FIELD NOTES: When you feel like walking away from everything...

...first, you buy good boots...

...and it doesn't hurt to buy matching shades to walk into the sunset...

FIELD NOTES: These boots are made for walkin'?

...I figured I could take a couple of loops around Harrybrooke after tutoring today without having to stop home to change…I have “Saturday-wear” on …skinny jeans, cotton sweater, down vest, ponytail…I even have sunglasses and my Klean Kanteen of water…however,I forgot to throw my walking shoes into the car…but my gray suede boots are flat…they should be okay… we have been experiencing a Seattle-ish winter so I have a good amount of company in the park…quiet company, contented company, nature’s company…I start at the Sri Chinmoy sign as usual and breathe in the softened Februrary air…as incorrect as butter left out on the counter too long, yet somehow delicious …two-thirds in, I notice my thin dress socks are sliding around a bit in my boots…uh-oh…friction is not good on the sole…perhaps I should only do one mile today…but it’s like flossing my teeth…I won’t feel right if I don’t complete the routine, so I go again…at the point of no return, the bottoms of my feet are burning…as a proud walker, I am taken by surprise as I gain new appreciation for athletic socks and shoes…in hoping to avoid blisters, I think to walk off-road, as the words of Nancy Sinatra follow me from a long-ago 45 on my little record-player…”These boots are made for walkin’, and that’s just what they’ll do, and one of these days these boots are gonna’ walk all over you”…dum-dum-dum….back then, I had no relationship to that song other than payback for one of my three older brothers or the pre-teen pecking order of fifth grade girls…I give up trying to keep my standard pace of a fourteen minute mile and just try to tip-toe my way to the car, thinking about aloe…these boots aren’t made for walkin’...but they did make me think…

FIELD NOTES: when the enormity of nature...

...requires the acuity of haiku.

Sunday Afternoon at Harrybrooke

Geese swim where lawn grew.

Walk? Melting flood, but......Japan!

My troubles: puddle.


Unbelievable footage of Japanese tsunami 03/11/11

FIELD NOTES: Harrybrooke Meets Benedict...

Snowstorm Haiku

It's a whole new world,

perspective changed/nowhere fast:

Cancel, dig...relax.

FIELD NOTES: It's all the same to me...

A walk in the park

…I drive out of my neighborhood…notice a dog with his nose to the ground on his front lawn…a young man sits on his front stoop playing his guitar…at Harrybrooke I notice the reflection on the water looks just like the photograph I took one April ago. Wasn’t I just raking? Wasn’t I just bracing for a long hibernation? And here it is…the closed bridge that used to be the way to town…the horizontal branch I admire like grandma’s arm guiding the river water below…watching her adorn herself…and un-adorn herself…for seventeen years…someday she will collapse…and the bridge…and me…but not today… today, spring’s white-noise water falls from the rocks in twenty-thousand tones to make it all the same…back in the neighborhood, I notice the dog…in the exact same place…as is the young man and his guitar…my heart hasn’t missed a beat…like a wheel, I have been nowhere…and everywhere…because it’s all the same to me…

FIELD NOTES: To be of few words...

Harrybrooke Haiku

...is sometimes to be wished for…

October Walking

Leaves tattle: "Feet! Feet!"
Soft brown needle shower, I
seal lips, hold breath…fall…

FIELD NOTES: Food in the air...

First Sunday of Fall


...I tend not to do my power walking in the rain, but today it was just a mist…and I really needed a walk…the diminutive swan family that I had seen streaming by me in Harrybrooke awhile back was waiting for me, but in a much larger form…clustered on the island looking like great scoops of mashed potatoes rather than the delicate floating line they once were…the water is getting colder now…the newly colored leaves of autumn are making a pretty collage on the wet black pavement and altering the aroma of the air…the Fish & Game Club is hosting a picnic in the pavilion and on my first walk around there is the charred salty scent of hot dogs…I don’t crave hot dogs, or even eat much meat, but this smell makes me believe that I once lived in a cave in the woods and hunted, tearing apart roasted meat with my canines, wild-haired, wiping my mouth with the back of my earthy hand…on the second go ‘round, the smell is toasty sweet…marshmallows on slender sticks…and I arrive at gentle thoughts of civilized campfires…I smooth my hair from the frizzling rain and think about standing in my kitchen making Cortland applesauce…

FIELD NOTES: Only the haiku remains...

Walk in Harrybrooke...
Red-winged Blackbird in the marsh!
Camera not; but...EYES.

Image link found at mayo.personcounty.net

HAIKU for PEOPLE

I and the Bird #100: Most Said in Less Award (22nd on the list)

FIELD NOTES: Uncommon scenery....

...I was not looking for on my walk, but this has been hanging on a tree at the back parking area for weeks and, for humor's sake, I finally documented it. I remember going for a walk near our favorite 'swimming hole' with my grandmother. She spied a nice pair of pants lying in the woods and used her walking stick to lift them out of the brush. Her enthusiasm curdled when a swarm of flies was released from what was covered up there. I am sure any of us who walk have encountered strange articles and I always wonder...where do their owners think this stuff is going? My PBS station 'happened' to show Dances With Wolves last night...and I 'happened' to think of the saying below...which 'happens' to be from a Native American chief named Seattle...where my daughter 'happens' to live...connecting lines...

"Leave nothing but footprints and take nothing but memories."
- Seattle, Chief



SPRING BLOOM-ERS?










...............ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE TRACK?



FULL RAINBOW IN FRONT OF GROCERY STORE.............

...........................HILLSIDE FULL OF TRASH BEHIND IT.

FIELD NOTES: Less talk...

...more walk.

...I am spellbound by the colors on the water…so much so that after my walk in Harrybrooke, I drive back home to get my camera, and return, even though I know I am a mediocre photographer even in digital terms. I keep shooting and shooting and shooting, but none does justice in interpreting what my eye can see…and in that moment, I have a deeper, and more personal, understanding of the impressionists. I am Monet, I am Cezanne, I am Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro, Cassatt and even beyond to Van Gogh and Gauguin…because I have their eyes…

FIELD NOTES: How do you see it?

A walk in Harrybrooke on the first full day of spring...


Comment with your gut reaction...

FIELD NOTES: My head is turned by the sound of something coming out of water...

Early Sunday afternoon

...but it is too cold for what comes to mind. A late winter storm predicted and some of us are out at Harrybrooke as if we need to take a deep breath before we are submerged yet again. New England creates greediness for the smallest scrap of palatable weather and, at the same time, an abiding appreciation because we are so often waiting outside paradise looking in. Later, I will take a drive by Candlewood Lake and marvel at the way its surface motion from the sixty degree day we had on Friday has been frozen as if stopped in mid-stir. But just now, the sound of a lone man in a sleek canoe, slicing through the cold in the low water with conservancy and control is the score and choreography of the day…and my head is turned as if it were a swan…

FIELD NOTES: We have left the month of my father’s birth…

A new month begins

…and my father’s death…and the inauguration of President Obama. We have left the month of ice storms and school snow days and unreliable walking paths. It was a notable…and harsh…month, but it was true to itself. It did not tease me with false warmth or promise to be comfortable. It made me think and work in ways I did not expect. It even made me work at taking a walk to find comfort. It did not hold my hand, but pushed me forward…into the month of Valentine’s Day…and Presidents’ Day…and the arrival of seed catalogs and the beginning of the impatient transitioning to spring…a season that is not necessarily prettier or gentler (depending on how you look at things) but one that hopefully will be true to itself. It is forty degrees today so I have more company at Harrybrooke, not like the days that required gumption. I suddenly have a flash of understanding as to why people climb mountains...in a word, it is resolve. Many of the frozen patches I hopped around last week in Harrybrooke have turned to puddles. I marvel at the give and take of the season, how it just happens and how I almost miss noticing a melted puddle as the pleasure of the day…and suddenly, two Canada geese appear on my second go around. There is evidence of lots of activity in the footprints left all over the snow-covered landscape - hungry deer, comic squirrels, feral cats, and maybe a logy skunk or raccoon - and I sense the interruption of hibernation, of dormancy, right under my feet…and I enter the month of births…Lincoln and Washington and Susan B. Anthony…and the births of my sons… days to celebrate.

FIELD NOTES: It's a lot like pepper...

Saturday walk

...It is known by my children that I hand grind peppercorns on the largest setting over my homemade turkey soup…or eggs…or pork roast. They chuckle and shake their heads in dismay when I choke out the words “I…love… pepper!” They don’t understand. It has finally managed to get near the freezing point this week so, being desperate to take a break from death and taxes, I gather mittens, ear muffs, leggings, hooded sweatshirt, down vest and head to Harrybrooke. Because it has been so frigid, most of the way is packed tight with slick snow and black ice. My speed is impeded by having to constantly skip to where I think the best traction might be and when I feel my heel slip, I envision my first broken bone…and my children shaking their heads in dismay that I walked this way not once, but twice. They don’t understand. But here comes an older woman wrapped as crazily as I am…and a grandpa with a pink papoose…the wind chill stinging us all. I remember as a child the beige pepper shaker my parents had - a 1960’s “space age” styled thing - which I decided to clean one suppertime by blowing off the pepper residue inside its recessed top. I’ll never forget the burning sensation on my eyes and in my nose…and yet…I do love pepper. My life isn’t like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates, it’s more like pepper…and, just like braving the wind chill, there is real satisfaction…once you get past the sting.

FIELD NOTES: The sunshine will be busy today...

Through the bedroom window

…coming and going, welcoming and warming…or distracting and glaring depending upon my needs…brilliant and all too brief for this time of year. It will radiate through the cold winter air and I will remember its warmth on my body for as long as possible…like a daughter. I have a daughter and I am a daughter…my mother was a daughter and her mother was a daughter…we are a steady stream of light-years. Yesterday the sunshine escorted us as we drove through Hartford to the airport while 30 mph winds tried to push us back. Today the light behind the curtain drew me from slumber. It will take me to Harrybrooke for a much needed walk...and back light for me the black knitted glove stuck on the end of a branch reaching up in an unrequited handshake to last spring’s tattered kite. It will disappear on the horizon, but I will know it is still there…behind something…or shining on another part of the world…it is always somewhere. It will help me remember the way my grandmother sang 'You Are My Sunshine’ in her Polish accent…and its solar power stored within me. The weather forecast for Seattle is rain and 40 for the coming week. Yesterday I had my daughter and the sunshine with me; today I have the sunshine.

FIELD NOTES: When I heard the snowplow in the early morning...

Afternoon, top of December

...I thought about being able to take my first snowy walk of the season, easy to think of in a warm, cozy bed on a Sunday morning. But when I do get to Harrybrooke at three with the temp on the dashboard reading 33, I am surprised by a powerful slap of wind and consider turning back. Not wanting to be a fair weather friend, I think “maybe, just once around” and doesn’t the ice trimming the waters’ edge look beautiful…like white lace? Then my stiffened cheeks mound up at the sight of a tiny snowman atop the post that holds up a small metal trash can. There is playfulness in winter, though the brisk wind continues to test my friendship as the huge white pines swoop down to flap at me like some fraternity initiation. The wind sounds vast and hollow and searching. The earth has turned one cheek away from the sun. Through cold-induced tears, I blink up at the sun that is no longer a radiant sunflower yellow, but so pale that if a sunbeam were to reach me, it would break over my head like a thin pane of ice. Over the river and through the bare trees, the flags on the golf course still standing in their holes bring soldiers to mind – so incredibly dutiful in their discomfort. I pass a few hearty souls…women walking…the passing greetings are less warm and more earnest, mostly an acknowledgment of what we must continue to do. I walk by a pair of lanky, layered, knit-capped figures blending in with the tree trunks…except for the cigarette and cell phone. A different purpose. After one mile around the park, the wind calms for a moment and, as if I have proven my mettle, Harrybrooke grasps me with steely arms, acknowledging my admiration, my respect and…that I am still here. My fingertips are warm now; the blood circulates under my frozen outer core like the mud of hibernating ponds. I feel as if I have been swallowed into the warm belly of a beast, welcomed now, although my body’s survival strategies are not nearly as ingenious as the frog’s with its antifreeze and adaptable metabolism that allows it to sleep winter away. The only sound today is a rhythmic whacking – firewood being split? In the periphery I see the movement of two sweatshirt hooded figures on a back deck. I guess it’s the whack of a staple gun installing Christmas lights – more dutiful discomfort. I have to watch my step on the way out; the wet pavement is icing up before me. Returned to my car, I find I don’t really need to crank up the heat because, except for my exposed face feeling like a drawstring is tightening around it, in the warmer interior there is enough contrast to feel the comfort. I am a lucky one; I can choose to survive this climate, I can choose to challenge myself in the cold because…I am not homeless, because there is certain warmth awaiting me. Really, I am only toying with survival …at least for today….

FIELD NOTES: From a distance, they look like broken eggshells...

After school

...the brown and beige and brittle oval leaves on the pavement scattered in the pattern that their tree chose to let them go in. With childish curiosity, I purposely walk on them to test their strength, to see if I can crush them, make them crunch, but their lifecycle complete, they seem to be apathetic to my footsteps. Some of Harrybrooke’s privacy has disappeared with the leaves; I feel as if I am in the shower tub with no curtains or standing by a bare window, exposed as the early dusk descends. The skeleton that supported the body of summer is now forced to show itself. I still find beauty, albeit coarse and gray and dry. It’s different and takes the sophistication of the senses to appreciate. Bony fingers try to point it out, but passersby linger less and find it necessary to keep warm with rapid movement. I read the Lake Lillinonah announcement of the annual draw down for seasonal service and dam maintenance, but nevertheless it is disappointing to find the Still River wizened. I sense an omnipresent dryness in the air and smell wood fires burning, feel my ears pinched and notice my nostrils dripping. I hear a far-off leaf blower and suppose there is a man at the end of it, earnest in his belief that he can control nature, at least a little part of it, at least for a little part of a day, at least from a distance...

FIELD NOTES: “Please stay away from the snapping turtles”...

...are the words printed in marker on the copy paper sign posted at the entrance road in Harrybrooke. “No colords” are the sprayed words that had to be scrubbed off the Sri Chinmoy Peace Mile sign on the exit road in Harrybrooke. Cautionary, incendiary, directional, instructive, restrictive, prophetic…..signs.

FIELD NOTES: In the middle of the night, Hanna and Harrybrooke were wed...

Hurricane season

...and late in the afternoon I went to their reception only to find the green groom still engorged, glistening under the waters that she had poured out over him with no restraint, her rain of passion turning him into an enormous puddle. I could not complete the mile loop and instead walked back and forth avoiding, almost with a sense of embarrassment, the post-coital pond where sky and land had made love with such ferocity. Pent up and bent on fulfilling my two miles, I headed for the bridge. I could hear the Still River roaring uncharacteristically, then saw it tumbling all over itself under the grate, foaming and spitting and thrashing as I quietly made my way out to the road. The road, now closed to through traffic, used to be the main route for commuters looking for a path of least resistance. It felt peculiar walking where automobiles once dominated and as I crossed over a defunct bridge back to my car, I noticed how the trees and weeds and grasses had narrowed it, vigorously reclaiming their territory, thin green blades determined enough to break open the black asphalt and stand in witness: “I, Hanna, take you, Harrybrooke…”

FIELD NOTES: Freedom came not from learning to ride my bike, but from leaving...

August afternoon

...my yard and driving on the mother-forbidden street! At Harrybrooke today there are lucky children, lucky because they have parents who brought them here. A toddler boy jogs alongside his stroller. The preschool teacher in me smiles when I hear the dad ask his boy to count the Canada geese. Although liberated from his stroller, he was not liberated from his parents’ fears: “Don’t go so fast, that’s how you fell last time. Slow down, slow down! That’s how you fell! Don’t go near the geese. Geese are very, very mean. They will bite you!” A helmeted elementary-aged boy learning to ride a two-wheeler is cheered on by his parents until he tumbles in the pathway. As I approach from behind in my power walk, I prepare to root for the boy myself and tell him to keep it up, but Dad is sputtering next to Mom: “Don’t stop pedaling! Come on, pedal, pedal…aw, not again! Don’t stop pedaling! (sigh) He KNOWS how to do it!” I close my mouth not wanting to go into the fray of family frustration. Instead, I notice how the cattails have evolved into their coveted state, brown and velvety and oblong, the frankfurters-on-a-stick of nature and how the voice of Harrybrooke has deepened from the soprano of spring peepers to the bass of bullfrogs. So will the voices of the young boys I notice today. It’s true that geese can bite and boys often don’t learn their lessons as fast as we’d like, but the streets of nature have often taught me to stand back and watch with my hands behind my back. Some things...water, wind, storms, weeds...will take their own courses anyway. And it is I that needs to find freedom in this loss of control. (Sigh)