Flip Side

Flip Side

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Washington, D.C., had its first official snow day yesterday, with a quick-moving and more-powerful-than-anticipated storm closing federal government offices and sending commuters and school kids out on deteriorating roads.

It was a chaotic scene that’s now replaced by the peacefulness of a snow-crusted Wednesday morning. I’m working in front of a window with the transformed world spread out before me. Every limb and branch is coated in white with crows providing the contrast. When birds land on a snow-covered limb, a bit of the white stuff falls to the ground in a small clump, creating a second gentle snowfall.

I’m not a skier or skater. Walking and shoveling are the occupations that get me out into the elements. But I love these snowscapes just the same. They are a monochromatic, matte version of the usual scenery, a flip side, so to speak.

Absolutely Ridiculous!

Absolutely Ridiculous!

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Early January requires a sense of humor, I’ve decided. Holidays behind us, long nights and bad weather ahead, we must cultivate a lighter way of looking at things. This does not come easily — especially with the doom and gloom that come to us regularly from the airwaves and our phones.

Watching comedies helps. So does talking to upbeat people, animals (though they seldom talk back) or, in a pinch, to one’s self (again, talking back seldom happens, or at least let’s hope that it doesn’t).

The right kind of book can also do the trick. The Salt Path, which I just finished, is one example; of course there are thousands of them. And then there is noticing the silly and ridiculous details of daily life. That works best of all.

Everyday Epiphanies

Everyday Epiphanies

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This year the feast of the Epiphany falls on the first back-to-work-and-school day. For some, it may even delay the first back-to-work day. For me, back-to-the-office cannot be postponed … so I’ll just have to be astonished by the daily grind.

Maybe this is not such a bad thing. Maybe we need to take our epiphanies where we find them, not just in the grand celebrations of life but in the everyday moments — hopping on Metro, settling into the office, getting a glass of water at the kitchen sink.

It’s difficult to find wonder in the everyday, but it is, I think, what we were born for.

Over Again?

Over Again?

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Even though I worked last Thursday and Friday, I did so at home, so tomorrow looms as the first real return day. In reflecting over the Christmas that was, I relive the lovely moments with family and friends, surely the highlight of this or any other holiday.

I also recall a day I’ll remember for its contentment, when I felt strangely happy. I say strangely because I was fighting a cold and still had a lot to do: all the cards to write, gifts to wrap and baking to do. But the tree was up and decorated and a marathon of biblical movies flickered on TV.

I addressed envelopes and curled ribbons to the soundtrack from “King of Kings” (I watched the film some too, but I listened more than looked). The majesty of that music seemed more fitting than any Christmas carol, and I went about my holiday tasks with a new sense of meaning and anticipation.

It was just a moment, but it was such a pleasant one that it seems to encapsulate all this holiday’s happy moments. Now I sit in front of that same tree, which must soon be taken down, and, well, I just wish I could do it all over again.

The Hawk Next Door

The Hawk Next Door

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This morning I saw in a neighbor’s tree the unmistakable silhouette of a hawk. A wild thing partially tamed, this bird, because the neighbors (who hunt with bow and arrow) leave hunks of deer meat about for it to chew on.

If it sounds like I live in the woods or up a mountain, be assured that this is indeed the suburbs. But such is the wide array of residents here that this hawk sits hunched in contemplation, looking as if he owns the place — because he thinks he does!

I love that he’s nearby, though I’m glad I have no small cats to tempt him. But the presence of this bird of prey, his cries in the morning fog, remind me of the wild world that waits just outside my door. A world I’m just about to walk in…


(Couldn’t find a photo of a hawk, so an owl will have to do.)

The Salt Path

The Salt Path

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My first book of 2020 is one I began in 2019, The Salt Path by Raynor Winn. The author and her husband, both in their 50s, suddenly find themselves homeless and decide to walk the South West Coast Path in England.

It’s not what one usually decides to do in such a situation, so right from the start I was hooked. And the further I read (I’m less than 50 pages from the end), the more I know that if I were to find myself homeless, walking the South West Coast Path would be something that I would want to do, too.

It’s about how to survive when nothing is going your way, about taking control when it would be far easier to left fate roll you over. It’s about the couple finding the “strip of wildness that was ours” between the rocks and the sea, about feeling both “confined and set free.”

“Drawn to the edge, a strip of wilderness where we could be free to let the answers come, or not, to find a way of accepting life, our life, whatever that was. Were we searching this narrow margin between the land and sea for another way of being, becoming edgelanders along the way? Stuck between one world and the next. Walking a thin line between tame and wild, lost and found, life and death. At the edge of existence.”

Winn may not know the answers (yet), but she certainly has figured out the questions.

Frosted Fields

Frosted Fields

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An early walk on a Reston trail, one of my favorites. This is a paved path that winds between backyards and parkland before connecting with the Cross-County Trail. It’s cool and enticing in the summer because of the tall oaks that shade it — and no less lovely in the winter.

It was a quiet amble —  not a soul about — and the stillness rang in my ears. Birds fluttered in the hedges, and the stream, normally gurgling, was quiet in the cold. It was chilly, so I walked fast from the get-go, flipping up the hood on my parka and balling up my fists inside old gloves.

But three quarters of the way down on the left, I had to stop. The wetland landscape there was transformed by frost. Matted grasses gleamed with white and broken tree trunks loomed above them. There was thin ice where the creek water ponds and a monochromatic beauty throughout.

Beauty is always welcome, but never more than when it is unexpected.

2020!

2020!

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Even the numbers look futuristic, and our new year is nothing if not balanced. Is it my imagination or is there a hopefulness among these digits, a sense of vision clear and untrammeled?

It’s too soon to tell, of course, but I’ll enter the new year like I always try to: with more hope than trepidation. I’ll take some deep breaths before the messiness of daily living intrudes upon this blank slate.

And for today, before the newness wears off, I’ll do my usual Janus thing: look back at the past, craft resolutions for the future … and of course, eat plenty of black-eyed peas.

Bounding into the Future

Bounding into the Future

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Copper and I reached the gate at the top of our deck stairs this morning at exactly the same moment that a four-point buck landed in our yard. He had jumped over the fence, trotted down the slight slope and paused in his foraging, as if listening to a faraway call.

I’ve become quite inured to the deer around here. They eat the day lilies and even the impatiens, if there’s nothing else. They cause auto accidents and are responsible for several dents in our cars through the years.

But seeing the buck this morning, so young and strong, stopped me in my tracks. I stared at him, mesmerized, and he stared back. He was beautiful, a messenger from a wild world. And indeed, in some cultures deer are sacred, a symbol of death and rebirth on account of their antlers, which they shed and regrow.

How perfect to see the deer on this day, which is itself a passageway to another world, another decade. I took the fellow as a good omen. And he — since he disappeared with a flash of his white tail — is not around to correct me on this.


(The stag I saw wasn’t white, but he was noble. Photo: Wikipedia)

Fast Away…

Fast Away…

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Tomorrow is the end not just of a year but a decade, so in case this warrants two posts instead of one, I’d better get busy.

First, 2019 wasn’t nearly long enough. It’s a trait this year shares with its recent predecessors and will, I fear, share with its successors, too. On the other hand, the year didn’t drag with direness so I can’t complain.

It’s a year that saw increasing dissension and partisanship, in our country and others, and I worry that 2020 will be worse in that regard.

Then there is the almost 70-degree high predicted for today and all that stands for in terms of climate change and environmental health.

As I look out my window at the bird feeder and the sparrows clustering around it, though, I see a balm for much of what ails us — our dear old Earth, which grows more precious by the hour.