Alexandersmap

    Author: nhcarmichael

    • A Walk to the Edge of Ambient Light

      Autumn, delightful as it is in so many ways, is the source of one bit of frustration: the quickly receding number of daylight hours. Traveling west, the morning becomes more and more difficult to work with if you’re trying to be active outdoors. Sure, you can strap on all manner of lighting to make you more visible and to offer a tunnel of light to walk through. But you lose something in all that battery-powered brightness–a feeling of connectedness with the land around you. And isn’t that the point of going outside to walk in the first place?

      Just yesterday I was walking on a warm and humid day on Cape Cod. This morning, I found myself next to an old favorite, the Erie Canal at Bushnell’s Basin. The canal trail here is mostly stone dust, with a few paved places along the way. Familiarity is helpful when you’re walking in the dark, and so is choosing to walk in the early morning. Morning offers hope for improving conditions, something an evening walk would be short of. In a safe area like Pittsford there aren’t a lot of concerns about getting mugged, but in a sketchier area most of the thugs eventually go to sleep, leaving the morning generally safer for wannabee fitness models.

      Still, there’s something about seeing that offers comfort. Even on a walk I’ve done a dozen times or so, when you run out of ambient light you’ve got to make choices in life. Press ahead into the dark or return to the ambient light? What are the risks? Walking into a branch? A skunk? The Erie Canal? Getting run over by a random cyclist not using a headlamp? None of those sound particularly appealing to start a work day. So I turned back to the light.

      Here’s the trick, you don’t walk all the way back to the brightest parts of your walk. You walk just far enough that your eyes can still see in the dim early morning light, then turn around and see how far you can go the next time. Does walking back and forth on a 1000 meter section of cinder path sound fun? You know what? It actually was. Just me and the ducks and some vehicle traffic on the other side of the canal. Back and forth, a bit further each time, until the scales tipped at 6 AM and suddenly you could see everything clear as… well, almost clear as day.

      It might seem ridiculous, this walking in the dark business, but I managed four miles before coffee, and sort of saw the Erie Canal from a different perspective than I’m used to. There’s a lot to be said for checking a few boxes before breakfast–exercise, reading, and writing this blog. The only thing that might have made it better would have been an epic sunrise. Perhaps tomorrow, when I plan to be out there again.

    • Riding the Shining Sea Bikeway

      Rail trails offer a great opportunity to walk, skate or ride without dealing with the resentful glare of automobile drivers who believe they own the road while controlling your life in their distracted hands. The Shining Sea Bikeway ups the ante with beautiful views and a diverse landscape. The trick on this trail is to avoid being too distracted yourself as the views stack up one upon the other.

      The trail lives up to its name, with views of Buzzard Bay across both of the Sippewissett Marshes (Little and Great—but aren’t they both great?) and of Vineyard Sound and Martha’s Vineyard as it hugs the beach. Shining Sea runs from North Falmouth to Woods Hole, offering plenty of options to linger for time on the beach, stroll through woodland trails, or a visit to the many shops and restaurants of Main Street in Falmouth and Woods Hole.

      As a sucker for salt water, it was easy to fall in love with the beachside section of the trail. Here you’re treated to those expansive views, the latest trends in beach fashion, and a monument to the trail’s namesake, Katharine Lee Bates, author of “America the Beautiful”, which ends with the famous line, “from sea to shining sea”. Very few Americans can recite every verse of America, the Beautiful, but everyone knows that last line.

      The magic on this trail is in riding through a tunnel of woodland canopy, salt march grass, past that beach sand and finally to the trail’s terminus at the Woods Hole Ferry. For a cyclist with dreams of never getting in a car for a vacation on the Cape and islands, the Shining Sea Rail Trail makes a strong statement of what’s possible. For this cyclist, it was an opportunity to give the feet a break while getting some exercise with a view.

      From the North Falmouth terminus, it’s a 21 mile (33 km) round trip. That’s very manageable on a good bicycle. The human body connects with a bicycle in five places, each essential to a great experience. Perhaps none more than the seat. My bicycle seat was apparently designed to maximize suffering, but no matter, a sore saddle wasn’t going to ruin one of the prettiest rail trails in the northeast United States. The seat is replaceable, the memories will last far longer.

      There may be no better time to experience the Shining Sea Bikeway than autumn. September is a great time to get the warmth with the crowds, and October should be spectacular for fall colors in that canopy. It’s a trail worth considering if you’re interested in experiencing Cape Cod without the hassle of driving in traffic.

    • Doing, With Purpose

      “There is nothing quite so useless, as doing with great efficiency, something that should not be done at all.” — Peter Drucker

      “You seem to spend a lot of time worrying if you will survive, and you will probably survive…. It’s the wrong question! The question is how to be useful.” — Peter Drucker to a young Jim Collins (via Nextbigideaclub.com)

      In September, Massachusetts’ Buzzards Bay is chock full of bait fish—millions of tiny fish trying to make a go of it in this world, as countless birds and bigger fish attempt to turn that bait fish’s purpose in life to be their breakfast. It’s a fish-eat-fish world on display, and offers lessons for those who witness it. Mostly, it’s a reminder to avoid being a bait fish. For us land-based creatures, the best way to avoid that is to live with purpose.

      We all dabble in those questions of purpose, the “Why are we here? questions. But isn’t that too big a place to start? Purpose is an impossibly big scope to answer with such a broad question. We ought to break it down into bite-sized questions that determine our unique value: “What do I do well? “How can I translate that into serving those who need this value the most?” and “What do I need to learn to become even more valuable for those I wish to serve?” are good starting places for building purpose into our lives.

      It’s fair to ask ourselves why we’re doing something. It’s appropriate to wonder where our work is leading us. And we ought to do something with the answers when we arrive at them, for our opportunity to do useful things resides in a very brief window of time. Feeling the urgency of the moment and doing something with it begins with knowing what both that something and that it really are for us.

      When we leave our lives to chance, we sometimes stumble upon a meaningful life. But more often than not, we end up getting chewed up in the feeding frenzy of life. Purpose brings us higher up the food chain, where we might rise above mere existence to a more valuable destination.

      Which leads back to that question of questions, posed so well by Mary Oliver in her poem The Summer Day:

      Tell me, what is it you plan to do
      with your one wild and precious life?
      —Mary Oliver

    • Ours Alone

      “You are everything that the rest of the universe is not.” — Ogawa (via @bashosociety)

      Is it the ego speaking when you reflect on Ogawa’s words? The universe can feel overwhelmingly vast, and we are but bit players in the big scheme of things. Who are we to brashly believe we have a significant stake in the game?

      Yet, small as we may be measured against infinity, we’re still…. here. Sure, it’s a bit part, but still we get to play. As Walt Whitman famously answered when pondering this very question, “That you are here—that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”

      In a life that may seem a bit overwhelming at times, we each have our verse. We might sprinkle magic. We might add reason in unreasonable times. We might play the game with audacity and hope. And we might concede that our part, however small, is ours alone.

      Orange stillness

    • Early Morning Walk on the Cape Cod Canal

      Quietly walking downstairs in the dark, water bottle filled, I opened the front door and slipped outside, hoping the dogs wouldn’t bark. They bark all the time… but thankfully not this time. I get in the truck and begin the drive to the Railroad Bridge (capitalized, thank you). 5:30 AM, it ought to be super quiet there, I think, just me and a couple of fishermen.

      Pulling into the parking lot, I see just how wrong I was. The entire parking lot is completely filled with pickup trucks and cars. Every contractor in Eastern Massachusetts must be along the canal, rods protruding from shore in hopes of that big catch. I felt like a single woman walking alone into a bar full of dudes, and like her, promptly turned around and got the hell out of there.

      Driving to the Bourne Bridge parking lot, I’m relieved to find it relatively empty, as if the fish don’t like the canal water a mile further. No matter, I’m not here to fish, but to walk. The aim was a bridge-to-bridge walk, but instead of the Railroad Bridge it’s the Bourne to Sagamore Bridge out and back. That net’s me roughly 6.8 miles, and that’s enough for this workout.

      Early mornings are a lovely time to walk the canal, and the best time to do it without earbuds in. It’s best to hear what’s happening around you when it’s dark out. Situational awareness is important, no matter who you are. Random cyclists and salty fishermen on old bicycles ride past at various speeds. All I can do is hold my line and keep the pace.

      Canal fishermen, and they all seem to be men at 5:30 AM, tend to fall into two categories: those who stay near the parking lots, and those who ride bicycles to their own private fishing spot. The bicycles are an odd mix of cheap mountain bikes and yard sale bikes of all shapes and sizes. Each has a basket for fishing gear and two or three PVC rod holders bolted on. I wondered quietly at the aftermarket potential for a bicycle rod holder business and decided it just wasn’t for me. These aren’t the kinds of customers who are going to go with premium pricing, and I don’t have the heart to sell commodity fishing bicycle accessories.

      Mind back to the walk, the bladder begins to call. I promise myself I’m not going to stop until I get to the port-o-potty under the Sagamore Bridge, and, feeling the urgency, push my pace a bit to get there sooner. Just as I arrive another character walking from the other direction sees me and makes a beeline for the plastic throne. I silently grumble, walk beyond the bridge to 3.4 and turn around. On the return the facilities are blessedly empty and soon my bladder is too. Relieved, the walk began again in earnest.

      Out and back walks always feel shorter on the return trip, and this walk was no exception. I was a known commodity for the fishermen on my return trip, and ambivalent good morning nods became indifferent been there, done that focus on the task at hand. The fish seemed to win the day, as I only saw two catches on the entire walk, and one of those was a heron catching its breakfast. The only winner, besides the fish, seemed to be Dunkin Donuts, judging from the endless parade of Dunks iced cups passed on the walk. Good coffee stock investment tip for those paying attention.

      Finishing a long walk brings with it the satisfaction of clicking that key word “end” on the Apple Watch. Lately I’ve been competing against a couple of women who suffer from the delusion that I’m going to let up and allow them to beat me in a seven day competition. Ha! Competitive banter aside, it’s funny how adding some people to the daily fitness routine can really enhance motivation to do the work. This one in the books, I quietly drove back to the house, waiting for the heckling to begin. And knowing I’m one step ahead, at least for this day.

      Not all fishing is done with poles
      Bourne Bridge
      Fisherman’s Bike
      Canal traffic
      Turning around to return under the Sagamore Bridge

    • Torn Between Two Places

      God it’s so painful when something that’s so close
      Is still so far out of reach
      — Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, American Girl

      September conjures up images of red and gold leaves in crisp air. I thought of their possibility while sneaking another swim in water that believes it’s still summer. But what we linger on isn’t always where we are, is it? I reminded myself to savor the water while I was still in it.

      We’re often torn between where we are and where we want to be. Between things we’re comfortable doing and things we’d like to try. It’s a fiendish place; nurtured dissatisfaction with one, with a lingering frustration that the other is just out of reach. We reason with the mind to accept one place, while the other place sings its siren song. No matter, were we to reverse our position, we’d likely yearn for the place we just came from. Such is human nature.

      The space between seems to be the real issue. We can’t have it all, but we dwell on images of places we’d love to be, or parts of our lives we’d love to return to, or maybe run away from. Surely, it’s there in that between where the devil resides. It’s our no man’s land where dreams go to die if we dare wander into it. And don’t we all stumble into discontent at times in our lives?

      All season I’ve been dealing with a garden neglected at the start of the growing season while I bounced around in Europe in June. It never really established itself, then came the drought, and here we are at the end of the season with a sad little garden that’s a shadow of its former self. The garden and I gave it a go, despite it all, and now it will go dormant for the winter before we try again next year. But I wonder, will I be inclined to try again, or leave it for the beauty of another place once again?

      Such are the considerations of an itinerate wanderer with a strong sense of place. Making a go of it here, while thinking about there. With American Girl playing in my head as a soundtrack of this life between two places.

    • Go Be It

      “The most difficult thing is the decision to act. The rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process, is its own reward.” — Amelia Earhart

      I woke up sore all over, with muscles tight and grumpy, protesting the last week of doing what they’re supposed to do but somehow forgot about in lazy compliance with the mind. The soreness is a lag measure of work applied, simply that, and eventually the lag will be replaced by acceptance of the new reality. It was certainly far easier to get out of shape than to climb back to shape. Such is the way.

      Decide what to be and go be it… simple on the face of it because it is in fact that simple. The hard part is hidden under the surface of those words: Go be it. Talk is cheap, and decisions without action are nothing but talk until we drag ourselves along for the transformation.

      It’s far easier to have a bit of wine and cheese after a long day than it is to change into workout clothes and earn the right to wear them. It’s far easier to start our work a bit later, and end it a bit earlier. And it’s far easier to doom scroll on our phones than to turn off all distraction and dance with the important but not urgent tasks that move the chains in our lives. But there’s a reason easy has a negative connotation. Deep down, we know it in the moment.

      So sure, I’m sore today, just as I’ve been sore for well over a week. It’s just the gap between where I am and where I want to be expressing itself. And what is expression but the manifestation of a feeling? Whatever discomfort we feel in the moment is part of the process of becoming, a manifestation of what we want to be. It’s that voice in our head reminding us that this time, if we stay with it, we might actually be it.

    • Days to Come

      “Days to come stand in front of us
      like a row of lighted candles—
      golden, warm, and vivid candles.
      Days gone by fall behind us,
      a gloomy line of snuffed-out candles;
      the nearest are smoking still,
      cold, melted, and bent.”
      — C. P. Cavafy

      When you think about it, our days gone by are a stack of previous lives, somewhat resembling us today. Yet we must seek the vivid and alive, embrace our days to come, especially this one, at the expense of what we once were. For there’s no growth in dwelling on the past—we must stand ourselves on top of who we once were, we aren’t built to linger there.

      What’s done is done, what lies ahead is all that matters now. Past accomplishments and failures, all the good and bad, are like books we once read that form us in sometimes notable, and often insignificant ways. There’s no telling in the moment you pick it up for the first time what it will mean to you until you give it your attention in the moment. Such are our days—notable and insignificant, but all adding up to this.

      Days to come offer hope for a better future. It’s our time together, formed today, and nurtured in however many more we might have. Like the past, we’ll face new highs and lows, savor wins and absorb losses. Each are inevitable. All we can do is give each our singular attention and an honest attempt to make the most of the line, however long it might be.

    • Irreplaceable Instants

      “Every instant of our lives is essentially irreplaceable: you must know this in order to concentrate on life.” — André Gide

      Here we go again: another week beginning. Much like last week and the week before, yet we’ve changed. We’ve layered on our moments of insight and irreplaceable instants that root us in identity and purpose, or perhaps left us anchor-less and drifting. Let’s hope for the former.

      The thing is, this week is different from those weeks gone by. It’s surely more tangible and immediate, but more, this one is in our hands. We can’t get too caught up in our previous successes and failures, we can only double down on what works for us. And maybe, try something bold and new.

      I like the idea of micro-bursts: sprints of intensity where you focus on key activities that move you towards your goals. In rowing it was a Power 10, where everyone put aside personal discomfort and focused on making the next ten strokes their very best. It started with a call from the coxswain when they felt the boat needed a boost in momentum. And it nearly always worked.

      Focus on living a bold, meaningful life can start in an instant. Often it begins with a feeling that you need a bit of a boost in productivity or purpose. With the right concentration and effort, like a boat gaining a burst of speed and swing, it nearly always works to reset rhythm and concentration.

      Now seems as good a time as any.

    • Creating, Out of Yourself

      “Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else. And, out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently, the most irreplaceable of beings.” — André Gide

      The writing comes slowly. The writing comes effortlessly. The work has bursts of creativity mixed with repetition and familiarity. The things I’m most proud of often fall flat, the hits keep getting views and likes. So it shall be.

      We must do the work, and see where it takes us. The work took me to André Gide recently, and I’m delighted with the discovery. Another stepping-stone on the journey across the mad stream of noise and nonsense that wants to sweep us all away before we’ve done the work. When you find such solid ground in the midst of chaos you celebrate the landing. Gide reminds us not to settle, but to make something of ourselves in our time.

      The work deserves our best, because it represents our best in our moment. Should it fall flat in its time or become a surprise hit matters little, save a bit of ego stroke. Work that matters doesn’t fly on the wings of a clever hashtag or marketing campaign. That may matter to a publisher or salesperson or PR firm. What matters in the creative process is how it resonates within us. And where it takes us.

      If we’re lucky, maybe it carries us to places we haven’t been before. To something unexpected and delightful in ourselves. Should be keep at it just a little bit longer.