Late-Day Hike

It was late enough in the day that dinner was no longer a vague thought. There wasn't time for a long hike. Luckily, it's a five-minute drive to half a dozen paths.

Yesterday it was Beckman's Trail, an easy two-mile loop that wound up and around itself. There were boulders and grass and a strange yellow fungus foaming around the base of a tree. 

The climb was mellow and the air was bracing. It was over far too quickly. 

Writing Quickly

I woke this morning, as I did yesterday, to the scamper of little feet and the noise of life being lived, hard, above me. It's the configuration of this shambling old cabin by the lake that the deck that runs the length of the main floor also runs above where I sleep. 

It's not until the respectable hour of 8 a.m. that the little ones are let loose, but once they are, further winks are impossible. 

They scamper, they giggle, they push plastic kiddie chairs across the floor. If there is a quiet moment, it's when bowls of cereal are being offered, fuel for further activity. 

I'm writing quickly because I don't want to miss a minute of it. 

Highly Walkable

I imagine the walk when I'm falling asleep. It's not just the lake that makes this place so magical. It's the landscape around it. And I plunged into it this morning.

Down the lane, across a field still wet from dew, right at the road and up to the intersection, then back onto the peninsula. There are dips and curves, green fields, and glimpses of lake water through trees.

It's highly walkable, this spit of land where the family has gathered, and I'll be walking as much of it as I can.

The Paper Towel School

I'm of the paper-towel school of house cleaning. Though I also employ a vacuum, dust cloth and broom, the humble paper towel is one of my chief weapons against dirt and grime.

Is it the most sanitary? Absolutely, you just throw it away when you're done.

Is it the most environmentally sound? I'll plead the Fifth on that.

But when you need a smudge remover, counter cleaner, or spill picker-upper, it can't be beat. I'll be taking six rolls to the cabin tomorrow, and I'm not sure it's enough. 

(Beatrix Potter's Mrs. Tittlemouse, who would never use paper towels.)

Bouncing Along

Music matters. I believe this always, but especially when choosing the soundtrack for a walk. Today's choice was Bach's Brandenburg Concertos. 

I started with Number Two, remembering the story my long-ago piano teacher told me about the physical rigors of playing the trumpet solos of that piece. Her husband played the trumpet, she said, and the second Brandenburg was so difficult, even when played on the smaller piccolo trumpet, that one could pop a blood vessel with the effort.

Apparently, she did not make this up. A quick bit of research today tells me that the second Bach Brandenburg Concerto is "a trumpet player's Everest."

For a walker, though, it's an energetic beauty of a piece. It revs one up and keeps one going. And this morning, it kept me bouncing along. 

(One of my favorite music-themed photos, shot May 2010 in Vienna's Musikverein.)

Passing on Genesis

I've been waiting months to nab a library copy of Marilynne Robinson's Reading Genesis. I've read most of Robinson's fiction (incandescent!) and some of her nonfiction (always erudite and thought-provoking). In fact, she's one of my favorite authors.

When I cracked open her latest, though, I wasn't sure I was up to the challenge. Nothing against Robinson, but Reading Genesis deserves a more clear-eyed reading than I can give it now. This is a book for cuddling with on a cold winter's evening. It's about concentrated mental effort, the kind I don't have much of when days are long and nights are short and the mercury is topping 90 every day.

Feeling this way about the book makes me wonder about the seasonality of our reading choices. Might I have finished Ulysses if I'd attempted it in September, with the crisp attentiveness of a new academic year? After all, that's when I finally completed The Power Broker. 

On the other hand, it's good to take the measure of a book before you start reading it, to save its revelations for another day. I'm sorry to pass on Genesis. But — at least for now — I will. 

(Photo: Detail of Sistine Chapel ceiling, courtesy Wikipedia)

Reaching Maturity

Summer has hit its pinnacle. We have almost as much ahead of us as we've left behind. If we fudge it a little we can still call this mid-July. 

Which is all to say that the season has reached maturity. Greens couldn't be greener.  Fledgling cardinals are coming into their own, flitting around with resolve, no longer with the wobbly flight of juveniles. 

And the cicadas! Their calls are the soundtrack of the season, wafting over me in waves. I omit earphones on my morning walks, the better to hear the summer bugs. 

Always I think: Let this last. 

Sand: An Appreciation

A return yesterday to the coolest weather I've experienced in weeks. No heat wave, no subtropical humidity. Instead, a pleasant warmth and weight to the air. I can't say I miss the heat, but I do miss the beach, the breeze, even the sand. 

Yes, it sticks to the back of the legs and collects in the shower drain despite best attempts to wipe it off at the door. But sand is a most amazing element. 

I think of my beach walks, striding across the fluffy stuff to find the hard-packed sand at water's edge, constantly adjusting my route based on wave reach and tide. 

I think of the bounce in my step sand provides: what a wonderful striding surface it is. 

My beach trip may be over, but the memories remain. And a little of the sand does, too. 

Rekindling the Rhapsody

I had just walked into the house when I heard a familiar piece on the radio. It harkened back, far back, into memory. It was a Brahms Rhapsody, a piece I never learned completely but mastered the first few pages well enough to play — effusively but ineptly — long ago. 

I'm in a funny place with what I still think of as my new piano. I love playing, but I don't like practicing anymore than I did in fifth grade. 

What's an adult musician to do? Playing a la fakando — the faux musical term my stand partner Greg and I penciled in above impossible runs when I played string bass in high school — is hard to pull off on a solo instrument. 

When I heard the Brahms, though, I remembered. It's the music itself that makes me practice. Give me a piece I'm itching to master and I'll put in some time. So I'm rekindling the rhapsody. 

Tiny Lizards

Every year when I'm in Florida I see the tiny lizards known as anoles. They're cute little critters with big eyes, holes for ears and long tails that detach if you pull too hard on them.

These small reptiles scamper and dart. They puff up and slim down. When frightened, they freeze and hide themselves among the scrub. 

I've had time on this trip to observe anoles up close, to watch them do what appears to be pushups but I'm sure is not, to wonder what they eat. (The answer: crickets, flies, mealworms and ants.)

Today I spotted an anole camouflaged on the bark of a palmetto plant. He was missing the fingers of his right hand. It wasn't slowing him down, though. He was clinging tightly with his remaining digits, and taking life as it comes.

Shades of Green

How many shades of green do I see in a day at the beach. There is the dark forest of the mangrove, its roots in water, clustered in wet spots along the road. 

There is the purplish-green of the sea grape, its leaves catching light, making tunnels of shade as I exit the strand.

There is the striated green of the palmetto, wagging in the wind. 

And sometimes, in the morning, there is the green of the sea.

Time and Tides

The walks come when they will, when I wake up and make my way to the beach. The tides have their own rhythms, drawn from moon and sun and gravity. 

When I stroll the beach, I'm part of the elements, pulled into their orbit, at one with sand and sea.

Time passes slowly. Eternal time, at least for an hour or two. 

Name That Bird

It tweets, whistles, sings and trills. I'm listening to it right now, though on my computer rather than in the field. In my wanderings on and near the beach these last few days, I've been spotting a gray bird with white markings. It's the state bird of Florida, the mockingbird.

There are some who want to replace it with the flamingo, a bird more associated with the Sunshine State, though flamingos have been absent from the state until just recently. 

Without wading too far into this controversy, let me say that the mockingbird is a splendid creature with an array of sounds that amaze and baffle. It finds a high branch on which to perch and sing its heart out. It has my vote, in case anyone asks for it. 

(Northern mockingbird, credit Bob Baker via Cornell Bird Lab)

Thriller, Filler, Spiller

I'm not much of a gardener, but I do love the look of a cottage garden — or a flower pot that replicates it.

To fill a bare space where the tall oak used to be, I wanted to create a container garden that sets the right tone, with a colorful abundance. I do what I always do when confronted with a task I know little about: I researched it. 

Container gardens should combine a thriller, a filler and a spiller, said one reputable source, Better Homes and Gardens. So I went to the nursery, bought begonias and heliotrope for the filler, caladium for the thriller and sweet potato vine for the spiller. 

Midway through a warm, dry summer, I'm thankful that these plants are all still alive. But half of the fillers are fading away and the spiller has become the thriller. Isn't that just the way it goes?

The Sky Rules

It's what I notice first every year, even before the foamy breakers, the spun-sugar sand. It's the sky: vast and blue and dotted with clouds.

Here at the beach the sky stretches out boldly to the horizon, no curtain of green to obscure it. 

Were I to live always beneath such a sky, I'd feel bare and exposed. But when I'm here, for this precious week, it opens me up, enlarges my vision. 

Here at the beach, the sky rules. 

Hyperlocal

Eating local conjures up images of farmers' markets and $12 quarts of strawberries. But for the last week or two, we've been eating hyperlocal. 

Our chief suppliers are the basil growing in a pot on the deck, which just yielded enough leaves for a delicious pesto sauce — and mostly the next-door neighbors, with their well-tended garden of beans, squash, cucumbers and tomatoes. 

The beans have been lightly boiled, salted and buttered. (I usually steam vegetables, but these thrive with a more old-school treatment.) 

The cucumbers have been sliced thin and served in a peppercorn ranch marinade (this dish courtesy of yet another neighbor) or simmered in broth then whipped with yogurt and dill into a cold soup.

The squash have been mixed with onions and breadcrumbs and turned into a casserole. And the tomatoes ... well, they're yet to come. 

Welcome Rain

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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 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. 

Alive on the Page

I've been reading Oliver Sacks' Everything in its Place: First Loves and Last Tales, a posthumous collection of essays by a master of that form. That he was a master of so much else — neurology, weightlifting, chemistry — ripples out from every page.

Sacks loved to swim, to walk in botanical gardens, to study ferns in Central Park, and the book contains short chapters on these topics and many more, easy explorations in the personal essay form. They move from the particular to the general, are informal and discursive. 

Sacks is most well-known for his book Awakenings, which chronicles his treatment of patients with a rare sleeping sickness, people who had missed whole decades of life then woke up and found themselves once again in the land of the living. 

Awake is how I feel after reading the work of this scientist and writer, gone almost 10 years but alive to me now thanks to this final, exhilarating collection. 

(Sacks' signature courtesy Wikipedia)