Tag: inspiration

Walking. With Night Moves…

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Working’ on our night moves…
In the summertime, Mmmmmmm
In the sweet summertime, summertime

Bob Seger croons Night Moves into my earbuds, and wistfully I drift off to summertime.

17° F, feels like 3° F. Winds gusting from the north up to 25 mph. Tariff some of that!

I walk.

I have four layers on, that is on top and bottom. That’s 4 on bottom: underwear, wool underwear, sweatpants and snow pants. And that’s 4 on top: Sweatshirt, hoodie, jacket with hood and North Face jacket with another hood.

And it’s still short of what’s needed.

I didn’t expect much this morning. High Tide. Few clouds. And bitter cold.

But The Cove failed to disappoint. Again. It’s been 1751 consecutive (almost) days. Like in a Row.

I reach the cliff, and look out to the horizon. The Last Quarter Moon with its moonlight glistens over Long Island Sound.

“Simply look with perceptive eyes at the world about you, and trust to your own reactions and convictions. Ask yourself: ‘Does this subject move me to feel, think and dream?‘” (Ansel Adams)

I’m stirred, the cold falls away, I take the shot. And pause to express my gratitude, for whatever is responsible for the will to get me out of bed this morning, and for whatever granted me the physical ability to make it to this exact spot (and thanking this same Power source in advance to grant me another 1751 days), and for whatever Power put this moon and this moonlight in front of me free of cloud cover at exactly this moment.

I get blessed with this day’s astonishment, I turn back, and head home.

I’m going to remember this.

“God, give us a long winter and quiet music, and patient mouths, and a little pride — before our age ends. Give us astonishment and a flame, high and bright.” (Adam Zagajewski, A Flame)

Notes:

  • More pictures from this morning’s walk here.
  • Post inspired by Charlotte Wood, Stone Yard Devotional: “I once felt a kind of inhabiting presence in myself…something took up space inside me and spread along my shoulders and down my arms, into my fingertips. It was a sensation of heat…This is either a ghost, or it is God…If I had not resisted it, if I had welcomed the heat – even the burning – what might have happened?“

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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and what the soul is, also
I believe I will never quite know.
Though I play at the edges of knowing,
truly I know
our part is not knowing,
but looking, and touching, and loving,
which is the way I walked on,
softly,
through the pale-pink morning light.

— Mary Oliver, from “Bone” in New and Selected Poems vol. Il (Beacon Press, April 15, 2007)

Notes:

  • DK Photo: 6:04 a.m. April 1, 2024 at where else, Cove Island Park. Don’t miss more photos from the magnificent BIG PINK morning walk on April 1st here.
  • Quote Source: PetaltexturedSkies

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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Driving through rural Mississippi, I felt my shoulders drop. Suddenly I was smiling. On a dappled road between weedy hedgerows and piney woods and cotton fields and country graveyards and shabby crossroads towns without so much as a blinking yellow light, I was singing along with Tyler Childers and smiling like a fool.

I was home.

I don’t mean literally. I come from Lower Alabama peanut-farming stock, not Mississippi cotton farmers. The first time I ever set foot in Mississippi, I was 22 and on my way to New Mexico, eager to shake the red dirt of home from my sandals as fast as I could manage.

But those small clapboard churches where cars park right on the grass, and those rough farm roads yielding to blacktop, and those blooming, insect-bedazzled margins between fields, and that splintered light pouring down from the pines — they were all telling me I was home. And I was so happy to be home.

“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,” writes the poet Mary Oliver, “don’t hesitate. Give in to it.”

I believe she’s right — “Joy is not made to be a crumb”— but for a certain kind of Southerner, it’s impossible not to question this particular happiness. This place has caused so much suffering. How could loving it fail to provoke questions? And yet the sight of cotton growing in fields made me happy. For those few hours, even knowing the terrible, blood-soaked history of cotton, I couldn’t help it. Happiness rose in me like an anthem. […]

Drive down a highway in your own homeland, the golden autumn light pouring around you and the golden leaves tumbling in the passing rush of air, and tell me your heart doesn’t fill up with love and longing. Tell me you could keep your heart from filling up with love to the throbbing point of longing. Even a heart entirely broken comes back for more breaking when the source of heartbreak is home. […]

I will keep on loving the place that made me, for I seem to have no choice about that. Because when the muted gold of the pine needles and the extravagant yellow leaves of the elms and the mottled orange leaves of the sugar maples and the shining red leaves of the black gum trees are all falling out of the sky in the passing wind, it always feels exactly like a benediction.

—Margaret Renkl, from “Notes on Going Home” (NY Times, November 20, 2023)

DK Photo @ Cove Island Park @ 6:25 am this morning. More photos from this morning’s glorious walk (in the cold wind chill) here.

Walking. It is so easy to forget…

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And here I go, 1,292 consecutive (almost) days on this daybreak morning walk at Cove Island Park. Like in a row.

There she stood on the dock, a Great Blue Heron, vigilant, stoic, absorbing a light drizzle.Waiting. Waiting. Waiting for what?

I walk.

Compared to yesterday’s magical sunrise, today, TODAY, was just painfully uninspiring —  with the bonus of rain spitting all over the camera gear. It took all of me, all that I had, to keep forward motion and not take a u-turn back to the exit.

I walk.

A supersized BK soft drink cup lay on the path, teethmarks on the recyclable straw where the pollutant ingested the soda. Trash bins everywhere around this park, yet here it is.  “I’m still willing to buy that life is beautiful if you dress it up right, that people are basically good, or that love can save you. I still want to believe.” (Jonathan Evison, Again and Again ) Continue reading “Walking. It is so easy to forget…” →

Walking. Touched by a Terrapin.

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Here we go. 1,153 consecutive (almost) days on this daybreak walk at Cove Island Park. Like in a row.

I’m off.

71° F. Humidity? One billion % and climbing.

Mimi, in her FB comment: A brooding kind of beauty —  and even the birds are holding court in silence.”

And they were silent. A Great Blue Heron. A pair of egrets. A Yellow-Crowned Night Heron.  Gulls, and their wings.

Just another morning at Cove Island Park.

I walk.

But, the Mind isn’t here this morning. Yes, it’s certainly here at Cove Island Park, but meaning not Here, and Now.

It drifts back 10 days or so. I’m at the end of my walk and there under the bench sits a Diamondback Terrapin turtle. No, I didn’t have a clue it was a Diamond Terrapin Turtle, Google Lens did though: “The Northern diamondback terrapin is the only species of turtle in North America, including Connecticut, that spends its life in brackish water…and they are most abundant in tidal estuaries west of the Connecticut River.”

Like who knew? Most abundant in tidal estuaries in Connecticut. Brackish water. This sticks.

I’m staring at this creature, at the intricate designs of its shell, and wonder what he’s doing so far away from brackish water.  “Injured? Lost? Resting? Kid dragged you from the water, and had a little fun with you.” Not sure why that last disturbing thought crossed my mind, no, please, not that. Continue reading “Walking. Touched by a Terrapin.” →