Auld Lang Syne-off Twenty-Twenty-Two: Just a Moment... We Are Rewinding the Memory Clock

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.

Our holiday card photo this year was taken at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, Christmas 2012. We remember a bitterly cold morning, angled sun filtering through snow clouds, exquisite light moving across the canyon’s unfathomable expanse. Ben had already been on a run, of course, but the three of us bundled up to walk the canyon rim, talking and laughing, marveling at the moment and the miracle before us. And we ate warm cinnamon buns and sipped hot cocoa. At Christmastime 2022, the photo evokes happy recollection, treasured reminiscence, and a reminder that what we do in this moment becomes tomorrow’s precious memory…

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.