few days off to clean a closet or start a blog, just think what 2020’s (and now 2021’s) lockdowns might produce. What novels and screenplays and landscapes and enchanted gardens will grow, have grown, from this enforced solitude?

A prodigious creative output for some, I’m sure … but not from me!  I can barely keep up with my paying work, the blog and the rest of my life. 

A 10-day snow storm does not equal an almost yearlong pandemic.  It lacks the fear and confusion; it lacks the duration. So while I have more time now to put words on paper, I’m keeping many of those words inside, hoping for time soon to process what we’ve been enduring. 

For now, I’m just trying to keep the balls I was already juggling in the air.  Maybe I’m alone in this — but I bet I’m not! 

(Starting my 12th year of blogging by adding a GIF. Will it work? It seems to on my end!)

Eleven Years

Eleven Years

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Eleven years ago today, on another snowy Super Bowl Sunday, I started this blog. It was something I’d been meaning to do for years, but the windfall of time made possible by a weather disruption gave me the space I needed to make the resolution come true. 

I still remember sitting on the couch, setting up the blog account, finding it easier than I thought. I had the title in mind, and a rough idea of what I wanted to say (though it would take months to learn how to size the photos), but it came together with the ease of something that was meant to be.  It seemed to me then, and on good days still seems to be … magic. 

Magic occurs when ideas have the room and reception to put down roots and grow. “Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest,” writes the author and memoirist Elizabeth Gilbert. “And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner.” 

For eleven years, I’ve partnered with the idea of A Walker in the Suburbs, writing about walking and place and books and family life. I’m glad it came to visit me, this idea. But most of all, I’m grateful I chose to welcome it. 

Questions without Answers

Questions without Answers

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It’s easy to forget when caught up in adult life how simple and powerful are the needs of little people. Our almost six-month-old grandson has been in our care several times now and re-entering his world is highly instructive for mine. 

For one thing, I always have questions. Chief among them are ones about his physical needs: is he hungry? is he sleepy? But a close second are questions about his psychological needs: does he feel safe? is he being stimulated? 

Some of these are questions without answers, but it’s important to ask them. For babies … and for grownups, too.

Leaving a Trace

Leaving a Trace

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I noticed them the minute I stepped out of the house on Sunday. There was no evidence of humans making their way through the newly fallen snow — but a world of animal tracks greeted me on that still morning.

Tiny bird footprints, the skittering marks of a squirrel or chipmunk, and the more dog-like paw prints of our local fox. Whether hopping, scampering or loping, these animals left their marks.

We think of snow as a covering, coating the verges and leaf piles, making smooth the weed-strewn and the bald-patched.

But snow reveals as well as conceals. It tells us who was here and, if we pay attention, how recently. It’s a blank white slate on which movements make their mark. 

Walker Meets Ice

Walker Meets Ice

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These days, walks are timed for optimal warmth and light. They must also flow around work projects and meetings, which is how I found myself looking for strips of pavement amid the icy patches on our street yesterday about 3 p.m. 

The snow had finally stopped, which wasn’t altogether welcome — it was fun living inside a snow globe for a few days — and a stiff breeze was drying off the wet parts of the road. The problem was that it was freezing the slush almost as quickly. 

I’m a fearless walker … until ice enters the picture. I have a healthy respect for it and will be glad when it melts away. Until then, I will make my way through the landscape very slowly … if at all! 

(Above: where ice should stay, in my humble opinion!) 

Snowscape

Snowscape

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The snowy Sunday quietly and steadily remained a snowy Monday, and has now — wonder of wonders! — become a snowy Tuesday. 

As I write, the flurries that made it difficult to keep a path clean for Copper down the deck stairs (he’s old and slips a lot) have continued flying. The railing I scraped off yesterday has at least another inch or two of white coating. 

Best of all, the winter wonderland brought to us by 28 degrees and enough cold aloft to produce these flakes still falling remains a vision, a snowscape, a sight for sore eyes. 

Snowy Sunday

Snowy Sunday

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It’s not just that the snow fell, finally, the first significant accumulation in two years, but that it fell on Sunday, when many of us could enjoy it. Into the snow went dogs and babies (two of the latter for the first time!). Out of it (and the time if provided) came photos; chicken and wild rice soup; and chocolate chip muffin bread.

Mostly what came of it was total relaxation. There wasn’t much I could do outside. And although there was much I could have done inside, the snow gave me permission to ignore it. 

I read in the morning, watched television while eating lunch, and as the soup simmered and the bread baked, I sat in the darkening living room looking at the white world outside. 

The Shot

The Shot

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In the end it’s no more than a pinprick, but into it has gone the world’s hope and desperation — the former more than the latter, I believe, but you never know. 

The second will come four weeks from now, and then … what? A sort of freedom, to be sure. But still no old life as we know it. 

Maybe in time, when enough of us have had what I was lucky enough to get yesterday, and that due not just to science and ingenuity but also to the kindness of a friend, who alerted me to the arrival of vaccines in a hospital where I had not checked for them. 

It was a longer drive than I would have liked … but it was worth it. 

Timbers Sighing

Timbers Sighing

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The wind came barreling in from the west last night, and as usual in this house, it’s quite a noisy experience. It’s not just the wind itself, howling and yawping (that latter word courtesy of a book I’m reading about the poet Walt Whitman); it’s the way these four walls respond to it.

The bamboo (rid of Monday’s ice) scratches the siding, and the sound this leaves in its wake makes me think of an old-fashioned sailing ship. There is that same sense of being at the mercy of the elements, of the very timbers sighing. 

To counteract these harsh noises, though, there is also the purring of the furnace. The colder the night, the more often it’s on, of course, and in it, there is the promise of warmth and safety and civilization.