Dark and quiet street, with sleet falling lightly, providing a soundtrack for only me. This isn’t dent your car sleet, rather it’s the granular bits of ice that tickle your nose as they bounce off it kind. The granules gently ricochet off every surface until finding a resting place. The sleet makes different sounds based on what it makes impact on. Dead oak leaves that refuse to let go their grip on the tree they sprouted from offer a snare drum, while other hard surfaces give a chorus of thousands of tinny taps. My feet make short work of the ice granules with their own steady beat; “crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch...” and on it went until I retired to the house. The sound of sleet followed me inside. It was just what I needed to hear.
Category: seasons
-
Restlessness Met Sadness And They Both Smiled In Recognition
Life is like the 55 meter indoor hurdles run by klutzes for its briefness and the lack of elegance with which we all get through it. Family gatherings during the holidays offer the opportunity to take stock. How have you been and what are you dancing with now? Jamming multiple family events into one day means not spending enough time with any one person, but instead getting quick downloads between eating too much and taking pictures for posterity and InstaGram. The latter offers immediate notification of what you’ve been up to for your followers (some of whom are in the picture), the former is the path highlighted for you years later when everything has changed.
In the last family event of the night, after all the caloric intake and the unwrapping of gifts and the catching up on what you’ve been up to, I realized I was way too warm and needed a walk outside in the cool air. Looking at my watch I calculated how realistic it was to hit 10,000 steps and weighed it against the limited time I have with these people in my life. I settled on a quick walk around the block and resigned myself to getting the rest done in the shrinking time left in the evening. I’d get over the mark eventually, with an hour to spare in the day. Should’ve knocked it off first thing in the morning but such are the holidays.
When I have a goal in mind I get restless, and sitting in a chair for hours isn’t going to cut it for me, so it wasn’t long before I needed to walk around the house a bit. So I left the crowded room to walk around the kitchen and into the formal living room, built for showing furniture that people don’t sit on. There standing by the door was the oldest aunt of my wife, waiting for a ride home that wouldn’t come for awhile as my father-in-law chatted in the other room with my kids. In that moment she looked like a teenager, though she is dancing with 90, waiting by the door to go. We talked about sports she used to play, for she was a very active in tennis and skiing for much of her life, and her eyes welled up as she talked about not doing those things anymore. We smiled and talked and eventually it was time to go and we opted to bring her back to her apartment and chatted more with her as we drove.
My restlessness met her sadness and they recognized each other. The sadness was rooted in her own frustrated restlessness, doomed to an older body and an aging mind battling dementia. She missed Thanksgiving on a bad day, but on Christmas she was lucid and sharp, seeking out conversation and connection. And we connected and smiled at stories of past glories, recent small victories and setbacks overcome. And I thought about my own restlessness and wondered when it would meet sadness again. We all look in the mirror and see our story. If I’m lucky enough to get there I want the sadness in my old age to be for the things I can no longer do, not the things I never did.
-
Looking Out The Window On The Day After The Shortest Day
I wonder what the Mourning Dove says to the squirrel as they both dine at the seed buffet dropped from the feeders to their feet. They both look around timidly, ready to dart to safety from threats real and imagined. But they’ve learned to coexist with each other, knowing deep inside that this other species isn’t a threat to me. Other birds – Chickadees, Jays, Cardinals – drop seeds to the ground as they sift for that special treat for themselves (or maybe as a nod to those below), and the ground feeders take over from there. They seem to take care of each other even as they compete for the same food. But they don’t look at each other as food and maybe when you’re both on the same link in the food chain that’s enough.
The coating of snow offers little in the way of camouflage for the parade of animals that move through the woods behind the house. Protected land close to a stream is a refuge during hunting season, and a bridge between wild places the rest of the year. Standing in front of the window, invisible to wildlife, that snow offers a spotlight on the animals that move through the woods. This morning three deer moved quietly by, nuzzling the snow aside in search of acorns. They’ve come to the right place and find plenty to nibble on before quietly moving on in a pattern of walk, nuzzle, eat, pop head up searching for threats, repeat. A month ago there were ten deer walking this route, and I wonder if the cold or the hunters got the rest, or if these are just other transients moving down the wooded safe route.
The other day I watched fourteen turkey walk through the woods in a tactical formation the Marines would be proud of, each assessing threats, stopping to see what was available to eat, moving forward with precision. I wondered how long it would be before they found the feeders, and of course I should have known they already knew about them, they were just approaching with full situational awareness. In a few minutes the turkeys running point were scratching the snow and nibbling seed, soon others joined them, but never more than a half dozen at a time in one spot. The rest occupied the perimeter, with a couple rotating in now and then. Turkey pecking order was on display, and I wished I’d had a better camera with me than my iPhone offered. But there’s no coexisting with turkeys, and the squirrels and Mourning Doves steered clear until the turkeys moved on.
This is my version of New Hampshire, at the edge of the woods on the day after the shortest day of the year, as viewed from behind the window pane. The days are getting longer now, and I look forward to getting back outside on warm days, observing this world from outside. But I know it would be different when I’m out there, as some wildlife avoid humans. So this view offers something you don’t get outside, and today I appreciate the difference.
-
Kimono Car Seeker
I was walking into a store to pick up a gift card (‘it’s the season for gift cards), enjoying the warming sunshine and relative tranquility offered on a quiet morning in a mall parking lot the week before Christmas in America, when my moment of bliss was turned upside down by a car alarm beeping urgently nearby. Properly encroached upon, I looked at the car, and as expected saw no burglars backing away. I looked up at the store I was walking towards and saw a tall woman in a kimono (I’m no expert on such things but I’m going with kimono) holding keys up and looking around. She determined the direction of her car and clicked the fob to turn off the alarm, felt unsatisfied with her new compass heading and clicked the fob to activate the alarm again. I walked past her and smiled, content in knowing she had figured out where her car was, and we separated as forever strangers, sharing this one brief moment on our trip around the sun. I started to wonder why you’d where a kimono to a liquor store, thought the better of it, and just let it be. Some of life’s mysteries are better left unanswered.
-
Chess Boards and Calendars
The chess board and the calendar are one and the same.
For each demands strategy and each is a game,
of reaction and discipline and boldness in kind.
I marvel at masters,
while struggling to keep more than two moves in mind
I marvel at poets as well, for my words betray me as a clydesdale and my words as poetry on the fly. So be it – not every dance is a tango. Back to the topic at hand, the similarities between the chess board and the calendar. I win my share of chess matches, but I find my vision of the board betrays me at times. I focus so much on my own moves that I don’t always see the threat lurking on the other side. But I know sometimes I can overcome a threat, while strategically making a noble sacrifice, with action towards my objective. Chess and the calendar do demand reaction and discipline and boldness, and I try to play both with equal grace, but still struggle with each. We never master the game of chess, just as we never master the calendar.
I look at the moves I’ve made with time over the last twelve months, and know that I’ve made some moves I regret, but also many that I’m quite pleased with. 2019 is a year of brilliant highlights mixed with some real duds, which makes it like just about every year I’ve been on the planet. We build the calendar and hope for the best. I can stand back and see myself in the beginning of a pivot, but the direction I’m pivoting isn’t entirely clear yet. So I press on, filling the calendar with necessary meetings and positive habits that offer incremental growth. A few have paid off, a few have been complete failures, and a few are just in the embryonic stage and need a bit of nurturing to grow. Such is life; we never look like what we once were when we grow.
Playing chess last night against the computer instead of a human, I felt bored and was going through the motions. Passing the time. That’s a great time to walk away from something when that something doesn’t move you towards a place you need to be, and I finished the game and turned off the computer. Life is too short to play boring games, and chess had lost its luster for me for the moment. In some ways the calendar has too, and it’s a wake-up call to see where the calendar is taking me and start filling it with more things that get me where I’m going. Wherever that may be. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it, as the saying goes. As in chess, stop being distracted by reactionary moves and be more bold. Better still, weave a little more magic into the calendar. Ready?
-
The Last Autumn Holdout
The neighborhood has worked diligently to clean up every fallen leaf of Autumn. Lawns neatly mowed in uniform stripes, offering green carpeted bliss house after house. But one house stands out like a shaggy-haired hippy at a military parade. Piles of brown oak leaves mix with maple, dogwood and a dozen other trees. The piles blow in the wind, scattering across the street and invade the pristine lawns of the neighborhood, like chicken pox claiming a classroom. The last holdout is mine.
Neighbors politely hold their breath, knowing we’ve been traveling. Knowing our track record of good neighboring. Knowing… but wondering. A weekend has past since we you went away. Another weekend approaches. Thanksgiving week is just around the corner. When, they surely wonder, will you clean up the leaves that continue to blow onto our lawns?
Not just yet. Though I know the time is flying. And Pumpkin Spiced Latte has given way to Eggnog Latte. I’m aware of the early “Black Friday” sales and the traces of Christmas music in certain retail environments. I’ve seen the snowflakes – not the political term that diminishes fellow human beings to “them”, but the real ones drifting down to let us know they’ll be here in greater numbers soon enough. But the leaves have their time too, and I tell you somewhat defensively but with a slight twinkle in the eye, not just yet.
-
November Woods
My favorite walks are November walks in the woods. The leaves stir underfoot, announcing your progress for those who would listen. And I have no doubt they listen. Deer, fox, squirrels and rabbits for sure, and many more I don’t consider. But I’m not here for them today, I’m here for the land, and the productive solitude it offers.
I don’t take the time to understand people that don’t walk in the woods. There’s nothing to understand, really. You either come alive in the woods or you remain detached and resistant. Some people come alive shopping for bargains, a place where I’m detached and resistant, so I know that we all have our element. Mine is the woods.
I walk on and come across wintergreen in a sea of brown oak leaves, which reminds me of Carlisle, Massachusetts and the Great Brook Farm State Park. I pick a leaf, snap it in two and smell the minty freshness. Memories of wintergreen moments from years ago invade my mind for a moment, and I smile and release them with the folded leaf.
I walk slowly through the woods; I’ve already reached my destination. I’m here to see not to get somewhere. Climbing a rise I wonder at the moss-covered granite ledge. Ferns cling to the moss, catching oak leaves that only wanted to fly. Will they return to the earth, or feed the ferns right here on the granite? That’s a question for time.
Conservation land offers familiarity without risk. Risk that this will become yet another housing development. It’s a friend that won’t be betrayed like that friend down the street was. The land has been betrayed before, you see it in the walls and cellar holes. It may be again someday, but in conservation there’s hope for more permanence. At the very least these woods should outlast me in some form. Still, there are no guarantees: Even these woods show signs of recent harvesting.
I turn back towards home. The days are short now and I have things to do. But I pause once again for the hemlocks. For all the bare trees in the November woods, a few remain evergreen. My favorite is the hemlock, with their lacy green limbs riding the breeze. These limbs fold down neatly under snow load, while the oaks stoically resist. This means the oaks stand naked in November while the hemlocks still proudly wear their deep green dress. A case for being flexible under stressful conditions, it seems. So I stay still, watching one limb bouncing above a stone wall that stand tired but proud amongst the clutter of fallen late autumn leaves. It reminds me of an Irish step dance on a carpet of oak leaves in a granite hall. I reluctantly walk on from this performance for an audience of one with a nod to the performer. And I’m awake once again.
-
The Farmer and the Poet
It sits perched atop its fellow stones, neatly laid as a capstone of sorts. Who’s hands laid this stone? A farmer from the earliest days of this nation? Or perhaps their grandchild, the last generation to farm this land before the young turned to the mills or went west? Once the land surrounding the wall was cultivated, bearing harvests of corn, beans and squash. Then the farms faded and the trees regained the land. This wall marks the past, and this stone waits eternally to tell its story, like that poem buried in a musty old book on a library shelf. The farmer and the poet each speak to us through their creations long after they’re gone. If only we’ll listen.
-
On Foliage and the Passing of Time
“Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
—Mary Oliver, ‘The Summer Day’Mary Oliver passed away in January this year, at the age of 83. If I may say it, too soon. With her passing, her question commands even more urgency than before:
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”This afternoon I drove back from meetings in Boston, flipped open my laptop and diligently followed up on the list of items that demanded my time. All save one, which required closing the laptop, stepping outside and finding foliage. New Hampshire glows in orange, yellow and red in October, and I’ve spent entirely too much of the first eleven days of the month indoors or behind the wheel of my car. So a walk down to a local pond on a gusty day felt more like living than crafting another email for somebody’s spam filter.
Foliage stirs up memories of autumns past, and I try to push those aside. Not because the memories aren’t mostly pleasant, but because there’s more than enough living now to occupy my limited brain cells. And there’s only today; words we all know but seem to push aside for the distraction of the moment. “What else should I have done?” Indeed. Take “what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” and replace “life” with “day”. For really, that’s all we have, isn’t it? The foliage illuminates the cold black water of a small pond nearby, and soon those leaves will float down onto the water, drift along the surface for awhile and then slowly slip quietly under the surface to return to the earth. The briefness of this life exemplified in a single leaf. Had I not gone to witness the foliage would the opportunity have been there tomorrow? Surely that’s a trick question.
-
Writing Illuminates
October 7th and there’s no escaping it now. The morning concedes more and more of herself to the greedy darkness. Darkness, not satiated, comes back for more sooner and sooner each afternoon. The days are more beautiful than ever this time of year in New Hampshire, there’s just less time in the day to enjoy it all.
The available light changes routine. No going outside to read in the still morning light now. Instead I find myself huddled inside during the magic hour. This won’t do at all. Perhaps a brisk morning walk outside would serve me better, with reading later? But thoughts of work encroach the later in the morning it gets, and by 7 AM there’s no escaping the feeling that the jig is up. Daylight brings responsibility, there’s no more buffer when the earth turns a cold shoulder to the sun.
Still, there’s beauty in darkness. That old huntsman Orion greeted me in all his glory over the weekend. He’s tired of playing hide and seek with the Northern Hemisphere. And I delighted in greeting him once again. True, the Autumnal Equinox makes stargazing more accessible. There’s that. Take what the day brings you, that’s the answer isn’t it?
Darkness grudgingly concedes the day, and I must be moving on. Writing calls, but so does the day job. The endless wrestling match between creative output and economic responsibilities. One voice tends to dominate the conversation. So what’s a writer to do? The answer, it seems, is to get up even earlier tomorrow. More time alone in the darkness, though not in the dark. Writing… illuminates.
