The Salt Path

The Salt Path

Comments 0 Comment

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

Comments 0 Comment

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!

Comments 0 Comment

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

Comments 0 Comment

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…

Comments 0 Comment

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.

Blog, in a Nutshell

Blog, in a Nutshell

Comments 0 Comment

Sometimes it all comes back like the rekindling of an old passion — the reason I started this blog, which is the walking and what it leads to, the new ideas, a fresh way of looking at something. Though I post about books and music and writing and more, it was walking that started it and walking that energizes it still.

No surprise this came to me yesterday, when the air felt more like spring than fall and a pair of doves rose up and fluttered off as I strode too close to them. I heard geese, too, a flock that has decided to winter here, I guess.

The light was soft and the scenery, to quote Hemingway, a movable feast, and I gobbled it up as I ambled past. Thoughts floated by, some of them even worth keeping. So I rushed home and wrote them down. And there you have it — the blog, in a nutshell.

Small Tech Victory

Small Tech Victory

Comments 0 Comment

Though I envision the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day as a black hole of relaxation, a time when I need do nothing but read, write, walk and watch movies, reality does intrude. Yesterday I even had to boot up my work computer — horror of horrors — to check on the old flexible spending account, a time sink if ever there was one.

To do this required the overcoming of several tech challenges, including the export of an Excel document. I was charged up by the fact that I did this without error, a small tech victory that inspired me to attempt others.

If increasing technical complexity is the sea in which we must swim, then small tech victories are the life rafts we must celebrate.

Walking to Georgia

Walking to Georgia

Comments 0 Comment

On my getaway last month I briefly hiked the Appalachian Trail. I passed it quickly on the way up to an advertised 360-degree view, which was more like 345, since to reach the ultimate pinnacle required a little more rock scrambling than I wanted to do. But on the way back to the car, the AT was there and I was game.

But first, I had to decide: would I head to Maine … or Georgia? A silly way to put it, of course, since I wouldn’t be walking to either one, wouldn’t even be on the trail itself for more than a few minutes.

Making the choice made me think, though. Despite all we hear about it being the journey not the destination that matters, endpoints make a difference. They shift the way we think about a trip. They color the journey.

In the end, the sun was slanting more fetchingly to the south, so that’s what I chose. This is what I saw. Not Georgia … but not bad.

After the Whirlwind…

After the Whirlwind…

Comments 0 Comment

The day was grand, filled with family and food and thoughtful gifts. In its wake there is gratitude and satiety and relief that I’ve no more gifts to buy!

Almost always after Christmas, I long for a cleansing, a de-cluttering, a new broom to sweep away the cobwebs.

At war with this instinct is the urge to relax, to actually do nothing except read, write and watch movies. And right now … that’s what’s winning!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Comments 0 Comment

Once again the days have passed, the splendid ones and the trying ones. Once again we’ve come back to this point, which is for me, and for many, the great pause. Christmas Day. Soon to be followed by New Year’s Day and the delicious week in between. Once again I’ll re-run this blog post, one I wrote in 2011. Merry Christmas!


12/24/11

Our old house has seen better days. The siding is dented, the walkway is cracked, the yard is muddy and tracked with Copper’s paw prints. Inside is one of the fullest and most aromatic trees we’ve ever chopped down. Cards line the mantel, the fridge is so full it takes ten minutes to find the cream cheese. Which is to say we are as ready as we will ever be. The family is gathering. I need to make one more trip to the grocery store.

This morning I thought about a scene from one of my favorite Christmas movies, one I hope we’ll have time to watch in the next few days. In “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Jimmy Stewart has just learned he faces bank fraud and prison, and as he comes home beside himself with worry, he grabs the knob of the banister in his old house — and it comes off in his hand. He is exasperated at this; it seems to represent his failures and shortcomings.

By the end of the movie, after he’s been visited by an angel, after his family and friends have rallied around him in an unprecedented way, after he’s had a chance to see what the world would have been like without him — he grabs the banister knob again. And once again, it comes off in his hand. But this time, he kisses it. The house is still cold and drafty and in need of repair. But it has been sanctified by friendship and love and solidarity.

Christmas doesn’t take away our problems. But it counters them with joy. It reminds us to appreciate the humble, familiar things that surround us every day, and to draw strength from the people we love. And surely there is a bit of the miraculous in that.

Photo: Flow TV