A Window Opened

A Window Opened

Comments 0 Comment

Last October, Hurricane Milton made landfall on Siesta Key, Florida, where I’ve vacationed for more than a dozen years. It sent storm water surging into bars and bungalows. Its 120-mile-an-hour winds downed trees, caused power outages and opened a pass that had been closed for 40 years.

It also reconfigured the beach, which is why visitors flock to this barrier island. Although accounts I’ve read say the damage was not as horrific as originally feared, I notice the difference as I walk the strand. There are channels where none existed before and rivulets to jump. My beach ambles require detours.

On the other hand, there’s a lagoon that’s made the place more fun. Now instead of swimming only in pool water, I can paddle around in a saltwater pond.

A door closed, a window opened? Something like that.

(Visitors enjoy Siesta Key’s most beloved attraction: the sunset.)

Fleeting Colors

Fleeting Colors

Comments 0 Comment

I spotted the rainbow from the beach, as I was walking down the hard-packed sand. I had no phone or camera, just my tiny iPod, so I took a “mind picture” of the fleeting colors.

I tried to memorize the shimmering sight, how it punctuated the beachfront sky with a wan, waning moon above it. The rainbow bathed the morning in vivid light. How surprised I was to see it as I headed south along the shore. How long had it been there?

When I turned around and walked north, I had an even better view, but I knew the colors wouldn’t last. I watched as the rainbow disappeared, thinking about the evanescence of beauty, how it’s our job as humans to enjoy nature’s wonders when we can.

Twenty minutes later, almost home, another rainbow appeared. It rose above the palm trees, scrawled its signature across the sky. And it lasted long enough for me to grab my phone and capture it.

Beach Day

Beach Day

Comments 0 Comment

On Monday I woke before 6. It was still dark but promised light soon. I slathered myself with sunscreen and left for an early amble. My calculations were a little off — it doesn’t get light here as early as it does back home. I stayed on the road until the sky brightened enough to hit the beach.

Then I heard the thunder, low rumbles at first but ever more insistent. Lightning, too. Not a good time to stroll the beach. I hurried back to my room, reaching it just before the first drops fell. It was the beginning of a mostly rainy day, a rarity here but not unwelcome. Time to stay inside, to read and write and savor the quiet.

On Tuesday the air was washed clean, and a breeze blew in from the bay. Blue sky, puffy white clouds. Volleyball games and gull cries and little kids digging in the sand. The rainy day was over. A beach day had begun.

Endless Summer

Endless Summer

Comments 1 comment

It’s mid-July, midsummer. It’s easy now to believe that summer will always be with us, that the long days and sultry nights will remain. What is it about this season that makes me not just forget about the others but cease to believe in them. Is it just wishful thinking or is there some scientific explanation for this blissful (but oh-so-wrong) perception of endless summer?

Maybe the long twilights that occur around the summer solstice? With that much light in the sky it’s easy to believe it will never end. The gray days of January seem preposterous, a bad dream.

Or maybe proximity to the perihelion, the day the earth is closest to the sun? But no. Because in the northern hemisphere the perihelion typically occurs in January.

Maybe summer seems endless because it seemed that way when I was young, and old habits (and dreams) die hard. Not exactly scientific, but true in that bone deep way of myth and time.

Breathing Deeply

Breathing Deeply

Comments 0 Comment

I do it at yoga, at bedtime, or whenever a fragrant flower is under my nose. But I breathe most deeply when I’m near the ocean, which I am now.

“Florida in July?” some people say. “Really?” But the heat seldom bothers me. And since our weather has been devilishly hot and humid for weeks, it’s even more of a moot point than usual.

At home, there’s no ocean air to breathe, no palm trees to ogle, no big sky to contemplate. Here there are all of these. Here it’s easy to breathe deeply. I’ve been doing it a lot since I arrived.

Get Packing

Get Packing

Comments 0 Comment

As I pack for my annual Florida excursion, I think about another kind of packing — and a set of moving boxes that have been in the attic since the dawn of time.

Some people love the lonesome sound of a train whistle at night. Others thrill to the revving of a jet engine. Perhaps we are overlooking one of the most ordinary yet evocative of mobility symbols: the moving box.

A suitcase holds only so much, but a fine set of high-quality moving boxes considerably broadens the field. Not that you would drag them along on a vacation. But if your idea of travel is getting out of Dodge for good, moving boxes are your friend.

This doesn’t explain why we’ve kept them around for decades, because we have most definitely remained in Dodge (also known as Northern Virginia). But the boxes have stored blankets, books, toys and many other items we probably don’t need. They’ve helped others move. And they’ve been at the ready for decades in case a quick getaway is required.

Have any been recycled? Absolutely not! These are high-quality moving boxes. Sturdy and solid. Meant to be reused. The ones you see here were on their way up to the attic … where I’m sure they will remain.

Six Miles an Hour

Six Miles an Hour

Comments 0 Comment

There’s a new speedometer in town, or at least in my neighborhood, one of those portable gizmos that’s set up to remind motorists to slow down. This one has colored lights that blink when you go more than 10 miles over the 25 miles-per-hour limit.

I walk past this speedometer every day. At first, I thought my eyes were deceiving me. Was that a number up there as I approached? A single-digit number, true, but still, a number — 6!

I wasn’t speeding, not by a long shot, but my puny pedestrian footfall was being picked up and measured. Yes, officer, I’ll slow down. I could have sworn I was only doing 5.

Truth be told, I probably did clock six miles an hour when I ran the occasional 10K road race, covering the 6.2 miles in 54 or 55 minutes. But that was long ago. Now I’m lucky to make 3.5 miles an hour. The machine seems to round up. It’s bad news for motorists, but good news for walkers in the suburbs.

Praying for Texas

Praying for Texas

Comments 0 Comment

They sought shade and the soothing sound of moving water. It was barely raining when they fell asleep, lulled by the gurgle of the Guadalupe River. But hours later, the river would swell with torrential rainfall. It would spill its banks and claim the lowlands. It would take the lives of more than 100 campers and Hill Country residents. Days later 161 people are still missing. We are all praying for Texas.

Who hasn’t been riveted by the images coming out of Texas these last few days? The sodden t-shirts and stuffed animals that mark these historic floods as especially deadly to children. The walls of water. Cars and trucks floating in the flood.

We’ve entered a new era, a harsher and more deadly one. It’s not just Texans who need our prayers. It’s everyone threatened by floods and fires and dangerous heat — in other words, an awful lot of us.

(Placid water in Houston’s Hermann Park)

An Antidote

An Antidote

Comments 0 Comment

A humid morning on the deck, fan whirring, heat still tempered by some faint remnant of nighttime cool. I watch the birds, the tiny wrens whose songs took me so long to identify because their sound was so much larger than them. The hummingbirds who have returned after an early summer hiatus. A male cardinal, his plumage bright red against the green.

How soothing it is to sit here as the birds flit and flutter in front of me. They’re an antidote to the hard times and the bad news. A way to be present in the moment.

In The Backyard Bird Chronicles, Amy Tan writes that the birds she watches heighten her “awareness that life contains ephemeral moments, which can be saved in words and images, there for pondering…”

For me, today, they do that … and more.

Every Last Sparkle

Every Last Sparkle

Comments 0 Comment

There were sizzles and crackles and booms. There were shrieks and giggles and applause. It was a simpler Fourth than usual, closer to home. Not crowding on a ridge in Arlington, angling for a glimpse of the big downtown fireworks, but standing at the end of a driveway in the outer ‘burbs, as neighbors shared their Roman candles and sparklers.

But to the children in our midst it could have been the fanciest fireworks in town. They oohed and ahed, they laughed and clapped. They enjoyed every last sparkle to the fullest. They were completely in the moment, captivated by the bright lights in the darkening sky.

They’d seen the big fireworks last year, but from such a distance that it had no meaning to them. Theirs is a more immediate existence — and a more joy-filled one because of it.