Alexandersmap

    Category: seasons

    • On the Tail End

      I was thinking about my adult children through the lens of Tim Urban’s famous blog post, The Tail End. It reminded me that I’m on the flip side of his statement about his parents. Now I’m the parent with kids that live away from home. In many ways I’m on the tail end of my relationship with them (having already spent 90% of the time I’ll have with them in our lifetimes together). Nothing focuses the mind on the most important things in life than realizing you’re in the waning moments of any one of those important things. Sure, we may have another 40 years or more together, or we may have run our course already, we’re never really sure are we? So embrace it, and them, when you’re together.

      That got me thinking about some close friends. A couple of them will be sailing away again later this year for an extended adventure to faraway places. Sure, we’ll visit them in a few of those places, but it’s not like we’ll be seeing them every weekend then. Another couple of friends hike every weekend and invite me to tag along, which I rarely do nowadays. This has led to an absence similar to if they’d sailed away like those other friends. Life calls us where it will and perhaps we’ll see them again one day, but that tail end seems apparent.

      When you build a career in one industry, you build a network of people whom you come to rely on to always have your back, to always be present. Change industries and see how quickly those relationships disappear. It’s a lot like college or growing up in a certain neighborhood. Most relationships are built on convenience. Few survive the removal of that convenience of proximity when it’s gone. Sure, there may be a Christmas card every year, or a social media “like” as we keep track each other, but are these the same?

      The point of all this, as Urban himself suggested, is to be fully present in those moments together, for we never really know how many we’ll have. To be aware is the greatest gift we can give to those we care about, whether we’re at the start of something beautiful or in the waning moments of our time together. Put the phone down. Listen and speak with the perspective of having heard. Be here, now. For it’s all we really have together.

    • A Walk on Plum Island Beach

      There are different ways to walk a beach. Some walks are meditative, some are merely workouts, and some are clearly meant for people-watching. The reasons why we walk lead us eventually to where and when. Each beach offers a new lens through which we may see the world and ourselves.

      My bride is a beach bunny at heart, and it turns out our pup is too. We’ve been taking her to a local New Hampshire beach for long walks and she’s grown more courageous with each bold step. She’s no water dog and won’t plunge in like our Labrador retriever would, but she’ll delightfully chase waves and bite at the sea foam. Her joy is ours, and walks on the beach have become a more frequent way of getting her away from the permanent mud season of never-winter-as-it-once-was that is our new reality.

      If Hampton Beach is a long, flat walk on firm sand, Plum Island Beach offers an experience more like Cape Cod National Seashore: soft dune sand plunging steeply in places to the ocean breakers. The dunes aren’t nearly as tall as Cape Cod, but the walk can be just as wonderful. On one end is the turbulent mouth of the Merrimack River, on the other are the dunes and swirling sandbars of Plum Island State Park reaching out into Ipswich Bay. In between are rows of homes ranging from beach shacks to McMansion: beach edition luxury homes. As with everywhere exclusive, money determines the future state of the real estate here. But Mother Nature has a say too.

      Plum Island is not an easy place to walk nor an easy place to live compared to other beaches in the area. Just as wealthy homeowners in the Hamptons on Long Island struggle with beach erosion and the fickle protectiveness of sand dunes, the people who dare to build homes on Plum Island face the same challenges. One day you’re living in paradise, the next you’re living through a nightmare of storm surge and wave action. It’s an audacious act to live in such places, emphasized with insurance rates that discourage the casual investor. It takes disposable income to have such homes in such places as this.

      Plum Island State Park prohibits dogs, so a walk to the end with the pup was out of the question, but there was plenty of beach available for our power trio. Walking towards the Merrimack River, we met a couple walking three dogs of their own. As soon as they said their dog’s name I knew it was a locally-famous author but kept it to myself. We all seek out the beach for our own reasons, and often it’s to get away from who we are further inland. We had a small reunion on the return and went our separate ways.

      Every beach has its own story to tell, just as each beach walker does. I wonder sometimes why we aren’t walking more beaches, and promised myself to add beaches to the collection of mountain summits, waterfalls and historic sites I’m collecting on my life experience list. The time bucket for such activity is now, isn’t it? We must venture out while we’re blessed with good health and a desire to do something with it. Perhaps we’ll see you out there too?

    • Keeping the Old at Bay

      And I knew all of my life
      That someday it would end
      Get up and go outside
      Don’t let the old man in
      Many moons I have lived
      My body’s weathered and worn
      Ask yourself how would you be
      If you didn’t know the day you were born
      Try to love on your wife
      And stay close to your friends
      Toast each sundown with wine
      Don’t let the old man in
      — Toby Keith, Don’t Let the Old Man In

      I haven’t been a skating exhibition in years. Why would I? I didn’t know any active figure skaters, or at least I didn’t know I knew any active figure skaters. It turns out I did know one, and so we went to watch her skate last night. What I saw was women and men of all ages skating in synchronized acts of skill and grace. No Olympic-style jumps at this event, just large groups of people gliding across the ice not hitting each other. I was likely the person in the arena with the least knowledge of the sport and found it enjoyably unique. It turns out you don’t have to travel to faraway places to place yourself in an environment foreign to you—just step into someone else’s world for a few hours.

      We’re all getting older, friend. Given that reality, we must keep the old at bay. Do things that challenge the mind and body and spirit. Stretch in new directions while we’re limber enough to reach without injuring ourselves. Take Thoreau’s advice and rise free from care before the dawn and seek adventure. We aren’t getting any younger than this. Toby Keith, whispers his lyrics from the grave: Someday it will end. Memento mori. So don’t let the old man in.

      You can laugh when your dreams
      Fall apart at the seams
      And life gets more exciting
      With each passing day
      And love is either in your heart
      Or on it’s way
      — Frank Sinatra (Carolyn Leigh/Johnny Richards), Young at Heart

      They say that people who retire early age quicker than those who work well into their senior years. I say it’s not about the work, it’s about having a reason to get out of bed in the morning. What stirs the imagination? We ought to be leaping out of bed to go do that. Stack new experiences one atop the other and see where it takes us. Get off the phone, step away from the computer screen and dance with the world.

      Sure, we all have obligations and responsibilities. We have deadlines and commitments. Just now I got a notification to check in for a business flight. The work seemingly never stops, but if we aren’t careful we won’t notice our best years have slipped away without doing those things we most want to do. Watching those people skate around on the ice, some of them old enough to be the grandparents of some skaters who preceded them, was a great reminder to get up and get out there. Carpe diem.

    • Processing Time

      “Wash the dishes relaxingly, as though each bowl is an object of contemplation. Consider each bowl as sacred. Follow your breath to prevent your mind from straying. Do not try to hurry to get the job over with. Consider washing the dishes the most important thing in life. Washing the dishes is meditation. If you cannot wash the dishes in mindfulness, neither can you meditate while sitting in silence.” — Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: A Manual on Meditation

      The writing of the blog post started late this morning, with fresh snow to clear from the driveway a priority, and a relatively subdued morning to follow. The words will come, as they always do, and they’re often better for having changed up the routine. I know I was the better for having done a small bit of exercise in the cold air with a pink and orange kaleidoscope of dancing clouds greeting me through the bare trees.

      The driveway and I have an understanding. If the snow is heavy and wet and more than two inches, I use the snowblower. If light and fluffy and less than four inches, I alway shovel. All other conditions fall somewhere in between, but I default to the shovel when it’s a reasonable ask of myself. I do this because so little in our lives is analog or manual anymore. We’ve got engines and batteries and computers for everything nowadays. These things do the work for us, but rob us of time to process anything in our minds. How many drive to the gym to walk on a treadmill, watching the screen in front of them take them to another place? How does that stir the imagination? I have a friend who walks through the woods to work every day and consider him the luckiest commuter I know.

      We must design a lifestyle that allows us to contemplate things, and to dream and discover things about the world and ourselves. There must be time in our daily lives for us to reflect on the world and our place in it, or we will remain nothing but distracted souls like all the rest. That’s not us, friend. Carve out and protect that processing time. As a bonus, we’ll be greeted with a job well done and a wee bit more clarity.

    • Stars and Snowflakes and Would-Be Poets

      Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
      That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
      But on earth indifference is the least
      We have to dread from man or beast.

      How should we like it were stars to burn
      With a passion for us we could not return?
      If equal affection cannot be,
      Let the more loving one be me.

      Admirer as I think I am
      Of stars that do not give a damn,
      I cannot, now I see them, say
      I missed one terribly all day.

      Were all stars to disappear or die,
      I should learn to look at an empty sky
      And feel its total dark sublime,
      Though this might take me a little time.
      — W. H. Auden, The More Loving One

      The indifference of the universe to our lives offers lessons. It’s seen characters like us before and will again. Sure, like snowflakes there may never be another just like us in all of time, but how many snowflakes stand out? I cast them aside by the shovelful. Yet every now and then one shows up that delights. The first and last of a season, surely, but also that rare character who sticks to a cold windshield at just the right moment to make a lasting impression. Blogging isn’t so very much different than the life of that one snowflake, is it? So it goes.

      I don’t write all that much poetry, but I aspire to write like a poet. My writing isn’t so different from Thoreau’s, in that I ramble on for a spell before getting to the point. With Thoreau we can forgive the technique as he casts insights about like grass seed in his best work. My own technique is to keep my blog posts to a few paragraphs lest I lose you forever.

      The last two nights I’ve been up late, crossing the midnight hour with a walk outside to give the pup some relief before bedtime. The ritual is always the same: flip on the spotlight, look for skunks or other critters that would ruin a perfectly good bedtime ritual, then walk out into the starry dome to let the pup do her business. My own business at such a time is simply to wonder at the stars as Auden did in his day.

      What will come of all this? There’s no doubt that the would-be poet is the more loving one in their time, aware of so very much in an indifferent universe. To be more than a snowflake on the windshield of time is too bold an aspiration. Isn’t it simply enough to be aware and celebrate the miracle of reaching one more night? Words may live on or simply melt away, but they’ve been released to dance with the universe nonetheless.

    • A Moment with Eugene’s Birds

      Nay, I will; that’s flat:
      He said he would not ransom Mortimer;
      Forbad my tongue to speak of Mortimer; 555
      But I will find him when he lies asleep,
      And in his ear I’ll holla ‘Mortimer!’
      Nay,
      I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak
      Nothing but ‘Mortimer,’ and give it him 560
      To keep his anger still in motion.
      — William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1

      In 1890, a man named Eugene Schieffelin brought European starlings to the United States. According to The New York Times, his motive apparently was to have all the bird species mentioned by William Shakespeare in America. So I have Eugene and a single name drop by Shakespeare in Henry IV to thank for the mess that starlings leave in their wake when they come to the bird feeders in my backyard. We ought to be more careful introducing invasive species to places where they never existed, but when has common sense ever directed anything that humans do?

      You learn a lot about the local bird population when you put the right variety of food out for them. I lived in my home for almost twenty years before I saw bluebirds visit the feeders, largely inspired by putting food they’d actually eat in the feeders. From that point on I’ve had an abundance of bluebirds. The starlings were never invited to the party, but they’re masters at crashing it anyway. Perhaps that’s why they call them invasive.

      This winter I brought the feeders back close the house, that we may enjoy the view of wild birds just outside the window. I forget sometimes the mess that comes with feeders in the form of bird droppings and seed shells, but it’s the uninvited guests like starlings, squirrels and rodents that make me question my sanity. But the birds are worth it. Even the squirrels are entertaining, and I give them just enough of a head start before I let the dog out that they stand a chance of escaping (there are some messes I don’t want to deal with).

      Winter isn’t what it once was, but we do have snow again. The bird feeders become very popular when the ground is coated in snow. The buffet is open for business, and as the movie line goes, build it and they will come. And really, that’s the point. When I go into the kitchen for a cup of coffee or tea, I look out in the yard and see life. Life in turns inspires me to be more lively myself, and the work benefits from my time with the birds. I suppose that’s worth a bit of mess from a couple of uninvited guests.

    • The Reassurance of Snow

      Whose woods these are I think I know.
      His house is in the village though;
      He will not see me stopping here
      To watch his woods fill up with snow.

      My little horse must think it queer
      To stop without a farmhouse near
      Between the woods and frozen lake
      The darkest evening of the year.

      He gives his harness bells a shake
      To ask if there is some mistake.
      The only other sound’s the sweep
      Of easy wind and downy flake.

      The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
      But I have promises to keep,
      And miles to go before I sleep,
      And miles to go before I sleep.

      — Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

      Winter hasn’t been normal the last few years in New England. Heck, what is normal nowadays anyway? We don’t always have to love snow, but we know it has its time and season. When we get it we celebrate the magic or curse the timing, disruptive to our very human plans as it seems to do. With it we recalculate what is possible in our days. Without it we wonder what we can control anymore in an upside down world.

      Snow in January calms me. Sure, there are inconveniences and struggles associated with snow that are not found in southern climates, but with snow we get the reassurance of the seasons playing out. We must embrace change in our complicated lives, but Lord give me a winter in wintertime.

      I write this on a mountaintop as snow falls all around this snow globe paradise. There’s magic quite literally in the air, and it piles up like dreams in a blessed lifetime. I watch with wonder knowing I have work to do still, but like old Robert Frost once upon a time, a pause to wonder at the beauty of a snowy moment is warranted. For the world goes on, and our youthful dance is the briefest of seasons.

    • Let Us Play

      “Health lies in action, and so it graces youth. To be busy is the secret of grace, and half the secret of content. Let us ask the gods not for possessions, but for things to do; happiness is in making things rather than in consuming them. In Utopia, said Thoreau, each would build his own home; and then song would come back to the heart of man, as it comes to the bird when it builds its nest. If we cannot build our homes, we can at least walk and throw and run; and we should never be so old as merely to watch games instead of playing them. Let us play is as good as Let us pray, and the results are more assured.” — Will Durant, Fallen Leaves

      Health lies in action. We know the drill: sitting is the new smoking. We must get up and move, and not just move, but delight in moving. To play is to live. Life is full enough of tedious moments, don’t you think? Our exercise ought to be fun.

      For me walking is a more fun form of exercise than just about anything save paddling or rowing. Walking in places that inspire and awe is wondrous, and ought to be a regular part of our routine, but sometimes a simple walk around the block is enough to reset the soul and stir the blood. Sometimes we focus so much on the spectacular or the glory of the summit that we forget the benefits of the activity itself. We must move, and glory in the act itself.

      This past weekend I’d contemplated a hike. Knock off a couple of summits that were particularly evasive for me on the list for one reason or another. When you hear the call of the wild you ought to listen, but sometimes that call is a siren. It was treacherously cold in the mountains, the kind of cold that will ruin a perfectly good day for the prepared, or kill the unprepared. Not exactly the play I was craving: lists be damned. So instead of a 4000 footer I opted for sea level and a January beach walk. Also bitingly cold, but distinctly more accessible. It also offered an easy opportunity to simply bail out and get back into a warm car (or bar) if needed.

      My bride and our pup are both beach bunnies at heart. Off-season walks on the beach are their kind of play, and mine too. I can spend all day at the beach so long as I’m not lying still like something that washed up. Surf speaks to me almost as much as summits do, and I view a great walk on a long beach as delightful as any walk can be.

      We chose Hampton Beach, New Hampshire for our off-season walk. We wanted to take stock of the damage from the winter storms last week, and to have a long stretch of beach sand. That biting cold ensured few people would brave the exposure of the beach, so our only company were other dog walkers and a few determined metal detector miners looking for lost riches. We each chase the American dream in our own way, and everyone needs a hobby.

      We should never be so old as merely to watch games instead of playing them. The trick is to stay in the game. To play in the sand is just as fun as playing king of the mountain. Just move, and delight in the company of others. That’s a simple recipe for a great life.

      January at Hampton Beach. Lot’s of footprints in snow, few people.
      Winter means walking in brisk solitude

    • First Snow

      I’ve had many snowstorms in my lifetime. Blizzards and lake effect dumpings, heavy wet snows and light and fluffy snow globe snows, white-outs that scare the heck out of you and ever-lasting slow drifts that barely seem to pile up. You tend to grow used to it after awhile, but that first snow of the year is always magical. Having a few mild winters in a row, and snow this year taking forever to reach the part of New Hampshire I reside in, it just began to feel like we’d never get another good storm. So there’s delight when if finally arrives, tinged with calculations about cleanup, road conditions, viability of the power lines and how much bread and milk one might consume before it all spoils.

      This first snow brings with it the perspective of a puppy, just nine months old, experiencing a heavy accumulation for the very first time. Now this in itself is appointment watching, as she steps timidly outside at this new world awaiting her, sniffs and licks at the white blanket and slowly steps ever deeper. My own obligations took a back seat as I watch her figure it all out. Eventually she grew bolder and began walking more quickly, and then in a spark of instinct or insight, began to prance like a deer through the drifts, ever faster. Soon she was running about the yard like it was her best day ever, and who was I to argue?

      The thing about heavy snow days is you learn to time the cleanup, that you aren’t out in it all day long, but you aren’t letting it accumulate so much that it’s difficult to work with. There’s an efficiency to snow cleanup that is learned through experience. Whatever the perfect moment is, it feels like the entire neighborhood decides to go out at the same time. The nods and waves and getting back to the business at hand inevitably follow, like some scripted scene from a pharmaceutical company’s drug du jour commercial. We’re all keeping an eye on each other in a way, even as we mind our own business.

      With all the responsibility of adulthood, sometimes we get caught up in the cleanup and calculations, and forget to just play in the snow. A new puppy, like children, teach us to delight in the wonder of a fresh snowfall. To roll about in it and clop through it and fly across it laughing at the sheer magic of the changed landscape. The cleanup is never the fun part, but we ought to remember the do fun part in our rush to clean up. Life deserves more magic and delight, don’t you think?

    • So Much to Admire

      I know, you never intended to be in this world.
      But you’re in it all the same.

      So why not get started immediately.

      I mean, belonging to it.
      There is so much to admire, to weep over.

      And to write music or poems about.

      Bless the feet that take you to and fro.
      Bless the eyes and the listening ears.
      Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.
      Bless touching.

      You could live a hundred years, it’s happened.
      Or not.
      I am speaking from the fortunate platform
      of many years,
      none of which, I think, I ever wasted.
      Do you need a prod?
      Do you need a little darkness to get you going?
      Let me be as urgent as a knife, then,
      and remind you of Keats,
      so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,
      he had a lifetime.
      — Mary Oliver, The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac

      Whispers from a poet, reminding us of the urgency of the moment. Tempus fugit… time flies. Go out and live boldly. Observe and be stirred—get right in the mix. And create something meaningful that might stand on it’s own. It’s a formula for living often repeated here, in this blog about doing all of these things. My daily reminder to not waste a second on the trivial, shared with those who wish to go along for the ride.

      The thing is, when we read the stoics, when we immerse ourselves in poetry and philosophy, in nature and travel, and most of all in the audacious act of heightened awareness, we too begin to live. Less of our own time is wasted. We become hungry for more and more experience, with a burning desire to share it with all who will listen and see for themselves. By opening the senses we let the magic in.

      “Ignorance is not bliss; it’s a missed opportunity.“ — Adam Nicolson, Sea Room

      There’s a price for ignorance paid in unfulfilled wonder and delight. There’s so much to do still. So much to admire. Like that of a poet no longer with us, it’s a whisper (or a shout) to make now count. We’re just part of the choir, singing our part, reminding the congregation to dance with the miracle of life with all the enthusiasm we can muster.