It’s
a little after 9:00pm, Christmas Day, 1972: Middle Sister Debbie and I, wearing
new matching floral flannel pajamas, are tucked under matching chenille covers in our shared-bedroom
beds, gazing across the darkened room, mesmerized by our really-truly favorite shared
Christmas present-- a glowing, color-changing electric clock. It
takes just a moment for the clock’s color wheel to pass from pink to yellow to
green to blue and it is, in a word, groovy. Mom and Dad are on another level of
our Grantham Road split level, ensconced and exhausted in the paneled family
room, taking a moment for themselves after a long thirty-six hours of making
everything merry for all of us-- and presumably not playing with our fascinating-yet-dangerous Christmas gifts still arrayed under the tree-- gifts like wood-burning tools that get hot, a toy
oven that gets really hot, a bottle-cutting kit (what could go wrong with
an arts and crafts concept utilizing razors and more applied heat) or a Creepy
Crawlers Workshop with possibly toxic Plasti-Goop and a metal mold tray that gets really-truly hot. But I digress: that’s another blog post,
tentatively titled Helmets Be Dammed: The Evolution of Toy Safety and
Creativity in Our Nuclear Family. Toddler Sister Marci, on the other hand, is having a moment of her own-- not with a groovy color-changing electric clock but with
a Winnie-the-Pooh mobile, calculating how many times she can beckon Big
Sister, Me, down the hall to wind the mobile… Barbie… wind up Winnie da Pooh…
Barbie… I pad down the hall, winding with exasperated affection as Marci stands in her crib, swaying to the music until at long last it is time to sleep, and she collapses in a lemon-meringue sleeper-suited heap in her cozy
crib. Winnie-the-Pooh, Winnie-the-Pooh, Tubby little cubby all stuffed with
fluff....
Just a moment... Across
history, we humans have spent a lot of time creating calendars and marking aforesaid time. Clocks and calendars maintain a sense of order, perhaps convincing us that we’re doing something to stave off complete mayhem and utter chaos. But beyond sundials, hourglasses, and digital atomic alarm
clock radios, I like to believe that there's a Memory Clock-- one that considers seconds and minutes, hours and days, weeks and years, but also Something More. The Memory Clock is a clock of the heart, of the mind, of the senses. It measures time, but in imprecise, ever-changing ways. And so, as we prepare to flip the calendar to a new year, I'm rewinding moments on The Twenty Twenty-Two Memory Clock....
Just a Moment: Susquehanna River Ice, East Donegal Township, January 21st.
On an overcast afternoon, we walk a stretch of the Northwest Lancaster County
River Trail, detouring to take a closer look at the winter-sculpted
Susquehanna. The Susquehanna-- from the Lenni Lenape descriptor muddy river or, alternatively and strangely, oyster river-- is one of the oldest waterways in the world,
broad and ever-flowing. This afternoon, the river is moving with dark urgency, bearing the reflection of a low, leaden sky southward to the
Chesapeake Bay. A solitary Kildeer joins us at the shoreline, darting here-then-there
across shallows littered with small shells and pebbles polished by millennia of sculpting water. We can see each breath, our voices carried by the rising breeze,
our words lost to altostratus clouds…
Winter, the artist—
as if ice-bristle
brushes
sweep the river, swirl
the sky, and tincture
the landscape with a
palette
of blues and steel gray.
Just a Moment: Snow Geese at Middle Creek, Stevens, February 24th.
Today,
we hope to catch a glimpse of the Snow Geese, to understand a bit more about their
annual migration and brief layover at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area in Lancaster
and Lebanon Counties. As we approach the Willow Point viewing area, we detour
to keep our distance from traffic, from the fray of humans with binoculars and
tripods and impressive photographic equipment, finding instead a quiet spot on a
distant shore of the dammed lake to take in the spectacle. There are thousands of Snow Geese, and thousands more, gathered on the lake. There is much flutter, a
multitude of noisy, nasal one-syllable honks forming a cacophonous, unforgettable
chorus. It is dissonant and beautiful and moving and… over there, somehow incomprehensible,
unreachable. As we turn to the car, we
spot a single white feather resting on the winter-brown grass of this far-flung shore—a token from the Snow Geese. It is quavering in the breeze, poised to
meet late-afternoon sky at any moment, trembling, as if to say, we’re here but
leaving soon, here but leaving soon…
and in that moment
we understand the Snow Geese
met at Middle Creek.
Just a Moment: Shenks Ferry Wildflower Walk, Conestoga, March 22nd.
We walk slowly, with care, looking for wildflowers in bloom-- some so tiny, so tentative, so delicate, that one might walk right by them if one is inattentive or bent on another purpose. But here and there and everywhere in this sheltered ravine, once you really-truly start seeing, we spot Lesser Celandine, Round-Lobed Hepatica, Bluebells, and Buttercups-- a tiny silent chorus in the warming, waking wood. The flower names are charming, evocative: Purple Archangel, Virginia Spring Beauty, Dutchman's Britches, Bloodroot, aka Sweet Slumber. Brad clambers down a steep slope for a closer look at a brilliant blue swath of Siberian Squill. It's almost as if we're being presented an exquisite, ephemeral bouquet...
and how this hillside
renews abiding faith in
quiet miracles.
Just a Moment: Raven Run Ramble, Lexington, Kentucky, April 25th.
We climb up: the trail passes through forest freshened by yesterday’s soaking
rain and then to palisades high above the Kentucky River. Then down: the path descends a curving hillside, through a broad, sweeping glen appropriately
named the Flower Bowl, and then down some more, following Raven Run for a time-- sparkling water flowing across modeled limestone. Then up, up, up-- climbing once more to an open meadow and the trailhead. The wildflowers we find along our up-and-down way fill the morning air like lyrics to a song: Toadshade Trillium, Squirrel Corn, Sweet Blue-Eyed Mary, Trout Lily, Downy Yellow Violet, Rue Anenome, Dwarf Larkspur, Blue Phlox...
fleeting wildflowers
blooming in the moment and
dancing in the light.
Just a Moment: Following Climbers Run, Pequea, May 9th.
A
spring storm, now past, has freshened the woodland floor and unfurled the
canopy. Climbers Run is cascading with lovely spirit through pristine forest into
this narrow gorge, the rock-ledge hillside festooned with Mayapple and
Fir-Moss, Pink Spring Beauty, Wine-Cap Mushrooms, True Morels, and Hay-Scented
Fern. We walk slowly, with attention and care-- picking our way on the narrowing
trail and across jumbled rocks, all the better to look and see. Our sporadic
attempts at conversation falter and fail-- our voices washed away, away by the
churning, tumbling water. Climbers Run is on a journey, a mission of sorts…
finding the Pequea,
joining the Susquehanna—
soon meeting the sea.
Just a Moment: Early Summer Walk, Palmer State Park, Street, Maryland, June 29th.
It
is peaceful beneath the canopy of this shadowed, green-hued forest, the way
lined with Interrupted Fern, Pincushion Moss, and Jack-in-the-Pulpit. We pass
crumbling rock ruins, remnants of another time and a history different from our own.
We come to Deer Creek. There are sun-kissed daylilies at water’s edge, powder-dusted
swallowtails browsing on gravel bars, and ripples and reflection as the creek
evolves from rapids to languid flow. In the meadow, we find Cabbage White Butterflies, Creeping Thistle, Carolina Horsenettle, and Sweet Milkweed arrayed beneath an expansive blue sky. The forest is not the creek side, the creek side is not the meadow-- and yet these
places flow together to make the perfect whole. Step by step, moment by moment,
the stories meet and mingle, making memories...
and how we hold them—
carry them and call them
forth—
always and again.
Just a Moment: Almost-Full Supermoon, Stone Harbor, New Jersey, July 14th,
We
are walking the beach at day’s end. The last flourish of setting sun paints sand
and sky, dune grass and cotton clouds shades of blue and purple and pink-- before
a gradual fade to inky black. The almost full moon-- the full Buck
Supermoon-- rises from the horizon and lifts above the sea. There is something
lovely and poignant and timeless about this moon-- the moon that shone over our
childhoods, that watched over our loved ones, that follows our life story, that
illuminates Seven Mile Island tonight. The moon, like a Memory Clock. Across the
millennia, how many have gazed upon this moon with delight, with despair, with
wonder…
an ancient lantern,
illuming joy and sorrow—
swept by time and tide.
Just a Moment: Butterflies and Quiet Miracles, Speedwell Forge County Park, Lititz, August 3rd.
Our morning walk through the unassuming forest at Speedwell Forge is interrupted by a quiet miracle-- hundreds of Eastern Tiger Swallowtails and a handful of Black Swallowtails congregating on Cup Plants and Joe Pye Weed along the trail at wood's edge-- immersing us in graceful flutter and light. While all of this can be explained by science, by botany and entomology, what cannot be explained is the moment-- how interlopers like us found ourselves right there, right then. The miracle is the moment, the Something More...
we happened upon
a kaleidoscope of bright,
joyful butterflies.
Just a Moment: Camp Michaux, Gardners, August 25th.
The
winding back road leads straight to the past-- through places we knew long ago
when we were growing up-- through the forest we recognize, by
whimsical landmarks-- Laurel Lake still reflecting each moment, each cloud. Our
destination is a secret World War II interrogation camp, tucked into the mountains
of southern Pennsylvania, undisclosed for a time, certainly unknown to us until
recently. Now we wander through ruins, finding purple thistle and
partridgeberry striving amidst crumbling walls, a long-abandoned Civilian
Conservation Corps fountain incorporating decorative quartz and blue slag from
bygone ironworks, a lone monarch visiting wild, nodding Goldenrod, moss
creeping across stone slabs, encroaching upon haunting inscriptions left behind
by German prisoners of war. We wander through ruins, nature reclaiming not only
what we remember but also all that we forgot and what we can never know. The
story is so broad…
our view so narrow,
it seems the best we can
do
is to hold each day.
Just a Moment: Meeting the Bay, Havre de Grace, September 29th.
We’re walking the
Promenade on a bright and breezy day. Beyond historic Compass Point Lighthouse,
we spot a White-Headed Gull perched atop a pier stanchion, a solitary sandpiper
at lapping water’s edge, and geese gaggling in the shallows. We’ve followed the
Susquehanna River, the ancient, storied river fed by one hundred streams, to
where it meets the Chesapeake Bay at Havre de Grace-- the Harbor of Grace. The Susquehanna, like a Memory Clock…
in joy, through sorrow,
across all time and
temper,
the river flows on.
Just a Moment: Autumn Walk at Wolf's Hollow County Park, Atglen, October 11th.
There’s something in the air this
morning, something about this rustic park, its beautiful bluffs, and the
quiet reaches of picturesque Octoraro Creek that has me thinking about the things we
carry beyond a pack and a hiking stick-- moments and memory we bear across time,
with calculus ceded to the heart. We walk down
a farm lane lined with Autumn gold and through a landscape of tinctured leaves that
light the sky and drift with leisure to the trail. We find berries and hear
birdsong; we see a Marbled Orbweaver spinning an elaborate web and Variegated
Fritillaries lifting from bloom to bloom in the broad meadow. We gather this moment,
adding it to what we carry, and somehow it lightens all burdens as we continue
across rolling, harvest-gleaned fields to the horizon…
We cannot measure
the weight of the past,
the breadth
of our life stories.
Autumn in the Tidewater, York River State Park, Williamsburg, Virginia, November 18th.
Late
afternoon light filters through long-needled pine and washes our path with
moss-shadow and burnished leaves. We’re walking the Taskinas Creek Trail, passing through forest and golden marshland beneath a big chilly-blue sky. This
estuarine environment, a rare and delicately balanced place where freshwater of
the York River and saltwater from the bay meet, is filled with vibrant Beauty
Berries, Crane-Fly Orchids, Sculpted Pinecones, White Moss, Christmas Fern,
and ice in sheltered pools. We pause for a snack-- pretzels and licorice and cool
water-- by a large fallen tree. Time, we know it’s fleeting, and yet could we
pause for just a moment, and might we linger? When tomorrow dawns, we’ll be
miles and moments from here and now-- our footsteps vanished. Perhaps we could
take a breath of this lovely place with us when we go.
Earlier
in the day, we visited Ben’s Bench, a memorial organized by Ben’s William and
Mary teammates. The site overlooks the York River along a trail where the team
routinely trained. It’s a remote, peaceful spot. Only the sound of an oyster
boat on the river and the call of a perching Bald Eagle disturbed the quietude
during our visit. As we were turning from the bench, the eagle showed himself,
taking flight over the river. Breathtaking. The bench is simple, beautifully
milled and crafted by one of Ben’s teammates using wood from the fallen
Majestic Oak at the site. It’s a moving and fitting remembrance of Ben…
perhaps a whisper
of memory will remain
at Taskinas Creek.
Just a Moment: Return to the River, Riverfront Park, Marietta, December 25th.
Wrapped in layers of winter gear, we take a Christmas Day stroll
along the banks of the Susquehanna River-- a bracing breeze, swift water, and flowing ice journeying southward to the Chesapeake Bay. Through the seasons, across time
and temper, despite rock and mountain and all manner of barrier, the river continues. It’s fascinating, a miracle
really, how water finds its way…
and we, wanderers
beneath the broad,
varied sky,
might learn from the
flow.
Just a Moment: Christmas at the Grand Canyon South Rim, 2012.
we like to believe
in always, in forever,
in a present tense
that’s
already past…
Just a Moment: Walking the Grand Canyon South Rim, December 2012.
It’s
true, the seconds and minutes, hours and days, weeks and years-- and lifetimes-- will pass. And while the Twenty Twenty-Two Clock is winding down, the New Year will bring opportunity to be present in the moment and to wind-and-rewind the Memory Clock. The clock of the heart, of our minds, of
our senses—tells time that means Something More. Wishing Us All a Twenty Twenty-Three filled with minutes that become moments, memory-making, quiet miracles, and Something More.
