Welcome Rain

Welcome Rain

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I had another post in mind for today but I’ll put it aside for this one. Because into this cauldron of heat and humidity has fallen what I thought I wouldn’t see again for weeks: a rainy day. 

It’s early yet, so it may not last. And a quick peek at the weather page tells me that we may not get as drenched as our neighbors to the east. But it’s a start. 

Waking up to wet pavement and gray skies is usually not a recipe for joy. But given our drought, it is today. 

(Rain falls in Manhattan, July 2021)

Tunnels of Reston

Tunnels of Reston

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It’s automatic: I always hold my breath when I walk through a tunnel. Too many years living in cities, where most subterranean sites reek of urine. 

But the tunnels of Reston smell only earthy or musty — and sometimes not even that, depending upon length and time of year. 

Which leaves me free to contemplate the road I’m scooting beneath, the traffic above and the crushed leaves below. The overpass and underpass. Two modes of travel, two ways of life. 

Reston believes in foot traffic, so it only makes sense that Reston believes in tunnels.

(One of Reston’s 25 underpasses.)

Running Water

Running Water

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It’s been a while since I’ve seen running water,  besides what I run through our taps. The streams in my neighborhood, the smallest tributaries of Little Difficult Run, have been dry for weeks. 

Yesterday I walked a section of the Cross County Trail that has a notoriously (to me!) difficult stone crossing. It should be dry enough to skip over, I thought, and decided to try it.

Turns out, that shady section of the trail is one of the few places where I’ve seen running water lately, where I’ve heard the music of liquid sluicing over stones.

I paused for a moment and took in the scene, the glare of sunlight on stream water, the tracery of shadows. I realized what I’ve been missing these last hot, dusty weeks. 

Considering Categories

Considering Categories

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I’ve been taking a look at the categories in my blog, trying to whittle down a list that’s 160 strong, which is about, oh, 150 categories too many. 

Doing this is an exercise not just in taxonomy but identity. That more posts are tagged “walking” than anything else is to be expected — but why so many posts tagged weather? 

When I first realized this, I took myself to task: “Weather, Anne? Really? Can’t you do better than that?” But then I thought about it some more. 

For a blog that’s about place, about noticing, what could be more elemental than the elements? 

Whether it’s the snow that made this blog possible or the heat that’s even now telling me to finish my post and start walking immediately, before the pavement is truly sizzling, weather is not a tepid topic. It’s a living, breathing force we reckon with daily.

Book Links

Book Links

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I think of them as book links, the way one book leads us to another. 

An author’s voice speaks to us and suddenly colors are brighter, the world makes sense again. We decide to pick up another novel she’s written, and we are even more enraptured this time.

Or maybe one book mentions another, a nonfiction happenstance. I just finished Hurry Down Sunshine by Michael Greenberg, which Oliver Sacks mentions in Everything in its Place. I was riveted by this memoir, a father’s story of his daughter’s mental illness. Here’s how he begins:

“On July 5, 1996, my daughter was struck mad. She was fifteen and her crack-up marked a turning point in both our lives.”

Now I’m on a mission to find another memoir by Greenberg. After a few minutes of googling, I locate a copy of his Beg, Borrow, Steal: A Writers Life. I hope to have it by week’s end.

The book links continue …

Sousa!

Sousa!

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There was a time when I played John Phillip Sousa music as we took down the Christmas tree. It was cheerful and made that seasonal task less melancholy than it would have been. 

But I hadn’t listened to Sousa marches in a while, winter or summer, until day before yesterday. Looking for suitable accompaniment to my Independence Day walk, I streamed a recording of Stars and Stripes Forever, the Washington Post March, Liberty Bell, Thunderer and many others. 

They certainly put a skip in my step, which would otherwise have been lagging due to heat and humidity.

It was a 45-minute trip to the turn of the century, not the last turn, the one before that. I imagined unicycles and bunting and girls with pigtails, all made possible by America’s March King. 

Today I repeated the experience. It felt just as fine. 

(Military observance at Sousa’s grave. Courtesy Wikipedia)

Giving Green a Chance

Giving Green a Chance

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Yesterday amidst the cooking and prepping for the evening’s festivities, the clouds were building, the air becoming even stickier, though that seemed impossible.

There have been so many times this summer when this had happened, but to no avail. Yesterday afternoon was different, though.

By evening an inch and a half of rain had fallen, soaking the ground, tamping down dust, freshening up the ferns, giving green a chance. 

It needs it. 

(A tracery of shadows on a past lawn.)

An Appetizer

An Appetizer

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You’d think I would know what it was, but when I heard the pop last night in the car, my first thought was that it was coming from the radio. 

Instead, it was coming from the fireworks that were exploding off to my left, filling the night sky with light as I drove north toward home. 

I could only catch glimpses of the display, but they were a perfect appetizer for tonight’s full-course meal.

Night Light

Night Light

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Watching the light fade last night, I see leaves grow indistinct, dark masses without color. 

Searching for bats, I see blurred forms cut through the darkness, visible only when they cross a patch of still-blue sky.

As sunlight vanishes, fireflies rouse themselves from the ground, blink and twinkle as they flutter their way to the treetops.

Closer to where I’m sitting, the deck lights snap to attention. They’ve been storing sunlight all day and now release it.

Two types of night light on an early July evening. 

A Facelift

A Facelift

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A library becomes a sanctuary, its shelves and kiosks like the rooms and closets of home, familiar and well-worn.

Sometimes, worn enough to need a facelift, which is what’s happening at my library now.

The Reston Regional branch of the Fairfax County Library system shut down on Saturday. But I couldn’t let it close without a final look. 

I was there on Friday, wandering through the stacks, checking out a book, glimpsing the old place one more time before it’s transformed.