Category: Outdoors

Posted on

Winter Woods

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

We haven’t had much of a winter, so there has been very little time this season to enjoy the beauty of winter woods — snow-draped hemlocks, the monochrome world of white on dark-almost-black pines, the painting of tree trunks on the wind side of a storm.  But it finally happened last week — a snowstorm.

I enjoyed it thoroughly.  I skied twice on Thursday and twice again on Friday, and yesterday David and I went snowshoeing, our first time this year.  There was barely enough snow to need snowshoes, and the storm’s drapery had melted and run off in the warm temperatures and rain on Saturday, but it was still wonderful to be out, to be sinking into the lull that comes from one foot in front of the other among trees.

We took a quick side trail off our path down to a little gorge, where the Narrows Brook curls around a steep bank.  I always marvel at this spot, because it’s less than a half mile from my house, but I didn’t find it until I’d lived here for over 20 years.  There used to be a small wooden bench here, which has since fallen over and disappeared into the wetness of this dark but beautiful spot.  Eric and I would walk or ski or snowshoe here and sit on the bench.  This lovely corner of my world shows up in one of the poems from The Truth About Death.

A Trick

Now you are the gate in, as you were the path back
to my life when I saw you after my crash, minutes
of my life I will never remember, scars I didn’t notice
when you were alive. Your eyes have moved into mine,
we notice details – a twig on snow, lichen on an oak,
gray barely begun to be green, sap running again,
a predictable trick, the course of a brook through marsh
and meadow, around shaly cliffs of a hill of hemlocks,
gravity always in play, my fall from the bike, my lost
teeth, your death, my life, prizes we never expected.

Posted on

Burgers on Ice

What do you do with hot charcoal from a grill after cooking burgers to eat while you skate and walk around on a frozen lake on a full moon night?  All of us on Pleasant Lake tonight agreed we shouldn’t dump the charcoal in one place on the ice, where it would melt through in spring and make a mess on the lake bottom.  What if we spread it out across the ice?  We scooped a few coals from the grill onto the ice, and Peter swept them away with his hockey stick.  Each chunk flared up into a small firework of flames, breaking into a spray of light in the wind, sparkles scattering across our line of vision. What a great show!  Over and over, we tipped a few more chunks of charcoal on the ice, and Peter sent them on a flaring journey into the muted night.  Then the grill was empty, the orange light of the coals flickering out fast in the wind and cold, the lake shining silver in the moon.

Posted on

Three Stones

The last small stone I threw into the River of Stones was on Tuesday.  It’s been a trying week, with many anxious moments, navigating some bumps in Eric’s mother’s recovery.  A friend reminded me yesterday that facing a serious health issue with Eric’s mother triggers the trauma of Eric’s death, so the intensity of reaction makes sense.  And that’s on top of how much I love her and am just not ready to lose her yet.

So the three stones I have to offer today are all underlined by simple gratitude — that Eric’s mother is recovering, that I have the privileged position in my life right now to be going on vacation in Paris, and that I’m able to take a moment each day and fully appreciate something.  Which I have done every day, I just haven’t gotten to the writing-it-down step.

Wednesday evening the sunset lit the western horizon, which is lined with a small mountain, tall white pines, a silo, open field, and then more trees in the distance, with a pale silver.

Yesterday I was up and out to a meeting at dawn, and watched the light, then color, come into the day.

This morning, as I drove down the road to go for a ski, a cardinal flitted past the car, flashing red on a bright, white morning.

My next small stone will most likely be from Paris.  A bientôt!

Posted on

Silver Stone

We woke to snow this morning, pulled up the shades and got back in bed, letting the silver light fill the room.  In spite of predictions of a change to sleet and rain, the snow kept up.  We went for a walk, the cold wind numbing our faces the way the last week of new loss has left us feeling numb and dumb and clumsy.  I don’t even know what I did yesterday, but I do know I managed to grocery shop and cook and work on a poem and go to Yogurt Poets last night.  Is that enough for one day?

Then I went for a ski, my first ski of the season, so I said a Shehechiyanu blessing (for more on that see this previous post) and thought of Eric’s mother.  Eric always said a Shehechiyanu when he did something for the first time each year — like the first chance to cross-country ski or the first kayak of spring.  It wasn’t until after he died that I found out Eric learned that from his mother, Natalie.  We were at a Passover Seder together three years ago and she talked about how often she says the Shehechiyanu blessing and all the opportunities there are in a year to bless the return to a favored place or activity.

Now Natalie is in a hospital, recovering from a bad bout of shingles.  More worry.  But back to skiing, to being in the woods, my tracks leading back into the trees, snow draping the branches and quieting the inner chatter.  Blessed.

Posted on

Ice Stone

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Morning pond croaking
Deep throated ice language
Sun dissolves in clouds.

Posted on

A River of Stones

Thanks to A Woodland Rose, a sister-haiku-writer-blogger I follow, for turning me on to this January writing and being focus.  The River of Stones, created by Writing Our Way Home, invites us to focus fully and appreciatively on one small, or large, aspect of each day, and write about it.  Write it in your notebooks, your blogs, on Facebook or Twitter.  Just appreciate and write.  The simple instructions: 1. Notice something properly every day during January; 2. Write it down.  I can do that.

My small stone for today:  The avocado in my refrigerator is dark green, skin pebbled, ripe and ready to be eaten.

David and I both went out to exercise this morning.  I ran around Jenness Pond with Anne and Betsy.  David walked one side of the Pond and back.  It’s such a glorious day — bright sun, mild air, blue sky with grand white coulds — we decided we need even more time outside.  We’re going to the coast to walk along the ocean.  I’ll be thinking of that avocado, waiting for me at home to be eaten.  Yes, the New Year is a lovely river of stones so far.

Posted on

Metaphors

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

David and I went for a walk today in the warm, wet woods.  There was a bit of snow several days ago, which had left a crust of white, but it was nothing that lasted, and all washed away in the rain we’ve had since.  We were talking, as we almost always are, and the topic today has been a pretty consistent topic — what are we doing, how are we handling this passage into a life without very challenging jobs as a central organizing factor, how do we balance family, friends, consulting work, play, creative ambitions, etc. etc. etc.  Yes, sometimes we are very etc. etc. etc. but we both are, so it works.

We took a turn off our usual woods path, towards the marsh that opens in the woods north of Canterbury Road.  And there on the path, right where the decades-old cars are rusting into oblivion beside the trail, was all that’s left of the snow around here, a snow man, covered with oak leaves.  Who made it, why here, and what’s the metaphor?

The next metaphor was easier to figure out.  We were deep into etc. etc. etc. as we walked up the east side of Narrows Brook, looking for a place where we could cross and get to the woods road that would bring us back to Canterbury Road.  There were occasional logs across the brook, but they were all narrow and slick with the day’s earlier rain.  Rocks bridging the span of water were scarce, as the brook is running high, and mostly covered with ice.  We kept bushwhacking upstream and finally came to a place where the span of rushing water narrowed, and there were ice-free rocks to provide secure footing across.  The brook bed and rocks were ringed with goblets of ice along the water line, but there was plenty of clear surface for crossing.  We crossed, and made our way out of the woods.

Posted on

A Different Golf

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Sam plays disc golf on a regular basis, talks about disc golf all the time, and has been taking his NH friends to play at a disc golf course just north of here since he got home for a visit a couple of weeks ago.  On Tuesday I went with Sam, Will and Kyle to the Woods at Beauty Hill disc golf course to see what it’s all about.

Like traditional golf, disc golf is about hitting a target, through various obstacles.  But the disc golf “holes” are standing buckets of metal links that capture the disc, a frisbee-like device built for long throws or putting.  Instead of a bag of various clubs to hit a ball, Sam and Will carry backpacks with a small collection of discs.  Instead of a course of constructed fairways, tees, greens and rough, this is all rough.  The course wove in and out of open fields and trees, across a ridge of land.  The “holes” may be across a stone wall and through a stand of white pines and oak, or up a steep pitch of ridge.  Discs bounce off tree trunks and land in the snow, no obstacle to a good round, as the dogs run around in the woods.  In most places, disc golf courses are free, constructed in city parks and on college campuses.  Here, at the private Beauty Hill, the cost is $5, honor system, put your bills in a slot in the wall of the little golf course shed.

As I trudged up and down the ridge with the guys, watching some amazingly long throws of the distance discs, I was impressed.  Mostly free, fun, outdoors, challenging and rewarding, the boys played on.

Posted on

What the Wind Does

We live in a very windy spot.  This morning we woke to blasts of winter air rocking the house, and crusted snow on the roof and lawn.  Walking on our usual trail, there was a piece of birch that must have come down in the night, part of the trunk piercing the wet ground, the rest crossing the trail.  We were talking, as we usually are, of our families, our ambitions for our art, both for today and the long-term, our emerging sense of what our work is, seeking a new balance in how we get to all the channels calling for attention in our brains.  And here was a bit of art wind, free form sculpture, the morning’s lesson.

Posted on

Walking

There was a list in my head, when I contemplated leaving my job last spring, of things I knew I wanted to do, things that take more time.  I wanted to drink more tea.  That sounds ridiculous, I know.  Anyone can find the time to brew a cup of tea and drink it.  Except I never did.  And now I do.

I also wanted to walk more.  Walking is great exercise and an excellent alternative to, and break from, running.  But it takes much more time to get a workout equal to running by walking.  Now at least once or twice a week I go with David on his morning walk.  Yesterday we walked the snowmobile trail through the woods, where the first skims of ice are forming on puddles.

The night before I’d gone to the retirement party of a friend and colleague.  I saw many people there who I hadn’t seen since I left my job, and everyone wanted to know how my retirement is going.  “Well, I’m actually working a good bit,” I said, not able to call what my life is like now retirement.  I have several hours of work a week on various projects, and am considering taking on a fairly major commitment (more about that later).  But I’m also writing a novel, working on poems, reading, spending lots of time with family and friends, drinking tea and walking.  And stopping to admire the patterns of oak leaves locked under cross-hatched ice.