Plant a Billion

Plant a Billion

Comments 0 Comment

Every year the yard becomes a bit brighter, the sun more inescapable. Every year the pools of light go up against the patches of shade. And the light is winning.

While this is comforting in a metaphorical, good-versus-evil way, it does not bode well for the tall oaks. There’s another one dead this summer, and another that is ailing. Is it drought or cold? Improper care? Lack of mulching?

None of the above, I imagine. It’s probably old age, the natural life span of this venerable fellow. Eight decades are enough; he’s had it.

But a report yesterday in Nature puts my yard in perspective. A team of scientists aided by satellite measurements and computer models found that there are a little over 3 trillion trees on Earth, 422 per person, a lot more than previously thought. But apparently not nearly enough, because we are losing 10 billion trees annually. Trees counteract global warming by capturing and storing carbon dioxide. We need trees now more than ever.

The Plant a Billion Trees Campaign aims to plant a billion trees by 2025. It has ten years and hundreds of millions of trees to go. Makes my tired oaks seem pretty insignificant. 

Bonus Week

Bonus Week

Comments 0 Comment

Labor Day is as late as it can ever be. School buses stand at the ready. Pools are getting that tired, slimy feel they have late in the season. The mint and basil plants have bolted. The woods are strung with spider webs.

In other words, summer is winding down. But we have a gift this year, a string of hot, high-humidity days; an extra shot of summer — a bonus week.

I try to save the weather, store it in some psychic, seasonal account so that when the frigid wind blows in my face as I walk north on Second Street I will be ready for it. I will be filled with summer, wearing an armor of remembered warmth.

Surely the only way to enter the next season is to be completely through with the one that went before. This week we have seven extra days to accomplish this feat.

Remembering the Beach

Remembering the Beach

Comments 1 comment

Thinking back to my beach walks, to the surf booming and lapping — to my right on the way out and to my left on the way back. The brightness of those mornings, the people I would see, some ambling along sipping coffee, others pounding the hard sand all decked out with pace-measuring equipment.

There was everywhere to look and everything to see. There was the sparkling gulf, the waves leaving foam on the shore. And then there were the shorebirds, the best show in town — gulls, terns, sanderlings, piping plovers, wheeling and swooping in tandem with an occasional loner breaking out of the crowd, soaring into a blue vastness.

I like to imagine the seaside now that I’ve been back three weeks, now that my nerves jingle-jangle as I walk and my head is full of commas, dashes and semi-colons. I like to remember the different life I had there, and the slow, steady purr of a great ocean.

Dog Days Walk

Dog Days Walk

Comments 0 Comment

Walking in the dog days is not unlike taking a bath. The air is full of moisture and weight.

I run down West Ox Road, past houses that have privacy now that trees have leafed out, filled in. As usual I strolled around the containment pond, hoping to see some red-winged blackbirds. But there were none. I realized how much I’d come to count on seeing them there. How each stage of my walk is populated with images and expectations.

Instead, I saw crowded cattails and reeds that might have been elegant had there been some wind blowing through them. We are at the tail end of a season. The scenery is looking tired. Or maybe it’s just the walker who is tired. That’s more like it!

Second Bloom

Second Bloom

Comments 0 Comment

All through this crazy week, as I read page proofs, wrote proposals, attended meetings and planned a panel, the rose bud was swelling, opening, preparing to bloom.

I came out on the deck this morning, still exhausted from a string of challenging days, and almost gasped when I saw the flower.

What I was doing suddenly seemed so unimportant. This is what really matters. That soil, water and light can come together to send forth this one perfect flower.

Secret Weapon

Secret Weapon

Comments 0 Comment

When there’s no time to stretch my legs for real I take a mental stroll. A trail that vanishes through a stand of  oak, passage to another world of fern and creek. I imagine an opening at the end of a field, slip through a curtain of branches. Sometimes the trail curves back upon itself, leads nowhere.  That’s when I’m feeling especially stressed.

Other times it opens onto a placid woodland, and my heart beats more slowly even though I’m standing in a crowded Metro car or about to lead a panel (which I will this afternoon). I conjure up favorite trails,  follow their sections from beginning to end: the entry, broad and leafy; the fair-weather crossing over Difficult Run; the confusing stretch where I sometimes get lost; the final burst of boardwalk put there by another devoted woods walker.

Then I realize that the calmness of the woods walk can be called back to mind any time, can be imbibed like a last-minute hit of caffeine or cup of chamomile. It’s my secret weapon. I’ll be using it today.

Person of the Book

Person of the Book

Comments 0 Comment

When the going gets tough, the tough get a day planner. An old-fashioned model, ink on paper, 5×8. Each week gets a complete spread, so there are 10 lines for each day’s appointments rather than just a tiny square.

I used to swear by these books but over time had stopped using them. I made do with the tiny, purse-sized calendars and scribbled notes to myself each day of what I needed to accomplish. I liked being less scheduled, time a vast river rather than a tightly parceled stream.

But my new duties require lots of meetings, and meetings must be jotted down lest they be forgotten. So once again I am a person of the book. The appointment book, that is. 

Digging Ditches

Digging Ditches

Comments 0 Comment

It was after 4 p.m. yesterday when I finally walked out into what some were saying was the most spectacular weather of the summer. It’s interesting how easily we accommodate ourselves to inside air, inside thoughts. Here we are, creatures of vastness, accepting so much less of ourselves.

We do it for all the right reasons, of course. To earn a living, to pursue a craft, to tend to the ones we love.

“You’ll never get rich by digging a ditch” goes a line from an old song, “You’re in the Army Now” (or some such title). Around the office I have a saying, “Well, at least we’re not digging ditches for a living.” And some in the office have argued that digging ditches doesn’t sound all that bad. Maybe not for those with strong shoulders and biceps like cannon balls. But for a puny pencil pusher like myself, having an indoor job is definitely a plus.

Still, there are days — days like these lovely, limpid, last days of summer — when indoor work seems a shadowy stand-in for the real thing.

Earlier Darkness

Earlier Darkness

Comments 0 Comment

It’s still dark when I wake now, and it remains that way almost until I leave the house about 6. Early darkness can be such a comfort — a cover, a foil, a way to keep the eyes half closed until the destination is reached. Pools of light like mirrors but tree shadows barely emerging.

On the other hand, I know what this early darkness bodes. Fall and then winter. Cold winds, snow and ice. Crunching down the driveway at 6 a.m.

So let’s just linger here a while. It’s still summer, though heat and humidity are abating. A few tomatoes linger on the vines and the cicadas are singing their songs.

Walking and Talking

Walking and Talking

Comments 0 Comment

Yesterday my sister and I walked on the Capital Crescent Trail in Bethesda, Maryland — and I realized this morning that I have no pictures to show for it. No shots of the tree tunnels, of the bikers and skaters and Sunday-afternoon amblers. This is because we were talking as fast as we were walking.

I am for the most part a solitary stroller, walking alone by choice. It’s when I sift through the day’s events, when I jostle myself free of the routine and to-do list long enough for thoughts to surface. Walking has become an essential writing tool. It’s the great “un-sticker.”

But when presented with a willing companion — someone who will walk and talk with me — ah, there’s almost no better way to make the words fly than moving forward together in space.