A nightly ramble

More often than not, Idriss and I take a walk after dinner. It's almost always dark by then, but that's OK. We have a ritual walk, too. We head down into the village and to the waterfront park, where we loop around the flagstone pathway, and turn towards home. Perhaps with a few lingering moments on the bench, to take in the smell of the sea and the fresh night air. 

It's the nightly walk, it's our nightly walk, and it's different from the daytime walk (down the hill, along the waterfront, and back up through the south side of Sea Cliff).

Tonight we were tired and started late, and so we took a shorter route, to the large, flat, square village park not too far from home. It's big enough to have a couple of little league baseball diamonds, with plenty of open space in between. 

But it's planted all along the borders with old, tall trees - so if you don't see the baseball diamonds, it feels more like you're on someone's extensive and gracious grounds. 

Even better, it's so thoroughly, incredibly dark for a suburb; it has no lighting at all. 

So tonight we went and stood in the middle of the field, to take in the darkness and the moon and the sky. And what a sky: a deep peacock to the west, with a bright indigo fading to navy over our heads. The stars were out, and the puffy clouds were highly visible, perhaps because the moon was very bright. 

And from the middle of the dark field, looking up, with the voluptuous lines of the clouds and the jagged half moon and the bright twinkling stars overhead, it felt like we could see to the ends of the universe, and it was curved over our heads in an infinite loop. 

Walking through Sea Cliff on a foggy evening

There is a fine fog outside tonight. I first noticed it on the train on the way home after work. A thick fog that colored the familiar ponds and fields and ravines a deep blurry grey.

After dinner, Idriss and I took a walk to the water. The mist dampened our skin and quieted the night. The soft air enveloped the treetops and gave the sycamores that line our block a filmy feel.

I was tired but the fog was so gentle it seemed to fit my mood. The mist combined with the sea and the fresh smell of the earth felt like an herbal tonic. I feel I will sleep well tonight.

Sea Cliff Sunsets

Sea Cliff is a little village perched on cliffs overlooking Long Island Sound and Hempstead Harbor.

Our main village beach faces west, and so all year round we have lovely sunsets. With the days longer, I have been able to get home from work and see the sun set a couple of times. And last night, we went to East Beach in Glen Cove to see the sun set from a slightly different perspective.

The first photo is the sunset at Sea Cliff a few days ago...and below is the sunset at East Beach in Glen Cove. I love the variance in colors, the cools and hots, the pinks and oranges, in the different evenings. The Sea Cliff sky looks almost like the height of summer, while the Glen Cove sunset is more serene and wintry. I love the soft rose fading to grey and the gentle ripples forming a plaid patchwork on the sound.

The Baron in the Trees

I have been reading a number of what I guess I would call "nature books." They range in topic from ancient walks, surviving in remote islands, swimming through public waterways across a country, climbing mountains, etc. You get the picture. I am hoping to write about some of them here. 

But one of my favorites was actually a novella, "The Baron in the Trees", by Italo Calvino. I was keeping a notebook at the time, to keep track of my reading lists, and I was so moved by the elegant writing that I wrote down the end passage, which inspired my name for this blog. 

"Ombrosa no longer exists. Looking at the empty sky, I ask myself if it ever did exist. That mesh of leaves and twigs of fork and froth, minute and endless, with the sky glimpsed only in sudden specks and splinters, perhaps it was only there so that my brother could pass through it with his tomtit's tread, was embroidered on nothing, like this thread of ink which I have let run on for page after page, swarming with cancellations, corrections, doodles, blots, and gaps, bursting at times into dear big berries, coagulating at others into piles of tiny starry seeds, then twisting away, forking off, surrounding buds of phrases with frameworks of leaves and clouds, then interweaving again, and so running on and on and on until it splutters and bursts into a last senseless cluster of words, ideas, dreams, and so ends." 

Italy Calvino

Building a framework, or way forward

I’m writing this blog because I’m tired of not being able to drop everything and move to Yosemite, to live in constant awe of the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. 

I’m writing this blog because my day in, day out work / commute / whatever feels like a slog through muck and crowds.

I’m writing this blog because my father passed away suddenly two days before Christmas, and I need some strength to find a way forward. 

Yes. I need to be outside. I need a framework for my life that includes the outdoors, in spades. 

Maybe when I am smarter or more creative, I will figure out how to be outside on the coast of Wales for a month. Or how one writes a book about exploring deserted islands in the Hebrides. Or hiking some ancient temple circuit in Japan.

But for now, I need to keep my job in Manhattan. I need to keep my house in Sea Cliff, a little village by the sea on Long Island. And most of all, I need to inject as much outdoors, as much wild, as I can into my day. 

I can’t say why I need to be outside. Here is what I know about it, though: Time doesn’t stop. It’s racing by, all the time, and it definitely gets faster as you get older. When I was little, I had to race to catch up with my tall father, who walked briskly and, as he said, with a purpose. I kept trying to tug on his sleeve, and ask him to pause a moment. It's the same thing with time, only there's nobody to actually talk to. Let me take this in, please, just for an extra minute? Right. 

But in face of this ridiculous sensation of time speeding up incessantly, I find that being outside is what helps things calm down. Taking a long walk. Climbing a mountain. Pausing to see the sunset from the cliffs. Taking an extra moment to stare at a winter night’s bright sky. Exploring the angles of the tidal pools in Sea Cliff harbor, day after day. Looking for herons early in the morning at low tide. And so on. 

So, I need to work. I need to stay put. Like most of us, right? But I need to shift around some priorities. Outside of my obligations, my priority is getting outside. Wherever I can, whenever I can. Yes.