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SUMMERFALL

Summer’s falling off the edge of reason, the edge where dry becomes arid and the alder loosens its crinkled leaves from brittle twigs, speckling the grass with umber and ochre a month ahead of schedule. They say it’s just a “moderate drought” here but sixty-two percent of our state is in severe or extreme drought – and fires rage across Spain. Our unbalanced world… * Yesterday a…

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FINDING A WAY THROUGH

Like a Primal Mother, she takes me in. All I need to do is follow the path. It might take a little while for my preoccupations to fizzle away but change will come. Life, in all its glorious detail, will take (me) over. As much as I know that to be true, too many days pass without any time under the trees or by the water. Worries pile up like dust in a corner. I don’t take my own advice, telling…

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Is there any room...

…between grief and exhilaration? Between hugging his dear, breathless head tight (after carefully and tenderly straightening his wrist, bent back on itself where it rested on his lap) – is there any room between my desperate screams and a fleeting sense of freedom? Grief like a dark prison, then freedom like a window open wide, the bracing air clearing that stubborn, unrelenting fear…

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R.I.P. Joe Madigan

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COURAGE

*** In the bathroom there’s a red cord and a sign: Pull for Help, it says. I want to pull it as I sit on the toilet and the patient, my partner of 16 years, lays nearby. I could use some help now, after “the talk.” You know the one. If you haven’t heard it in person, you’ve heard it at the movies, read it in a book. Dr. N. was thoughtful, considerate, unhurried. All questions were…

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The Neccessity of Beauty

I’m swallowed whole by the fleeting beauty of spring and my life is saved, at least for the moment – that’s the way it has felt this spring. Refuge. Rescue. Life has been difficult on the home front – serious illness settled in months ago and took hold. Keeping spirits up now is crucial. The primary way I do that is by taking walks in forests, along the shores of the Salish Sea, and across rock…

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EARTHBOUND

Relaxing into shavasana,* fibers loosen, knots fall away, untangle, and regroup into a shimmering remix of invisible molecules, a remix that with any luck, will penetrate my consciousness. In this way and in countless others I become something new, something new under the sun.  Eventually there comes the end of the rope when I will cease sensing anything. I know that “ending” is an…

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HERE and GONE

It was mid-afternoon and I was at the bookstore-cafe in town, slow-sipping a strong macchiato. Stepping away from a noisy, enthusiastic group convening around a table, I drifted down to the travel section, where a book titled, ‘Edgeland, A Slow Walk West’ caught my eye. In the book, author Sasha Swire follows part of the South West Coast Path, which – surprise! – is located on England’s southwest…

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LOCAL WALKS: What the Light Brings

* 1. ** Leaning back in his chair and tilting his head, Danish photographer Per Bak Jensen mused, “…with photos and a camera I don’t feel that I’m the one creating something. And perhaps it isn’t the camera – to me it’s life itself unfolding. Which it does all the time. And it just becomes documented or registered somehow.” Jensen’s “somehow” leaves a lot of room for speculation – but I don’t…

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LOCAL WALKS: From Solstice to Equinox

The winter solstice last December seems like long ago. Holidays have come and gone, a new President took office…but let’s not talk about that! I want to focus on the period between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, how it feels and looks on one small, Pacific Northwest island. Over the course of the twelve weeks between the winter solstice and spring equinox, I took lots of walks, some…

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FURTHER AFIELD: SoCal Black & White

Trees, calligraphy, cacti, sculpture, and more, from a winter vacation in California. * 1. A banyan tree spreads and soars at a private home in Del Mar. * 2. Splendid, old Coast live oaks at Blue Sky Ecological Reserve, where some of these oaks have lived for 400 years. * 3. A view into a ghostly thicket behind a Coast live oak at Blue Sky Ecological Reserve. * 4. A peeling bamboo stem at…

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FURTHER AFIELD: In the Realm of Sand

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THE GREAT MATTER

Deception Pass Bridge *** There was Trevor, who drowned in the Delaware River that summer day in 1983, when I tried but failed to keep his head above the water. That was more than 40 years ago, old news that still stops the heart at random times. And the nameless jumper, leaping to his death in the waters of Deception Pass. Was he drowning in his emotions? I’m sure he was. Though the man…

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FURTHER AFIELD: California Dreamin'

Art that blurs the boundary between representation and abstraction has interested me for a long time. Maybe it’s because that kind of art reconciles aesthetic principles I absorbed in the days of minimalism and conceptualism with the realism of a tool I’ve come to love, the little black box we call a camera. Cameras were made to record our world in a particular way – realistically. Of course,…

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FURTHER AFIELD: SoCal Sojourn

Southern California beckoned, we listened. Our bodies and minds were itching for a break from short, cold, damp, winter days. So we flew south. Without changing times zones, we swapped 48.44°N for 32.95°N and 122.58°W 117.26°W. Enough to make the days start earlier, last a little longer, and feel warmer. Though the trip was bookended by big upsets that had me scrambling, the center held and we…

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FURTHER AFIELD: My West Coast, North to South

In a few days we’re flying to Southern California for a change of scenery and some warm, dry, sunnyfun. Back in November there was a 30% off sale at Alaska Air, and I knew we’d both be tired of the winter dampness by mid-January. I found an easy flight to Los Angeles from a small, regional airport nearby and booked tickets. Using the small airport instead of driving two hours in traffic to busy…

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LOCAL WALKS: Waterside Musings

1. * We’re back at Bowman Bay, bundled up against the cold, enjoying a quiet walk in the off-season. Only two cars are in the parking lot on this gray afternoon and the air is heavy with winter’s damp chill. I doubt I’ll walk very far today; I want to take it slow and look carefully to see what’s changed since my last walk. Call it an investigative meander. Already I see something interesting…