Packing Light

Packing Light

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I’m better on some trips than others. Ironically, the longer excursions require more discipline, more ruthlessness. Packing light is not for the faint of heart.

But after lugging large suitcases up and down the stairs of broken escalators, after being unable to hoist my bag into the overhead storage unit, I’m determined that the next trip, which begins today, be a leaner, lighter one.

And so the winnowing has begun, began days ago, to be honest. I started out with a universe far larger than the final subset, made some calculations (no hiking boots, fewer shirts) and jettisoned. When I reached what I thought was a suitable compromise, I threw everything in my bag and picked it up. Not bad, so I pulled everything out to pack it properly.

I have time for one more round of belt-tightening, though. I’m hoping the bag I take to the airport in a few hours is lighter still.

(My old, much-battered, too-large suitcase — may it rest in peace.)

Walker’s Corner

Walker’s Corner

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It may not look like much, but it’s an improvement, two crosswalks instead of one, new crossing lights, and paved walkways on the corners (notable since my neighborhood has no sidewalks). The intersection is finally becoming a walker’s corner.

For weeks this summer workers busied themselves erecting poles, stringing wires, pouring concrete. I couldn’t figure it out at first. All I knew was that traffic funneled into one lane and it took longer to get through the light.

But then they finished up and the mess made sense, though it seems an empty gesture in some ways. My area is more walkable than it used to be, but it’s no walker’s paradise. I routinely drive to walk because it’s more pleasant to stroll when you aren’t fanned by 60-mile-an-hour tailwinds.

But every effort helps, and this corner has long needed some love. If pedestrianism is part of the picture, so much the better.

Nightcap

Nightcap

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I used to take these walks often. Nightcaps, I’d call them. Not the brisk, efficient stroll of early mornings but a saunter, an exhale. I took another last night, pulled outside by the dying light.

I strolled through pockets of warmth and coolness, bent down with outstretched palm to feel the heat still radiating from the pavement. Traces of the day as it fled.

Bats have been in short supply this summer but I saw two darting across patches of open sky. Trees seemed larger, hulking, like fairy tale specimens. Nature reasserting itself, nighttime claiming its own. I ambled through it, was filled by it.

Birthright

Birthright

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I woke up the other day to a deer grazing in the yard. She was munching on what passes for grass, a mixture of weeds but pleasing to her, it seemed. At first, I only saw the doe. Then a small shape moved close to her, a still-spotted fawn. It must be the baby born here in June.

We’ve tried sprays and powders, gates and fencing. Neighbors have set up a sonic system to deter them. But the deer are hungry; they eat whenever and wherever they can. And there are many of them.

Used to be I’d run out in the yard and wave my arms when I saw deer, anything to banish them. But it was early; I was half-asleep. Resigned, I watched the pair as the doe stared straight at me. My child was born here, she seemed to say with that plaintive look. Doesn’t she have as much claim to this place as you do?

Cool Air

Cool Air

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Last night I threw open the windows to let the cool air in. No fans required.

I love the whir of a fan on a hot summer night, but without the fan I could hear the insect noise, the crescendoing song of katydids, crickets and other creatures of the night.

The room cooled naturally, a simple transference, cool air instead of warm, night air instead of day.

Was that why I slept so well? Probably not. But it must have helped.

“The Last Voyage”

“The Last Voyage”

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Yesterday I watched an old movie that’s haunted me since I was a child. “The Final Voyage” chronicles the last days of an aging ocean liner. When the boiler explodes it traps a woman (played by actress Dorothy Malone) under tons of steel and maroons her child in the corner of a room that no longer has a floor.

The little girl’s father (Robert Stack) must rescue her. He tries several methods before hitting on the only one that he thinks will work. The young girl must crawl across a flimsy board with a makeshift harness around her chest. If she falls it means certain death. The minute I saw this scene I knew it was the one I’d remembered. Apparently, a real ship was sunk to make the movie, which accounts for the immediacy of the drama.

I’m not sure how I ended up watching this film, nightmare material for sure. But viewing it again as an adult — the search for an acetylene torch to free Malone, the bravery exhibited by some of the characters, the cowardice of others — well, it wasn’t “Titanic” but it held my interest.

(Photo courtesy IMBd)

Wayfinding

Wayfinding

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I first read Lynn Darling’s Out of the Woods: A Memoir of Wayfinding shortly after it was published in 2014, and I wrote about it here. It was a Kindle book, one I can no longer access easily, so I put it on my birthday wish list, and just finished reading it again, this time in hard copy.

Re-reading a book that struck a chord is always risky. Will it still put the world to rights? Will it still make my heart sing?

I’m happy to say that this book did. Whether it means I’m still finding my own way (I am) or that the writing holds up (it does), I can’t say exactly. Probably a little of both.

I pulled out my pen often to scrawl notes on an index card. “So much of direction, of having a sense of direction, is bound up in a sense of place, of knowing where home lies even when you don’t know exactly where you are,” Darling writes.

She makes an argument here for long acquaintance with a locale, for knowing it so well that you’ve named the trees. But at the end of her memoir she leaves her home in the Vermont woods and moves back to Manhattan, a place that was “both present and past.”

What I took from this book upon second reading is the importance of remaining flexible as we age. Yes, we might move to the Vermont woods in search of solitude. But what’s to stop us from moving back to a bustling city four years later, if we can afford it and that’s what we want? Finding our way means staying open to all the possibilities of life, to changing our minds and accepting the detours, no matter when or how often they come.

Bamboo View

Bamboo View

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The bamboo that hugs the house has grown like gangbusters this summer. It has thrived in the semi-tropical conditions. It has grown so much that it obscures my view, bending over as if to shake its head.

This morning I think it’s saying, what’s happened to the summer? Already two-thirds gone. Didn’t it just begin yesterday? Has it vanished in the glare of 90-plus-degree days, of heat warnings and thunderstorms? Or has it just skedaddled out of here with the increasing velocity of all my days?

No way to know.

What is certain, though, is that it’s blocking my light. So down to the deck I will go to shake the plant out of its lethargy, to bend it enough that it springs out from under the eaves, to put it in its place again. It won’t behave for long — bamboo never does — but at least for a few minutes I’ll have my view again.

Exitalgia

Exitalgia

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There should be a word to describe the emotion one feels leaving a place when the most beautiful day of your stay is the day of your departure. Exitalgia, perhaps?

Exitalgic was the way I felt yesterday leaving the house we rented. I stayed a few minutes after the others to make sure the place was ship-shape and found a small green beach rake toy in the gravel driveway. It looked so forlorn sitting there. I was already missing the chubby little hands that held it.

But soon there was nothing to do but leave, so I drove past the red barn, skirted the bright lake and took a left on Sand Flat Road, its new-mown fields rolling up to forested hills. I thought again about my affinity for this part of the world, largely unexplored on this kid-oriented visit, but still present, there to enjoy in the future, I hope.

An hour or so later, I was traversing a more dramatic landscape: Route 48 through the West Virginia highlands. My phone location service tells me that I snapped the top photo near Keyser. When I turned the other way I had a closer look at the behemoths you see below. Hilltop wind turbines have become a beacon on the drive to Garrett County. When I see them, I know I’m almost there.

Fallingwater

Fallingwater

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It’s one of the most famous houses in the country, and I saw it yesterday, visiting on a day befitting a home perched on top of a waterfall. It poured as we drove to the house, sprinkled while we were inside, and rained again on the way back.

Apparently, Fallingwater has also been called Leakingwater, so often does the bedrock sweat and the moisture pool. Frank Lloyd Wright, who designed Fallingwater, told its owners that drips and drops are what you get with organic architecture. “Use buckets,” he told the Kaufmann family.

I suppose when you consort with a genius, you learn to be tolerant. The Kaufmann family donated the house to a conservancy in 1963, making it possible for millions of people to experience this national treasure.

What I noticed most was the sound of the place, the peaceful patter of water slipping over stone. Or maybe it was just the rain.