Hold Onto Your Hood

Hold Onto Your Hood

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The wind that made beach combing and cycling harder than they needed to be last week in Chincoteague seems to have followed us home. For the last couple of days there have been gusts up to 40 or 45 miles per hour. 

I decided to take a walk anyway, because I was driving past the W&OD and thought I’d give it a whirl. A whirlwind was more like it. 

The breeze blustered, it careened, it nearly knocked me off my feet. And while my hat was fairly secure, my hood was anything but, especially when I was walking into the wind. It blew it right off my head. At times it took both hands on the hood to keep it from flying back.

Luckily, a hood is usually attached to a coat whereas a hat is not. Which makes the phrase “hold onto your hood” … somewhat nonsensical. 

(“Who has seen the wind?” The ripples in this sand dune prove it was there.)

Guest Post

Guest Post

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Careful readers of this blog will know that with one exception I write every post every weekday of every year. This has nothing to do with my willingness to welcome new voices and everything to do with why I started A Walker in the Suburbs: to limber up my own voice, cramped as it’s been by years of scribing for hire. 

Luckily, not everyone has this proclivity. Many sane bloggers do seek guests posts, and I’m shamelessly plugging one of them here. 

Reflecting the Sacred was started by a longtime friend, avid reader and deep thinker, Gwen Zanin. I’m honored that she asked me to contribute a guest post to her blog. Wishing this new blog many years of posts and pleasures. 

For Ratsy

For Ratsy

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Her name was Janice but we knew her as Ratsy, a childhood nickname that stuck. The childhood is not mine but Mom’s. She and Ratsy met as little girls at a convent boarding school in Kentucky and had the sort of adventures you read about in books. They made up games, imagined ghost nuns in the hallway, and almost hopped a freight to California until a law-abiding friend learned of the plot and tattled on them. 

It wasn’t all fun and games, though. Mom and Ratsy missed their parents and homes. But they found much comfort in each other, and they remained close friends — more like sisters, really — to the end of their lives. The end came only two weeks ago for Ratsy, just a month shy of age 96. 

How to describe Ratsy? Pure elegance, sophistication and cool. She and her husband, Monty, worked in Hollywood and knew movie stars like Bing Crosby. Ratsy sent us lovely gifts, a dress and pinafore set I still remember. She made Mom laugh. And she hosted seven of us (four kids, two parents and an aunt) when we drove across the country to California in an old “woodie” station wagon. 

The Ratsy I came to know as an adult was even more impressive. I realized then what she had overcome, living most of her life with the use of only one arm. It was a disability you never noticed — until she was driving you down an LA freeway, with a cigarette in one hand (a habit she later kicked) and wait, how was she steering? Never mind, we survived. 

Ratsy outlived her husband, sister, nephews and many others, but she leaves behind dear friends and family who grieve her passing. With her death, the world lost a true original … and my family lost a little more of the world that Mom knew and loved.

Quiet Victory

Quiet Victory

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I had a couple other potential posts lined up for today, but I will interrupt my “regularly scheduled” (as if there’s anything scheduled about this blog!) programming for just the tiniest of rants about the Oscars. 

As usual, I stayed up till the end, enjoying what I thought was an unusually touching crop of acceptance speeches. As expected, “Everything, Everywhere, All at Once” swept the awards.  

This is where the rant comes in. I actually watched this film, wanting to see what all the fuss was about, and I can appreciate its manic energy and the sweetness of its message. But this multiverse martial arts film left me completely cold — and bored. I figure it’s generational — my film-loving millennial enjoyed it very much — but I hope it’s not indicative of a new trend in film, ones that I can barely stand to watch.

Luckily, I had slipped off to an actual theater yesterday to see “The Quiet Girl,” an Irish movie up for Best Foreign film. It didn’t win — the magisterial German remake of “All Quiet on the Western Front” deservedly nabbed that one — but I walked out of the theater with my heart stirred and my soul enlarged. As long as a few movies still do what movies used to do, I’ll be content. 

(Above: the empty — I mean completely empty throughout the entire film — theater where I watched the old-school movie “The Fabelmans.”)

 

Beach Bling

Beach Bling

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Water, wind, sand and sky.  From these basic elements flow the beauty of a beach. It doesn’t need anything else. But like a little black dress set off to perfection with a single strand of pearls, even simplicity can be enhanced with a little bling.

I’ve seen beach art before, but never so much of it. On a hike this week we came across scores of tree trunks decorated with whelks, conches, cockle shells — and a few feathers for good measure.

The shell trees made us smile. They invited us to contribute, which we did. They sum up the beach attitude: relax, create, enjoy. 

One Beach, Indivisible

One Beach, Indivisible

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A hike yesterday through the refuge backcountry, so far in fact, that the Maryland state line was less than five miles away. 

I’ve always thought it would be fun to trek from one state to another, a feat fairly easily accomplished here, since the Assateague National Seashore includes parts of Virginia and Maryland. 

But yesterday’s walk stopped short of that, circled around and back to what I love most — the beach. 

For the Birds

For the Birds

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There are more birds than people on Assateague Island. Maybe always but especially on a blustery March afternoon. There were snowy egrets in the shallows and a great blue heron that flew up and away as I tried to snap a photo. Piping plovers ran in and out of the waves, in that adorable way they do. Beside them were scores of sanderlings, many hopping on one leg, and gulls, of course, which are always with us.

Most dramatic was the flock of snow geese that spiraled down from the heavens, a murmuration of waterfowl that landed on the spit of sand between Tom’s Cove and the Atlantic Ocean. A gift of bird life all the way from Arctic lands. 

Prescribed Burn

Prescribed Burn

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Like everywhere else these days, the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge has its share of invasive species. To manage unwanted plants, the refuge plans a series of prescribed burns. One of them was happening yesterday.

Smoke wafted over the estuary and closed the wildlife loop. It hovered above previously singed areas. In other words, it did its thing.

But it didn’t interfere with the wildlife. Ponies grazed, squirrels scampered and something large and quick plopped into the water as we passed.

By early evening, the western sky had cleared, making way …. for this.

Back to Virginia

Back to Virginia

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The commonwealth of Virginia stretches from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean. Today, we drive toward the latter. But to reach coastal Virginia we’ll drive through much of coastal Maryland. 

Chincoteague perches at the top of Virginia’s outer banks. We’ll spend most of the almost-four-hour drive in the Free State, won’t reenter the commonwealth until we’re almost there. 

In that sense, we’ll have done on the first day of this short getaway what all travels hope to do, which is to bring the traveler home again. 

An Endorsement

An Endorsement

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A few weeks ago, in a rush of gratitude, I emailed a stranger whose maps I had recently accessed online. It’s thanks to his map that I’ve been exploring the paths in a woods not far from here, the one where I finally found the Northwest Passage. 

I wasn’t expecting to hear anything back from the man, but I did want him to know how much I’ve been appreciating his maps and commentary, what a difference they’ve made for me.

Late yesterday, I heard from him. He’s 88 years old and doesn’t check his email as often as he used to, he said. But he credits all the walking he’s done with being alive now.

Quite an endorsement for walking in the suburbs. Or for walking anywhere.