I can't sleep…
But none of that matters now. I look out at the hills and the lake again. I’ve been driving along these roads for nine decades, but I’m still struck by just how beautiful it is, and I never want to leave.
— Lisa Ridzén, When the Cranes Fly South: A Novel. Alice Menzies (Translator) (Vintage, 8/19/2025)
Notes:
It’s 6:15 a.m, 61° F with light rain, on a dreary Friday morning.
61° F (!) in August, after several weeks of blistering heat, imagine that. I lift my face to the sky, and let the cool morning breeze and light rain work themselves into my bones.
I cracked open a new book last night, Linn Ullmann’s “Girl, 1983.” Hypnotic scenes drift in and out as I walk.
But sometimes there’s a blessed respite – like a sudden breath of cool wind from an open window…I shook the duvets and smoothed the sheets, tidied the bedside table, opened the window wide and flung the curtains apart. I wanted air and light to stream in to where I lay in the white linen – and sounds that told of a city that was awake. (Linn Ullmann)
It’s been 1,914 consecutive (almost) days on this morning walk at Cove Island Park. Like in a row.
And even though I’ve been walking in this same park, on the same track for 1,914 consecutive days (like 5.25 years now), I’ve stepped foot in the Cove Island Park Wildlife Sanctuary, maybe 10x. This small refuge is less than 1000 feet from where I park my car at the entrance of Cove Island Park.
Continue reading “Walking. I’m lost. I’m lost. I’m lost.”
Anna wandered down to the sea. She knelt in front of some of the stone nest houses and peered in. Anna’s life here was, I was coming to see, devoted to paying attention to – or, more than that, being completely committed to – the beauty of the world before her. She seemed to have done it by cultivating an extraordinary form of independence from other people, their values, and their noise. She used every ounce of her willfulness to shut out the world and concentrate on these simple things. More and more, she reminded me of my grandfather. He spent many hours walking his farm and learning about the wild things upon it, like it was the most important work a human could do. Growing up, I’d wanted to be like him. And I was, for three or four years, after I left school. I’d go for walks over the fields; on sunny nights I’d sit with my back against a rock or climb into the lower branches of a tree and watch the world happening around me. I’d spend hours just watching deer or foxes or badgers, or swifts tumbling and screaming through the sky. I’d lie on my back in the grass and watch the swallows hawking after flies round my dad’s cows, or the brown hares playing in the meadows. But somewhere in the years since, I’d stopped being that person. Life was too busy to stand and stare. I became responsible for boring, necessary things. At one point I had three jobs and worked most nights and weekends. D. H. Lawrence once wrote that the industrial age had created a new kind of human, a machine-like man with iron in his soul. I had become one of them. The past few years had been swallowed up by striving. I remembered a friend back home trying to tell me, gently, that I had become almost manic. But the longer I spent with Anna, the more that way of being felt like a sickness I needed to recover from. A new calmness began to settle over me. It was a feeling I had not known since I was a child following my grandfather round his fields.
Anna reminded me that the first rule of living is to live. To see, hear, smell, touch, and taste the world. The more I tuned in, the closer Anna and I were growing as friends. I was beginning a journey back to the person I had once been – and needed to be again.
— James Rebanks, from the Prelude of “The Place of Tides” (Mariner Books, June 24, 2025)
Notes:
So you were dealing with the feelings we talked about earlier, and you got to a point where you decided your life had to change. One of the things that then changed your life was birding. How did you find it? In the spring of 2023, just before I left The Atlantic, I moved to Oakland from D.C., and one thing that happened was I started paying attention to the birds around me. They were omnipresent in a way they weren’t before. On my first day in my new house, there was an Anna’s hummingbird in the garden. I would go for walks and hear birdsong: the melodious sound of a Pacific wren in a nearby redwood forest. I bought a pair of binoculars and would take it with me on neighborhood walks or hikes. I would have Merlin while I was working and look up occasionally and go: “Oh, that’s interesting. It’s an oak titmouse. I’ve never seen one before.” To me, the difference between being casually bird-curious and being an actual birder is making a specific effort to go and look at birds.
Going from passive to active. Exactly. So early September of 2023 was when I made my first trip to a local wetland to specifically look at birds and nothing else. That was, honestly, a life-changing moment.
Continue reading “What a beautiful balloon I’m carrying with me.”
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: