travel – whereIwonder&why

Winter Weather

Hello

I am pretty sure I am in a better mood than when I wrote and posted my blog last time, which was last year now. I sit before my window watching the snow start again this early afternoon. Six hours almost to the minute that I watched it start this morning. At that time my phone weather app assured me that it was cloudy out and a “wintry mix” was not to begin until noon. That early morning snow lasted half an hour and left a good, solid, slippery dusting. I trod through it around mid-morning from my house to the river. Such a wonderful river. It flowed on this day silently, slowly. It carries a skim of ice along the edges, and no visible debris–always a gift from a river that traverses this city and many others along its not inconsiderable length from source to sea.

As I stood two seagulls, about 10 minutes apart flew northwest along the river route. Then 25 geese in a double V that shifted shape as I watched, front runners falling back, rear guard sliding forward, flew east turning, as they shape shifted, toward the northeast. I listened and, yes, thank you geese, they began a conversation among themselves. Then fell silent again. There was little other sound, if I inclined my attention upward. As I leveled my gaze again, I heard and then saw the everpresent vehicular cadences. If only we had not invented combustion engines and their unavoidable audibility, nor, now, for that matter, electric, which hum quite loudly. We would not, of course, have such long distance in short time spans mobility, but is that bad? Here is something to think about. Given our propensities–to imagine and then image every place we go in our own image–is it bad to limit our reach? I wonder.

I thought I’d include a cloudy sky. Can you see the layers of clouds, or do you see only the monochromaticity? Blink and look again. It was a moment of peace to watch up to it.

I must tell you that after it snowed this early morning, and as I walked back uphill from the river to the section of the city where I live, it warmed to a couple of degrees over freezing and the snow coat all disappeared. Then, it sleeted. Then is was still and the pavements everywhere returned to visibility from their early morning bright whiteness. And now, early afternoon, the second snow is falling–larger, distinctive shapes distinctly visible, and blanketing all within view. The dogwood out back and the birches out front are wearing attractive and increasingly lofty shawls. (BTW, my phone says it is 37 degrees and sleeting right now. It is NOT!)

So, these are today’s little mysteries.

“Whose woods these are
I think I know
His house is in the village though
He will not see me stopping here…..”

I’m pretty sure anyone who has gone to school in the USA recognizes these lines as part of Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” quoted here from memory, so I cannot vouch for the correct punctuation or stanza breaks.

Oil up your snow shoes!

Rain

Rain refreshes. Rain immobilizes. Rain revives. Rain soddens. Rain delights. Rain depresses. Rain greens. Rain grays. Rain is a gift. Usually gifts are welcomed. Sometimes not.

I have never endured a rain induced damaging flood. I have never endured any kind of significant flood. In this, thus, I am lucky. Probably most of us are. Flooding is localized in the global scheme of things. As is its opposite, sere, usually burning or scalding, aridity. Yet for the endurers of these extremes, localized is their world during its prevalence.

For the endurers of anything not-good, it is a trial anyone else will not understand.

In fact, most of whatever each of us experiences in our consistently occurring 24 hour spans after 24 hour spans after 24 hour spans, is what anyone else will not, and so, we being highly self-referential, will not understand.

I move on. I am sitting in a quiet house, in a quiet room, with windows closed, so a largely perceptually quiet outside, although I just heard a minor unidentified sound and, looking outside, saw a kid– 8 or 9 years old–bicycling down the street, unrain-geared, but likely, so would I have been at 8 or 9, defiantly so. Especially if urged to don the jacket, the hood, take the umbrella, to not take the bicycle out in this…. From a young age we assert our individuality.

And each of is one, an individual. And each of us need to never forget that, about ourselves, and about every other being we cross paths with, hear about, see, talk to, listen to, consider. Simultaneously, each of needs to remember that each of impacts what and who we see, talk to, listen to, write to or about, even, what and who we, ourself, think about. Very rarely do our thoughts not translate into actions (be they physical, verbal, or emotional), which impact.

I move on some more.

How many different modes of transport in these pictures? My oh my, our options seem limitless

From rain to transit, where shall we go now?

Lodged

The rain to the wind said,
‘You push and I’ll pelt.’
They so smote the garden bed
That the flowers actually knelt,
And lay lodged–though not dead.
I know how the flowers felt.

– Robert Frost

As Dawn Emerges this June Morning

Good morning! I lay awake for near to an hour listening to robins outside my windows, and Maria purring beside me. I lay there, and as the robinic chorus increased in number and volume, I began thinking about my job, my last job, the one from which I retired quite a few years ago now, and that I had held for 28 years. Fifteen years into my working life, it involved a complete change to my presumed career path; it was not a route I expected to take, and typical to my way of being, not the one planned.

I thought, hmm, I think I am going to share about it in a blog post. I started remembering it–what it comprised, who my fellow employees–my colleagues, reportees, bosses, intimates and not-so-intimates–were, where I traveled for it, what I accomplished, what I didn’t–and then the sparrows woke up and began their less than tuneful, but certainly neighborly chirps and chips, and Maria began tapping me, and the clock marked 4:45AM, and I said, okay, I am getting up, I am going to write the blogpost, but, nope, not about my job. Because, really, who cares?

I can’t answer that question. I am not in your head, nor yours, nor yours. But, more I will just say, I met and knew a lot of people I like a lot. I traveled to local and somewhat distant places in this country, learned different takes on what I thought I was profoundly knowledgeable and right about, learned how much being the rightest in the room isn’t always possible, and surely isn’t always necessary, nor, in fact, right. I am grateful for this job, these people, these 28 years with them, and very grateful for now, sitting at this desk, at this very old laptop, looking out into the curtain of my weeping birch trees, and listening.

Thus–this morning, this day. The sparrows just, maybe 30 seconds ago, stopped their chorus. I need to go out to the kitchen to listen for the finches and mourning doves, who are likely emerging now, with substantially quieter voices than the sparrows and the robins. So I am pausing for a bit.

I’m thinking I may tell you about a bicycle trip I took in the US Southwest about 24 years ago. It was a magnificent trip, experience, time. I do want to suggest now–never let your body and head conspire to tell you you can’t. Your body may tell you so, and if it does by itself, probably listen and accommodate. But if your head is part of the telling, close your ears, step away! By listening, you will only divert yourself from something you can do.

Hoodoos in Bryce Canyon in the early morning. Photo courtesy of NPS (support it!)

For seven days we bicycled to and hiked into and out of Bryce Canyon, Grand Canyon, Zion Canyon. In Bryce, traipsed among the hoodoos! I had before seen them from above, but to wander among them, and to wonder. At the Grand Canyon, to meander down to the river, kicking up ancient dust, steadying oneself on rock millenia-billenia-zillenia old, and, when seen from across the canyon, so many hues, yet here among it, just present and touchable. Ah yes. In Zion, trouped through the Virgin River and Gorge at dawn, ankle, knee deep, prickles of cold in a day that then climbed to barely bearable heat. Climbed a ridge to a place called Scout Lookout, reaching that height, at times by scrabbling on hands and knees. And on the way, while pedaling to and between these canyons, passing through red, rose, dusky, bisque, beige, golden, tan, ecru, magenta, ochre, umber, rouge walls near and distant, miles of floor, with a single roundhead, glaringly green tree poised mid-desert offering brief shade. Naming places on the horizon and at hand–Escalante, Angel Canyon, Kanab, Panguitch.

Virgin River in Zion National Park. photo courtesy of NPS (support it!)

And, not wandering so far from home, pedaling here, in Massachusetts, pedaling beside Hondas, Mercedes, Hyundais, Nissans, Mazdas, Fords, Rams and Jeeps, F150s and Tundras, turning off, leaving rubber-on-road rumblings and pedaling beside and under tall red oaks, red maples, cottonwoods, aspens, white and red pines, hemlocks, spruces, green ashes, white oaks, black oaks, yellow poplars, paper birches, grey birches, black birches, copper beeches. Dismounting and whisper stepping within pine woods, shushing through deciduous woods. Stopping and fingering mud and packed, sodden, not-yet-mud tree-fern-reed-shrub leaves; standing before a bird-shelter and feast riddled once thriving pine counting its ladder of holes, squatting before a long fallen oak to visit its four and six and eight legged residents, before a spider web and its captives. Discovering.

Spider web suspended within two specific eras–former factory, long collapsed, and second or third or fourth growth woodland both fallen and growing new; living giving life

Morning has broken, like the first morning… It is 9:45am. I have breakfasted, enjoyed coffee, sat through a thunderstorm, and here we are. 9:46am now. Sending to you.