Decisions, Decisions

Decisions, Decisions

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My morning commute involves driving to the Metro station, riding the train seven stops, hopping off, trudging up the escalator to an express bus that takes me to Crystal City, then walking to the office. Four segments, three types of transport, but it works. It’s a routine, something I could negotiate in my sleep — and often feel like I do.

When it’s very cold or rainy, I vary this slightly, stay on the train one more stop, then switch to another train, which also goes to Crystal City, where I can walk to within a few hundred feet of my office without going outside. This is the longer option, and it lacks the escalator walk (which has become part of my fitness routine), so I seldom take it.

This morning, though, I debated, because for once I dressed for afternoon warmth and not morning chill. When the train pulled closer to my stop, I deliberated. If I just missed a bus, I would have to wait and be cold. If I stayed on I would stay warm. What should I do? I really couldn’t decide.

At the last second, I stuffed the newspaper in my bag and jumped off the train. I’ll probably just miss the bus, I thought. But no, the bus was there. I stayed warm and got to my destination, where the time I’ve saved I’m now spending on this post.

Decisions, decisions.

The Return

The Return

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Sometimes it’s the ordinary miracles that touch us most. So it was yesterday when we spotted a hummingbird at the feeder. It’s always good to see these amazing birds return in the spring. But this time, we knew when they returned last year and were watching and waiting, filling feeders.

And then … a little bird appeared. It was April 28 — the exact same day they returned in 2018.

Do they have little timers inside? Small clocks? What is it that tells them when to leave and when to return? What propels them across mountains and oceans, back to this suburban backyard?

I’m sure there are theories, actual knowledge. I’ve probably even read some of it. But I don’t want to know about any of this right now. I’d rather just marvel at it all.

Fallen Petals

Fallen Petals

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In a slight twist on “March winds and April showers,” we’re in the midst of an April wind that follows on the heels of an April shower.

That has meant that the April flowers, in this case the lovely pink rose-like blooms of the Kwanzan cherry, are no longer attached to the tree but strewn about the grass.

This is the way of the world, is it not? And has anyone expressed this more simply and more beautifully than Robert Frost?

“So leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.” 

Walking Wordsworth

Walking Wordsworth

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I knew the Romantic poet was a walker, but not the extent of his rambles. According to Alice Outwater in a new book called Wild at Heart, William Wordsworth spent much of his day walking. He would compose poetry as he strode along gravel paths, which he favored over the bushwhacking preferred by his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge. (I’m with you, Wordsworth.)

Wordsworth covered roughly 10 miles a day, an estimated 175,000 miles in his lifetime. He and his sister Dorothy walked so much and at such odd hours that the local people suspected them of being French spies.


According to Outwater, Wordsworth’s perambulations were inspired by his meeting John “Walking” Stewart, an English philosopher who hiked from India to Europe. Wordsworth, 21 at the time, was especially interested in Stewart’s philosophy on nature.

And it was in nature, not sitting passively in it but walking through it, that Wordsworth found his life and his inspiration.

(Dove Cottage, near Grasmere in England, where Wordsworth lived with his sister Dorothy. Photo: Wikipedia.)

Three Years

Three Years

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As if I needed another reminder of time’s quick passage, today I celebrate three years at my “new” job. Three years sitting on the fifth floor of a steel and glass building, staring out the windows but mostly staring at my screen. Three years traveling to report on stories, visiting places I never thought I’d see, meeting people around the world.

I won’t say it seems like yesterday that I began this new adventure. In many ways it seems longer (which, I guess, is a vote against time’s quick passage). But it seems longer in the way that new and familiar things often do.

Already the years are speeding up here. The time between my first few months, when I could barely tell one project from another, and this time last year seems like quite a stretch compared with the past 12 months.

On the whole, though, I’m feeling quite lucky on this three-year anniversary. I work harder than I have to, but it’s work that engages, and sometimes even inspires. Can’t ask for much more than that.

Picking Up Sticks

Picking Up Sticks

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Is there a less glamorous but more necessary lawn task than the picking up of sticks?

It must happen before mowing, of course, but preferably sooner than that. Around here, it needs to be done every day or so, at least in the spring when strong winds rattle the oaks and do as much pruning as shears or clippers.

With every bending down and picking up, I fell myself that I’m building up a pile of kindling for a bonfire some day. Or at the very least enough to stuff a can of yard waste for the recycling pick-up next week.

Most of all, I tell myself that these are nothing, mere toothpicks, the balsa wood of yard flotsam. The big trees they came from, they’re still standing. And that’s what matters most.

This is dedicated …

This is dedicated …

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A spring walk yesterday took me from ugh-it’s-a-Monday to I’m-glad-to-be-alive.

It was about 65 degrees with a brilliant blue sky and leaves that seemed to have their own power source, so brilliant was the green they were flashing.

Their power source, of course, was the sun, which was flooding the day with light and warmth. My winter-weary bones were soaking it up (through properly applied sunscreen, of course) and my work-weary mind was jetting off in several directions: how beauty sustains, how I wished everyone I love could be in my skin experiencing it with me.

Especially those no longer on this side of the ground, I wanted them to have it, too, to be back long enough to feel warmth on their skin and see a redbud tree in flower. So this walk, like the song says … was dedicated to the ones I love.

On Earth Day

On Earth Day

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Over the weekend I learned that a tornado touched down in my neighborhood Friday night. It must have been just the barest glance of a tornado, because the damage was minimal. But an expert was called in and he explained that the direction in which the trees fell and the crack down the middle of one proves that the tornado which hit Reston Town Center also hit Folkstone. It was a good reminder that nature is always ready to rear up and remind us who’s boss.

Perhaps Earth Day is a good day to remember this fact. Earth Day, which I remember from my youth as green-tinged and vaguely hopeful but which has taken on a grimmer tone in these days of global warming and Extinction Rebellion.

I have a much more protective feeling about the Earth now than I ever used to. And while I’m adding to the carbon load with my work flights to foreign shores, the travel those flights made possible is opening my eyes to the work we have in front of us, to the need to protect this good old Earth, which grows more vulnerable and more precious every day.

Transcendence

Transcendence

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A friend sent me an electronic Easter card, the kind that comes with music and motion, with sweet scenes of birds and bunnies.

Only this one played the powerful “God So Loved the World” by John Stainer.

I’ve heard this piece before and marveled at it, but something about the animation of the dove — a pure white bird flying heavenward, spreading flowers in its wake — and the dynamics of this hymn, the great swells of its sound, the ache in its harmonies — spoke powerfully of the mystery and the promise of this day.

I write these words in the office, a room I don’t often sit in this time of day. I don’t know why not — because it sits in the front of the house, the one the light touches first.

It is not just Resurrection we celebrate on this day, but transcendence.

Foxy Morning

Foxy Morning

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As I begin this post, Copper is barking his head off. And for once, I don’t blame him. He did the same thing yesterday, also for good cause.

The culprit is a plump and prissy red fox, who trots through the neighborhood this time of day as if he owns the place. Today he entered the yard from the west and Copper spied him as he was about to slip through the back fence.

Yesterday was even worse. Before leaving our yard, the fox paused and looked back, as if he was taking the measure of the 30-pound hound yapping on the deck — and found him lacking. Copper may have sensed the scorn. I could swear there was some righteous indignation in his response.

For those who don’t parse his barks as I do, it was just that crazy Copper, waking them up again.  But I know the truth. It was really just … a foxy morning.

(Photo: Wikipedia)