Isn't it self explanatory?
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These photos and post are in response to this week’s theme for the 52 Photos Project. You should participate, too! Read about how it works here. You can see a gallery of everyone’s photos for this week’s theme here. To see a list of all my blog posts for this project, go here.
Once upon a time, in the first years of our marriage, M and I lived in Pittsburgh, PA. I was working on my master’s degree at the Cathedral of Learning, and M was working at paying the bills and keeping us housed and fed. When the stress of either of those occupations got to be too much, we’d head over to Kennywood, an old fashioned amusement park, and ride the coasters.
I never much liked roller coasters until Kennywood. They scared me to death. I hated the way my stomach lurched when we plummeted down that first major hill. Our first trip to Kennywood, I avoided those rattling carriages of terror.
But there was this one wooden one to the side. It looked quaint. And not too big. I could see the scope of the rises and plummets and they looked bigger than a kiddie coaster, but not that scary. “Let’s try it” we decided, and got in line.
It wasn’t until we were buckled in that we realized the trick: That Kennywood was built over a series of ravines. That there would be no first big clicking climb. That the entire thing was powered by one stomach churning drop, just as the coaster cars left the platform. That the best part of the ride was the part you couldn’t even see while you were waiting, appraising the size of the ride, deciding to tackle it.
There’s no time to prepare or worry. Just plunge, remember to breathe, raise your arms, scream, and laugh while the tears are making horizontal streaks across your cheeks.
The photo above was taken four years before I learned to love that roller coaster (that’s me, second from the right), and two years before M and I became a couple. Most of us in that picture were recently out of college, just embarking on our careers and lives. We were in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, at the trail head at the start of a weekend of backpacking. We had a trail map with a couple possible tent pitching locations circled, a few hours’ walk in. And that’s about all we knew. We didn’t know at that moment that it would start to drizzle, then to rain, then to pour for the rest of the weekend.
We didn’t know about the rises and ravines ahead of each us, the loves, the losses, the jobs, the babies, the miscarriages, the accomplishments, the disappointments, the adventures. We set out, laughing, wholly unprepared and excited for the ride of our lives.
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This photo and post are in response to this week’s theme for the 52 Photos Project. You should participate, too! Read about how it works here. You can see a gallery of everyone’s photos for this week’s theme here. To see a list of all my blog posts for this project, go here.
We all have our quirks, our strange desires, our unexplainable fixations.
Maybe yours include miniature donkeys, red race cars, old marbles, antique spoons, smooth sticks, felted bowls, comic books, spools.
One of mine is yaks. Don’t ask me why. They just fascinate me.
For a small while I entertained the fantasy of adding a yak to our goat pen (imagine the goats’ outcry at that!).
My family—ever encouraging, ever thoughtful, ever patient—somehow found me a real yak bell. Huge and resonant, bearing the dents and rust of age and use.
Sometimes, when the house is too quiet and lonely and my mind is making too much noise, I’ll ring the bell (startle the dog), and imagine myself among those great shaggy beasts, heads down, grazing the grasses and sedges of some high plateau in Tibet. Unperturbed, steadfast, shoulder-to-shoulder with the rest of our herd.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/141357212″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /]
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This photo and post are in response to this week’s theme for the 52 Photos Project. You should participate, too! Read about how it works here. You can see a gallery of everyone’s photos for this week’s theme here. To see a list of all my blog posts for this project, go here.
Last week’s theme for the 52 Photos Project was to take a picture of a place I would show you in my town.
We have a small town. There’s a combination post office/village store/gas station. The store doesn’t stock much, but if you need a bag of chips, or a dusty can of soup, or a dozen eggs, or the newspaper, you can get it there.
There’s a town hall. A town garage. A community center. Several schools. Several churches. Several cemeteries.
There’s a beautiful nursery where we buy our apple trees and blueberry bushes and other perennials.
There are many farms. Many trees (the maples are tapped for sap this time of year).
We have two covered bridges.
We have a dam.
One cafe.
A bank.
A river.
With two branches.
Which is where I absolutely would take you.
The west branch of the Ompomanoosuc river runs through the valley behind our house. Most of the year, H can hear the river’s waterfall from her bedroom window. Right now the river’s run is mostly locked up in ice and snow and the waterfall is just a ripple.
In the summer, we go to one of the swimming holes, and pilfer the day. We hike up the river (water up to our knees) and play in the riffles. We sun on the rocks like sleepy seals.
The picture above was taken last week, before the vernal equinox. Now that it’s spring, the difference is that there are six more inches of snow on that layer.
I’ll tell you what.
I’ll take you to the river, but let’s wait until July. We’ll pack a picnic of a sourdough loaf, a round of bloomy goat cheese, and quart of sweet strawberries. And a thermos of ice-cold lemonade and a jug of beer. We’ll wear our sunglasses and sunscreen and sunhats and moan with our heat-induced laziness. And we’ll try our darndest to remember what winter felt like.
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This photo and post are in response to this week’s theme for the 52 Photos Project. You should participate, too! Read about how it works here. You can see a gallery of everyone’s photos for this week’s theme here. To see a list of all my blog posts for this project, go here.
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These photos are in response to this week’s theme for the 52 Photos Project. You should participate, too! Read about how it works here. You can see a gallery of everyone’s photos for this week’s theme here. To see a list of all my blog posts for this project, go here.
I think we can all agree that this winter has been long by any measure.
Even this week, when the days are noticeably elongated by extra minutes of daylight, the overnight temperatures keep plunging down below -10ยบ F. The alternating daytime sunshine followed by nighttime freezes has glazed the snow with a sparkling layer that fractures with each step. It makes for beautiful but tiring walking.
Because I work at home, I spend too many hours alone in this house and on the trails and hills surrounding it. It’s beautiful. I love this place. But after a winter like we’ve all had, I’m antsy. I need to see people and buildings. I need to eat food that I didn’t cook. I need to buy things that I don’t really need. I need a different view out the window. I need not to see the piles of books and waiting projects.
Long days. Cabin fever days. Seen-enough-of-the-shovel-and-the-wood-pile days.
Probably not coincidentally, New England schools take a one-week break in February. M had to work, but H and I skeddadled to Boston, where my sister took us in and offered us her city.
We went to the most touristy of Boston spots, Quincy Market, where we grazed up and down the central hall of the food building and reminisced about our school days when we’d be set free early once a month from classes and we’d take the bus into town with our friends and gorge on pizza and french fries and then go window shopping at the most ridiculous single-themed tiny shops (one that sold nothing but things with hearts, another that sold only purple objects).
These days, Quincy Market is rather more like a mall, populated with larger chain stores (thankfully, the pizza place is still there). Even so, we enjoyed our hours among the school groups and the tourists, and the cute couple with matching stocking caps, and the new parents pushing baby carriages, and the teenagers giggling next to the candy shop, and the guy playing piano in the central atrium for an hour without stopping.
Our first night in town, we went to play pool. The music was loud, the food was mediocre, but we were there for the pool and the tables were clean and smooth. None of our group is any good at all, but oh did we have fun. We took turns walking around the table, lining up our shots, sinking some, but missing more often, trying out ridiculous angles, and laughing a lot. We got better as the night wore on, and then we got worse as we got tired.
I didn’t think about snow or ice or firewood or the oil tank once.
We’re home again and it’s as bitter as ever. I swear if it’s like this in April I’ll buy a plane ticket to Mexico. You’ll find me there with a pile of books, a plate of tacos, a tall cool drink, and no memory of winter.
Today when I went out the snow was so white, the sky so blue, the sunlight so bright that it was blinding (you know that kind of day when you come back inside and everything looks pink? that kind of day). The river was still frozen over. The dog skittered out onto the ice; he’s either braver than I am or just clueless.
I imagined a giant cue stick in my hand, my bending low over the table of ice, shooting my right arm forward with force, the slam of spring against winter, breaking it, scattering it, and sinking it into the corner pocket.
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This photo and post are in response to this week’s theme for the 52 Photos Project. You should participate, too! Read about how it works here. You can see a gallery of everyone’s photos for this week’s theme here. To see a list of all my blog posts for this project, go here.
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This photo is in response to this week’s theme for the 52 Photos Project. You should participate, too! Read about how it works here. You can see a gallery of everyone’s photos for this week’s theme here. To see a list of all my blog posts for this project, go here.
Did I have a song in my head this week? Of course, I did…
http://youtu.be/1NIz0IrpmX4
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These photos and post are in response to this week’s theme for the 52 Photos Project. You should participate, too! Read about how it works here. You can see a gallery of everyone’s photos for this week’s theme here. To see a list of all my blog posts for this project, go here.
I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
There’s more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.
–The Indigo Girls, “Closer to Fine”
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These photos and post are in response to this week’s theme for the 52 Photos Project. You should participate, too! Read about how it works here. You can see a gallery of everyone’s photos for this week’s theme here. To see a list of all my blog posts for this project, go here.