Bridge at Sunset

The Port of Savannah is the third largest in the U.S., plied day and night by colossal container ships. But when I snapped this shot it seemed to be holding its breath, and the Talmadge Bridge seemed delicate as lace.

Today we leave this city for its cousin across the river — Charleston, South Carolina, with its French Quarter, waterfront and Rainbow Row.

We may take another span to get there, but a bridge will be involved, just the same. 

(As it turns out, we took this one.)

Rosy Glow

There are stands of ancient hemlocks in New Germany State Park, an oasis of green trails and lofty heights. A cathedral of a forest.

And then... there are the streams, and the late day sunlight slanting on them.

In some spots the light struck the creek at such an angle that it gave the water a strange, rosy glow, as if it were blushing or bleeding. As if it were lit from within.

Charting Time

It's only a baby habit, just getting started, but I've decided to keep a time chart, noting on my (paper) calendar what I'm doing and when. 

Time flows differently these days, it eddies and it stalls and sometimes it swirls by so quickly that I barely see the ripples it leaves behind. 

So rather than wondering each day, where does the time go, I will try to chart it as it flies. 

A noble experiment, yes? 

We'll see. 

Mirror of the Moment

So many walks to choose from these days, paths around ponds and through forests. Trails in the morning, chaste of footfall. Paths in the afternoon, littered with leaf bits from all the walking.

On Tuesday I passed two ponds, a bright one with cattails and a shady one rippled as if a fan were blowing on it. 

The water was meditative, brisk, a mirror of the moment. 

A Walker on the River

After days pounding asphalt and concrete, we had the luxury of a few hours on the water, where legs are for the most part irrelevant. We left the floating home mid-afternoon for a slow cruise on the Multnomah Channel, a tributary of the Willamette.  

How calm it all was, how evenly the ripples flowed from our wake. 

We cruised under the Sauvie Island Bridge, passed sailboats and motorboats and a contraption that looked like an elliptical on water. There was an osprey nest off our starboard side and an abandoned restaurant farther down. Mostly there was sun and stillness and companionship. When we landed, the light was golden.

End of the Road

It happened often while traveling in the Northern Neck. We'd follow the road to a cove or point only to find that the pavement literally dead-ended into the water. No parking lot. No gracious circle in which to turn around.  Just land ... then water.  Sometimes there would be a sign. The one above for the Sunnybank Ferry was a bit misleading. It wasn't closed for lunch but closed for the weekend. Still, what can you expect? It's free!

Other roads were more like this one at Windmill Point: a clear signal (as if you needed one) that if you want to go further, you'll be needing fins or flotation devices.

The road to the village of Weems ended at this overlook — well, not exactly an overlook, more like a backyard with a world-class view. You can see the big bridge to the Middle Peninsula from here.

When land meets water, roads and cars take a back seat to boats and bridges.

Blue Sky Day

It was a blue sky day at the bay, a day spent with my brother and sister. This meant we could talk about Dad, and his habit of standing at the threshold of a doorway, stretching out his arms and saying, "Look at that, not a cloud in the sky."

We joked that had Dad turned around, he might have noticed looming thunderheads. But he didn't turn around; he ignored the clouds. He kept his gaze resolutely blue-skyward. An excellent trait — until you're caught unprepared in a sudden downpour.

No matter, we loved him — and we carried umbrellas, learned to look for and deal with the rain and clouds and gloom.

Still, that doesn't mean we can't enjoy a blue-sky day when one is given to us.  And one was, yesterday — a glorious day.

Making Waves

These are crazy days. Buying cases of wine at 9 p.m. Forgetting my lunch.  Making lists of lists.

Still, the mind observes. Even when in crazy mode, the mind is active, laughing at its own craziness and finding the world an interesting place to be.

This morning on the radio, I heard a segment on artificial waves, how a company has been perfecting them, will sell its technology to indoor wave pools, the estates of sheikhs. Few details of this report have remained in my brain, but one phrase did. "We're carving water," said the wave creator.

The poetry of that sets the mind to spinning.  An ultimately futile task, one would think. And yet someone makes a living from it.

What do you do? I make waves.

Water, Water Everywhere

A rainy Monday, so maybe not the best day for a post about thirst and the lack of public water fountains. But an article in yesterday's Washington Post made me think about this endangered feature of communal life.

According to the International Plumbing Code, the number of public drinking fountains required in new buildings is down by half, the article says. There are a few causes. One is the consumption of bottled water, which has quadrupled in recent years. Another is fear of contamination, which ironically has grown since the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974 began requiring municipalities to notify their residents immediately of any problems with their water.

But the lack of clean, safe public drinking water has actually hurt American's health by driving young people to consume more sugary drinks, the article argues. And a preponderance of plastic water bottles is hurting the environment.

This article explains why I have to hunt longer to find a public water fountain. And it also makes me remember the water fountains of my youth. The one at Idle Hour Park, which made a deep whirring sound and produced a trickle of water that seemed to have been drawn up from the depths of a nearby swamp. And the one in the hall of my grammar school, which we would be allowed to stand in line and use on warm spring afternoons. Imagine 400 to 500 kids drinking out of the same fountain! Still, nothing has never tasted as good as the water that flowed from that cool — and I'm sure unsanitary — tap.

That May Morning

When the weather is exquisite, most any walking path will do. I put this philosophy to the test a few days ago and did not find it wanting.

I started from a Target parking lot, a paved path around a containment pond where there was immediate gratification in the form of a trilling mockingbird. The bird perched on the lower limb of a small, low tree, which gave me a chance to stand and watch (as well as listen to) his performance. I almost clapped when he was done.

The path led to a new concrete sidewalk along a two-lane road. It was the kind of area we have many of in the suburbs, the kind you drive past on your way to somewhere else, the kind filled with self-storage units and auto body shops.

A sad little road if you were traversing it on a gloomy March afternoon. But on a sparkling May morning, the water spurting up in the sterile office park pond could have been the Trevi Fountain. That's how intoxicating it was to be alive and walking on this late spring day.

(Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Time for Sun

What a difference the sun makes. It's cold, slightly above freezing, a steady breeze blowing off the lake. But the day is friendly, not the alien weather of yesterday, which was inhospitable to humans.

I say this from experience, after first rambling along the shore and then trudging up to the ridge, where the combination of exertion and distance from the lake made the temperature almost bearable.

Today there are sounds of life, some hammering next door, an occasional car engine. It's time for me to go outside — if for no other reason than to know how good it feels to come back in! 

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.

Hidden Pond

Today I walked down an old section of Hunter's Valley Road to twin stone pillars flanking a trail. A few hundred feet down a muddy path I came to a grove of bamboo so thick that light barely penetrated the thicket. It rained hard last night and everything was drenched. Moisture beaded up at the ends of the bamboo fronds and dripped on me as I shoved my way through the foliage.

Once into the enclosure I marveled at the space. A pond, completely hidden from view, surrounded on three sides by bamboo and on the other by banked rows of rhododendrons and azaleas. Fallen leaves and lily pads dotted the surface, and the great shaggy bamboo, weighted by water, hung its head in the pool.

What is it about a hidden garden we find so appealing? Is it the incongruity of something outside and in the open but still out of sight? Or is it the feeling that it gives us, one of enclosure and safety. Whatever the explanation, the place had a magical effect on me; it calmed me, slowed me, made me want to stay.