Category: Memories

A holy time of year

This morning, in the midst of my routine and sleepwalking life, was a truly unexpected moment. I was travelling my morning commute (the sans husband one, sadly). I was passing the Wyoming graveyard, which is large and low, and sometimes misty in the mornings. This morning it was pale in filtered morning sunlight, with iced-over snow between marble tombstones. I was passing between it’s high stone walls and a strip of houses backed between graveyard and gray cliff this morning, when I saw low movement. I braked, so as not to hit whatever it was. And there, 7 miles from the center of Boston, in the quiet urban landscape between rowhomes and tombstones, walked a red fox. His tail was bushy. He looked energetic and cheerful, crossing in front of me. Against the paleness of the morning, he was brightly and vividly red.

How does this fox come to find a home in the midst of thick habitations? Does he make his living on pets incautiously let outdoors? Is he on some journey, headed towards less and less hospitable lands? Why was I given to see him in this time between Solstice and Christmas?

There are rational answers for all, but I do not feel the siren call of rationality. To the opposite, right now I yearn for mystery and nature, the unknown and unknowable, for purpose and intent in the universe without my necessarily needing to know what that purpose is.

And today, this morning, I saw a red fox in the Wyoming graveyard, beshrouded in snow.

Requiem for a torch-bearer

Our beloved friend and companion, the valient Knobby Foot, has passed on
to the warrior’s world of Valhalla. We found him last night, carefully
composed on a bier, with a spear in his hand and a determined, noble
look on his face. A note placed beside him read, “Do not stand at my
grave and weep. I am not here. I do not sleep.”

Knobby Foot was a true hero. He bravely faced and vanquished many foes,
including various fruit flies and paper towels. He had the capacity to
carry nearly his bodyweight in dried fruit in his cheek pouches, and was
often seen swaggering across Herot with cheeks wider than he was long.
He had been injured in single combat at an early age, earning his name
as well as a clubbed foot. Although the smallest of his litter, and
despite having the broken limb, he was also the fastest and one of the
most engaging. He proved that diminuative size was no obstacle to a
creature with his heart and courage.

Knobby Foot was predeceased by his mother Mrs. Robinson and his father
Mr. Jingles. His fruit-fly-foes will raise a glass of fermented tomato
in his memory. His many friends and admirers will miss him. His name
shall never pass from story or song.

Homesickness

I have lived in New England for 7 years now (not coincidentally, the same amount of time I have been with my husband). The last three years I have lived here full-time; no summers spent in the Northwest for me. 7 years represents just under a third of my life. My adult life has been lived in New England — four years of college, three of marriage in Boston. I have lived in my sunny apartment in Roslindale for far longer than we spent at the Shillinger house. And yet.

Not so long ago, I treated myself to an hour long massage at a spa near downtown Boston. Although I spent the first part of it consciously paying attention to enjoying myself, I inevitably slipped into the half-consciousness of relaxation, where my mind wandered through its subconscious world. Where, you may ask, did I go? Did I wander Newbury Street and visit the Commons? Did I fly kites on Peters Hill in the Arnold Arboritum? Did I canoe the Charles?

I was treated to a slide show of the loveliest, the most beautiful places I had ever seen in the Northwest. I saw sunset on the replica of Stonehenge near the Columbia. I saw the lightening storms over Horse Heaven. I walked the quiet trails of the West Side of Mount Rainier – walking from deep forest to high alpine and returning to deep forest. I saw the rocky crags of the Coast, the salt water beating almost to the mossy feet of tall fir trees. I saw the bountiful plenty of a clear cut in August, full of red berries with the soft sound of a distant chain saw and the haunting whistle of a steam engine in the background. I saw a cathedral with walls of dark hemlock, a stained ceiling of dappled needles and leaves shifting to let the sunlight down, and a faerie floor of bright green wood sorrel hiding the shifting and unreliable bones of former branches. I saw the beaver dam and the blackberry bramble. I saw the gold of Lithia Park in twilight after Shakespeare. I saw the silhouette of Indian riders on an unexpected hill. Thick snowflakes fall like a movie prop on a mountain pass outside of Missoula. My feet walked almost every step of White Pass, pausing especially outside of Nachez where I pretended to be an Indian and realized that I did not have super-human eyesight.

I think a lot about the beauty of the Northwest – especially when caught in Boston traffic on a rainy Monday morning. I have come to realize why I miss it so very much. New England is beautiful. The miracle of spring is one I never appreciated before, the architecture is lovely, the flowers or plentiful and colorful, the hills with their dappled colors are enchanting. I like to watch the fens move with the wind, and mark the progress of leaves. But New England is somehow staid. It is a question that has been answered. I look at the Blue Hills and I see the Blue Hills. They’re pretty. Yay.

When I looked out the living room window at home, I saw Round Top, with its rumors of Indian caves. It has a set of cliffs on it (which I have climbed) that seem unutterably mysterious and profound. Beyond it are mountains in which a person could get lost. I know the next road that direction, and it is far away and lonely. After that there are no roads until you come to the desert. Behind them and to the left stands all 14,411 feet of Mount Rainier. Majestic. Dangerous. Powerful. Beautiful. I once saw the moon, Venus hanging brightly on its every word, rise above the ghost of that mountain. I have stood on her hips as shreds of clouds have torn themselves on her trees, but I do not know her inner secrets. She has not confided to anyone living.

The beauty of the West I miss. They mystery and promise of mystery I had at every unexpected corner, I miss more.

I had considered writing about the fear that the mystery is gone – that the overlay of meaning was the fevered imagination of a youthful mind. There are other things there too – traffic worse than even Boston, strip malls, and more disabled cars on blocks in lawns than people. There are a proliferation of things that tarnish or hide the beauty. But I know it is still there. Every year I have come back and walked the quiet woods. The magic, the hope, the mystery – they have waited for me patiently like a field of fox glove in the warm sun waits for the forest to reclaim it. It waits for me to come there and live again, and dream more deeply, and discover that it is even more beautiful than I remember.