From the Top

It's been two weeks since we returned from our Northwest jaunt, and I often catch myself looking through photographs when I have a spare minute. Which means that I've noticed trends.

For instance, I was often pointing my phone camera at flowers: roses, rhododendrons, formal gardens, cottage gardens. You would think I have no blossoms whatsoever at home, which is not the case. 

But also, whenever possible, I snapped photos from ridges and hilltops. Luckily, both Portland and Seattle cooperated, providing expansive views where I least expected them, like the one above — which appeared out of nowhere on a walk — and others (like the one below) where I huffed and puffed to reach it.

Reliving these vistas now, I feel like chucking it all and buying a piece of land in the Shenandoah. It can be small, it can be humble — all it needs is a view. 

Miles and Miles and Miles ...

On the second day of my getaway I wrote in the morning and explored in the afternoon. About 20 minutes from where I was bunking, there was an entrance to Shenandoah National Park's Skyline Drive. I'd been there before — it's less than 90 minutes from my house — but I hadn't been there in years, so I was looking with fresh eyes ... with, dare I say it, eyes of love?

Virginia is for lovers, you know, though it's taken some of us a while to love the state in which we live. But this reluctant Virginian was swept off her feet yesterday. First of all, the weather was perfect. It was almost 60 degrees, clear and bright. There weren't many people around, and those who were there drove slowly, seemingly as much in awe as I was.

I did a couple of quick hikes, but what grabbed me most were the views. Skyline Drive runs along the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains, so you don't just have one vista, you have dozens. At some point I realized that if I didn't stop pulling over at every overlook I would never get home.

I looked at the ridges, one behind another, as close to infinity as we are likely to have this side of heaven. In my head was that song from The Who: "I can see for miles and miles. I can see for miles and miles. I can see for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles."

It reminded me of flying; there was the same above-it-all-ness, the sense of seeing more clearly because we can see farther. Real world problems didn't go away, but for a few hours they seemed smaller and more manageable. They seemed miles away too.

View from the Spot

Today was my parent's wedding anniversary, so I'm thinking about them and about my visit to the cemetery last weekend when I was in Lexington.

I'm lucky that it's only been recently that I factor in a trip to the cemetery when I visit home. But factor it in I do. On the last trip I thought about what a lovely view is available from their final resting place. It's an open sunny expanse, with cows grazing in a grassy field a stone's throw away.  One could argue that the view from a plot doesn't matter to those who inhabit it, but it does to those who visit.

Because it's a military cemetery, there are strict restrictions on what kinds of flowers and ornaments you can lay on the graves. I settled for a small American flag, in honor of Dad's service and the upcoming Memorial Day. Next time, I'll bring flowers for Mom.

Aerie

I work on the fifth floor of a large building that overlooks a train track, a highway, a street and National Airport. Windows on the other side of the building have a perfect view of the control tower and take-off and landing. Given that I used to work on the ground floor, this is a welcome change.

There is a light, airy and aerie-like feel to being up this high, a sense of being the first to spot the weather when it changes. And...  about an hour ago I saw a bit of sun peak through the clouds.

I was intending to report this news immediately, of course, but work intervened. And now, alas, the sun has gone away. But it was there, I'm sure of it. And the weather forecasters assure us that that sun returns in earnest in a couple of days.

Meanwhile, I'm glancing out the window whenever I have a second. Right now the only light is see is what's reflected back at me. But I'm hanging on and hoping for more!

(OK, not up quite this high — and with a decidedly less pastoral view ...) 

Grand Landscapes

The drive home was through sun and shadow. The snow that was falling on Friday had stuck in the higher elevations and was still there on Sunday. It was a spring day with a feel of winter, a day to process what has happened and what lies ahead.

In this I was aided by landscape. What is it about a glimpse of long distances that airs out the brain?

There is one spot on the road we took yesterday, one that approaches the area from Maryland rather than Virginia, where the view must be 50 miles or more in either direction. From that vantage point, it's easy to see how small we are, how busily self-important.

Spend enough time in the company of grand landscapes, and the trivial falls away.

Lake Monroe

I'm writing from a cottage in Indiana as the wind whips whitecaps in the lake and sends the wind chimes into overdrive.

I've come here for years but never in the winter, never when the water opened up before me on three sides, never with a sky so leaden and gray. 

It's a cozy place to hang out for a couple of days. And I've figured out how to create a "personal hotspot" to post these words.

Here, in a "frame," is Lake Monroe, snapped from inside, the only place to be today.

Walking to the Potomac

Yesterday a hike from Colvin's Run Mill to the Potomac River, eight miles round trip on the Cross-County Trail. The river is the trail's northern terminus and you have to work a little to get there. Floods have taken out part of the gravel walk along the stream and there's a stretch where you must clamber over rocks or turn back. Combine that with two fair-weather creek crossings and I used up my courage quotient for the day.

The destination was worth it, though, walking along the roiling waters of Difficult Run as it makes its way to the river, plunging and skipping over rocks, through channels narrow and deep. (Hard to believe it's related to the rivulet that meanders through my neighborhood.)

And then coming finally to the Potomac, the orange and yellow kayaks glimpsed through the trees, Maryland on the other side. The stateliness and otherness of a river. And a walk that made the destination matter.

A View in Mind

Cold and snow have hemmed in my walks and runs, have kept me close to home. But yesterday I broke free. Not that it was much warmer than it has been, but it wasn't snowing or sleeting (yet) so I left the neighborhood for a familiar route.

I darted across the busy street to the trail on the other side, the one with cut-out hedges, the one that always makes me feel like I'm in a maze or a tunnel of English hedgerows. When that trail ended I was at the crest of a rise, where I can see for miles on a clear day.

It wasn't clear yesterday, but no matter. I have that view in my head. I could see the Dulles control tower, the blue hills beyond it. I could escape the immediate and enter the faraway.

Sunrise over Metro

The built world intrudes but can't diminish. Sometimes, in fact, it frames and beautifies.

A sunrise ringed by palm fronds would be postcard pretty, but this one is lovely, too.

An ordinary morning, walking through the Metro parking garage, and this is what I see.

 

Perspective

A view from on high. It's what we get from airplanes, towers, mountaintops, rooftops and other lofty places. It's perspective. Our world grows smaller when measured against the immensity.

It's a necessary corrective, an antidote to most craziness. It can also be lots of fun.

Today the indoor parakeets are spending some time outside with me as I work. To say they are excited is putting it mildly. They haven't shut up since I brought them out here. A moment ago a baby bird landed on the table beside me, attracted by the exotic chirps of these unfamiliar creatures.  A change of scenery for them, too, that of the wild beside the tame.

What has the birds so excited? The same thing I've been treasuring recently — perspective.

State House Dome

On Monday, a rainy afternoon gave way to a clear evening, and a walk along Annapolis's main street after dark gave us this view.

It's the Maryland State House dome. Completed in 1794, it's "the oldest and largest wooden dome of its kind in the United States," a fact sheet tells me.

But on that early summer night, as it shone between the other, darkened buildings, it was a thing of beauty most of all.

Escape Route

A few days of blissful low-humidity weather mean that at the highest point of my favorite walking route the foothills of the Blue Ridge swing cleanly, clearly, briskly into focus. I like to think of this as my "escape route," the one that gives me, better than any other, a glimpse of a world that lies beyond.

For the longest time the route — and for all practical purposes the view — didn't exist. The road was curvy, two-lane and treacherous. You walked it at your peril. And even if you did, you wouldn't have seen the mountains. They would only have been visible from the ridge above — and probably not even there, since the trees that grew along the brow obscured the horizon, too.

But when a new housing development shoved out the few remaining homes and a preschool, the view emerged. And the sidewalk supplied by the property developers opened it up to all.

I had to stop griping about progress then. For once it was on our side, the side of the walkers, the side of those who like to be reminded where they are in the world. The side of those who like their escape routes.


(This is not exactly what I see. My view is of the same mountain range, just farther east.)

Room with a View

When I was a kid, I liked to climb trees. Not as a daredevil would, not to the highest branches, but high enough that I could see our house and yard from a new angle. It was like standing on my head, something else I liked to do back then.

Now I dream of a cabin on a ridge. Mountains will rise in the distance, a ribbon of river binding them to earth. And beyond them, clouds will pile plump as pillows. It will be hard at times to tell the mountains from the clouds, the soil from the sky. But I will know the horizon and my place in the world.

Is this the allure of views, then, that they help us belong? Or is it the opposite: that they teach us to escape?