Two Fleet Feet Out the Door

Tags

outdoors, road trip, running, summer

I’ve largely disappeared online, and that’s mainly because both of my feet have been (literally) running all over the country in recent months.

My days have been filled with physical activity, and my time in front of a screen has correspondingly shriveled. There are a few things I miss about that (for one, my novel has been stalled at about three-quarters done for months), but I am filled with vigor as I travel across the country and put some ground under my feet at every stop.

With more to come on this topic later, I have been putting many miles on my running shoes the last six months or so. Much of it is hiking-specific training out on the streets, running paths, and trails both here in Houston and wherever I am traveling. It served me well in Bhutan, and I expect it to show even stronger returns during almost two weeks of hiking this August in Idaho and Utah.

There’s no better way to get to know a new place, or to poke into different parts of a known town, than to run or walk its streets and trails. Here at home, I’ve investigated new running routes many times a week, often in the very early morning (another new discovery for me!) because of the sweltering temperatures and humidity.

J and I have ventured out to other spots in our own state, like cute, little Brenham, historic Nacogdoches, and beer-lovers’ Shiner.

On my own, I’ve plied the usual summer roads to and from Georgia and Pennsylvania, as well as some little diversions en route:

More special trips included a glorious four days in Colorado where one of our sons lives with his wife, with lots of fresh mountain air and sunshine, family and good food. I learned that running at over 5000 feet of elevation is a snap compared with running in 90% humidity, and we all put in several solid days of hiking in the foothills nearby.

A four-day trip to the Bay Area/Marin County was another huge winner, with jogging and biking paths at every turn, as well as a chance to do some nice, long hikes, including the 15-mile round-trip Dipsea Trail, several 10-mile days in Golden Gate State Recreation Area and the Marin Headlands, as well as some city time, which of course included a walk over the Golden Gate Bridge and back.

I squeezed in a girls’ weekend in Boston where our daughter is living for the summer, and on Saturday we cranked out a 5-mile run and a follow-up 10 miles of walking in blissfully cool temps in the city, both excellent compensations for all the pizza, ice cream, wine, and lobster rolls we consumed in two days!

A four-day holiday work break for the 4^th of July found us in the oldest town in Texas, surprisingly charming Nacogdoches in the Piney Woods of the eastern part of the state.

I once again explored on fast feet by morning and at a hiking pace all afternoon for a few days here and in Ouachita National Forest in central Arkansas as we moved north. We finished off the weekend in Fayetteville and environs, once again relishing Northwest Arkansas’s natural beauty and quirky little towns.

When my feet have finally been propped up for the evening, I’ve tried to keep up with your blog posts and happenings. Some days I may have mustered a mere “Like” (or not, if you don’t have that button), but please know I have still been reading and keeping up with your adventures. The more I have focused on what is here in front of me each day, the less I have been able to keep up with social media. It’s been very freeing, and over time, any stress or guilt I’ve felt about it has dissipated as well. My Instagram time has contracted to nearly zero hours per day (and Facebook was already dead to me), allowing me to read blog posts, which I find much more fulfilling, as well as all the other literature I consume on a daily basis, while still spending much of my day out in the real world.

As summer and the tug to be outside wane, I’m sure I will reappear more regularly in this space and in yours. Meanwhile, happy summer to all from wherever I am at the moment!

Summer Interlude

Tags

beach, driftwood, Georgia, out of this world, St Simons Island, summer, Weekly Photo Challenge, youth

A seasonal time warp dropped me into a brief summer idyll last week. In the day and a half it took me to drive nearly halfway across the lower U.S., I transitioned from late winter rain and fog to luminous blue skies, cottony clouds, and soft, warm air.

In the early hours, the atmosphere was thick with fog and the greasy refinery stench of East Texas, Lake Charles, and Baton Rouge. As I pushed on, the petrochemical panorama eventually gave way to tangly brown swamps crouching below the causeways of Louisiana.

For me, it’s always an eerie part of the drive – a divided road propped up on pylons above the brackish water, followed by bridges over the Atchafalaya Basin’s Henderson Swamp, an enormous and ghostly pool of water in which half-buried trees appear to be drowning. Billboards hawk boudin and cracklins for miles, neither of which tempted me to stray from my path hard east.

The mist slowly lifted, and so did my spirits, as I spied skeins of birds unspooling over the low-country wetlands of Mississippi and Alabama and, later, a shimmering expanse of water dancing with hard white points of light near Pensacola.

The second morning, fields of bristly marsh grasses appeared, my sign that coastal Georgia was near. I-10 straight east, Houston to Jacksonville, and then a short northern jog. That’s all it took to land me in a hot summer milieu that smelled just like childhood.

It lasted all week, a gift of lightness and the very best kind of nostalgia. “School’s out!” the fresh air cried, and we flung the windows open and popped in the screens at my parents’ sunny house. It was summer break in mid-February, and I hungrily inhaled the sweet and earthy scent of grass and warm soil. I marveled as flowers and ferns began to sprout from one day to the next. A chorus of birdsong was my morning wake-up call, and cheeping insects serenaded the dog and me on her last trip outside each night.

I pedaled an old bike into the wind, savoring the delectable mix of hot sun and cool air on bare arms. In the company of my parents and younger sister, we revisited old pastimes, ducking into the DQ for long-eschewed treats and lolling on the couch with the NY Times crossword in the evening. The aroma of fresh shrimp and veggies rose from the grill, and a hint of chlorine, fertilizer, and light mildew – all smells I strangely love – put the finishing touches on my olden-days reverie. The years and cares that had been piling up rolled away, and if my birthday hadn’t been at the end of that exquisite week, I might have been convinced I was several decades younger.

Which leads me to graceful aging …

A highlight of the week was a walk on Jekyll Island’s Driftwood Beach, a popular, well-loved shoreline that had somehow eluded my acquaintance in many years of being so close by. It was immediately obvious this had been a terrible oversight!

Jekyll’s northern beaches are slowly eroding; each year, more and more sand is pushed by the sea and dumped on the south end of the island. In that process, centuries-old live oaks and pines are uprooted and scattered across the hard sand that is constantly pounded by ocean currents and then baked by the sun.

A few trees remain rooted but most are sun-bleached carcasses strewn about like sculptures in an outdoor art exhibit. While the otherworldly scene has become popular for wedding shoots, my sister and I used it like the children we had regressed to, climbing barefoot on trunks, branches, and toppled root systems as our father amusedly looked on.

The driftwood has an admirable, simple beauty, a spare look that’s enhanced by the blue of the ocean beyond and the pinkish tinge of early sunset. We roamed aimlessly for a while, climbed some more, took our photos, then slipped back through the ferns and palms to the road. Like the buffed and whitened old trees, my own troubled edges were scrubbed clean by my week in the sun, and I came home rejuvenated, eager to reclaim the simple pleasures of summer and youth, every day.

Home again

 

Invincible Summer

Tags

optimistic, summer, Weekly Photo Challenge

When I was a teenager, I was so cranky in the wintertime that my mother gave me a little framed quotation by Albert Camus. (On a normal day, she was more likely to give me an earful for my griping and whining, but I think she secretly sympathized.)

In the years since, I have gazed upon that little frame so many times, willing a little shoot of green joy to poke up through the dirt of midwinter. Of course, Camus was talking about much more than two seasons, and it is that daily rush of renewed hope and optimism – that invincible summer within – that I hang onto for dear life.

I was born in February, the darkest, meanest month of all – a month of short days, low sun, and a paucity of plant life. By then, we have descended at least three months into winter, and there are many more weeks to go before we can climb up and out, until life and warmth return to my part of the earth. Glistening snow has turned to filthy mush, and the cozy glow and attraction of hot tea and cozy throws and fires is on its last flicker.

In a literal way, I escape winter by physically seeking summer – flying south as far as necessary to chase down some heat and sun. In recent years, I’ve made it to Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia and, just last week, Nicaragua, in the dead of our winter and have thawed my bones enough to get me into spring.

But I don’t think that’s what Camus had in mind, and the kind of summer I keep inside me is a different and truer source of warmth. Although you will frequently find me bitching about the weather, the summer sun burns inside me in other ways. We live in a mess of a world, but I stubbornly see more lightness than darkness, more good than bad, especially in my travels.

In the midst of dire poverty, I have seen incredible generosity – the poor helping the poor and even offering the rich the little they have. After the worst days of clouds and rain, I have witnessed the best sunsets. And trite but true, the happiest people I have met have the fewest material goods.

Even at home, my invincible summer dawns every day. It starts with coffee, and builds through little things like a bit of fresh air, a job well done, a smile from a stranger, a new book suggestion, the dawn of comprehension in a student. On the darkest days, in the depths of winter, that tiny flame somehow stays lit, and I am grateful for it.

Prompted by the Weekly Photo Challenge: Optimistic

Friday Photos: Is it Summer Yet?

Tags

Australia, Boston, Cinque Terre, Croatia, Door County, Glacier National Park, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Santorini, summer

It’s only November, and already a deep chill has settled into my bones. A dose of summer memories from this country and others seems like just the ticket today. Let’s pretend we’re warm …

Door County, Wisconsin

Dublin, Ireland

Buza Bar, Dubrovnik, Croatia

Farmers Market, Boston, Massachusetts

Adare, Ireland

Gruz Harbor, Dubrovnik, Croatia

Vernazza, Cinque Terre, Italy

Glacier National Park, Montana

Vernazza, Cinque Terre, Italy

Mykonos, Greece

Late summer, North Dakota plains

Christmas Day lorakeets in Wahroonga, Australia