Southbound Train

Where I Live

It is green where I live. Soft, rolling, gentle green. The trees push up to rub against the sky, bend down to caress the earth.

It is lush. Things grow here – flowers, plants, animals, people. The land and the air are nurturing. Life seems to flourish without too much strife.

It isn’t fancy, but it looks nice. It isn’t likely to show up in a magazine or win any awards, but that might be because no one thought to look here for award winning things.

It is well known, but not really – more like a catchphrase than somewhere people really know anything about. I think people would be surprised at what they saw if they bothered to look around.

Where I live is not populated entirely by toothless people who talk about “the dia-bee-tez” or are always “fixin’” to go to the demolition derby in cars painted with the Stars & Bars. Where the media tracks those people down every time they mention my state, I do not know. It is about as representative as showing only movie stars when referring to California. Or only white people, for that matter. Tennesseans have teeth.

They also have concern for their friends, their neighbors and complete strangers who might be in a bad place. I have never seen people take care of each other the way my neighbors do.

Where I live, people talk to me in the grocery store. They wait for an answer to “How are you” before rushing on to talk about themselves. They are polite. They are considerate. They signal.

Where I live, people wave when they pass another car, a walker, a biker – not because they know everyone, but because it is the nice thing to do. (I wave, now, too.)

We are an easy target, I guess. Easy to dismiss, easy to make fun of – a middle state in the South, not so forward thinking, still willing to farm and make money other hard ways, still willing to wear our overalls and sit on our porches. We don’t look so shiny and slick to the movers and shakers, but we live what all the glossy magazines say is so “in.” Simple, local, fresh, community.  Buzzwords, elsewhere. Here - life.

We are not so into the pretension. Social graces, yes. Presenting a good face, yes. Pretention – not so much as you might think for a place that has a steeplechase in the spring and sometimes wears hats and gloves.

Where I live has its problems, too, just like everywhere else. We don’t do everything right here. We need to recycle more and drive less. We need to remember that some people worship a different god but are still good people. We need to open our minds as easily as we open our hearts.

But, damn it, this is where I live, and I love it. And I am proud of it, and fiercely protective, and I don’t care how backwoods you might think we are here, or how “unessential” we might be to the national economy, or how easy it is to dismiss us as just another slice of backwards flyover country – WHEN THE STATE FLOODS, WE ARE NEWS.

Thanks for the apology, Anderson Cooper, but maybe someone could have noticed us drowning out here without a country music star calling it to media attention.

Yes, the rain stopped. And the ground has dried (but not as much as you might think). Life is back to normal, mostly, but we all cringe when we hear thunder, and  the clean up continues and will for a long time. There are still plenty of people out of jobs, out of homes, out of luck. But because we take care of our own, where I live, Nashville will be ok.

Where I live. Y’all may think it is hokey, but I’m pretty proud of it.

Two Years

There is a robin sitting on my bird feeder right now, looking in and chirping with a beak full of dried grass. I’m not sure what she wants from me, but she’s obviously in the throes of nesting. Its that time of year.

I’m nesting too, though with less dried grass. We didn’t travel in March and for the first time in memory I wasn’t chomping at the bit to get to the airport, get on an airplane, head somewhere else. In fact, as we did just that, headed westward last Friday to spend the weekend in California, I squawked and complained about it. I didn’t want to leave, I didn’t want to fly, I just wanted to feather my nest and watch spring explode. I’m amazed at my willingness to just be here, to enjoy the simplest of pleasures  - the birds, the flowers, the way the sunlight falls across my bedroom in the morning.

The honeymoon is officially over, today, but I’m clearly still besotted with Tennessee. Like a bride who still sees Prince Charming in the man snoring on the other pillow in the morning, I might even breathlessly tell you that I like it even more here than I did two years ago. I might even be telling the truth. Two years! It amazes me that we have been here that long; it seems in some ways like just a few months ago that we left LA. A year – I could believe a year. But two seems impossible. I think the first months were a blur - I can hardly count them, and who could blame me? Boxes and meals out don’t really make for a sense of permanence. Last year was our first “full” year, but I spent a great deal of it working and being stressed about working and the other significant chunk travelling, the upshot of which being that I wasn’t present here in Tennessee for as much of it as I could have been. And now this, the unceremonious ending of the honeymoon phase, two years gone, just like that.

This spring is familiar, mild and bloomy, roadsides awash with color and the air scented sweetly in the long evenings. We had a thunderstorm two April 8^ths ago, and I think we could hear thunder tonight (we certainly did last night – the cat was afraid and woke us for reassurance). The neighborhood is dotted with cherry trees in full bloom, and thanks to my initial neighbor envy I now have one of my own. The dogwoods are even blooming, spreading their lacy arms out to the redbuds tricked out in shocking purple – the debutante and the bad girl of the tree set. Springtime is Tennessee at her most seductive.

I enjoyed my time in California; no denying that. Being with the people I love was worth leaving my nest, worth the pangs of self-pity that I no longer live in a cosmopolitan place, worth the realization that I am a bad 80’s song and that I do love LA. We were there at the same time last year, and coming back then felt like a 2000 mile wide game of Twister. With a foot in each place and a heart in California, my hands were frantically looking for a place to find balance; I was afraid they might land in Kansas, and then what? I came back to Tennessee last April 8^th and had to ask myself – well, how did I get here? I liked it but it wasn’t mine and I put off the milestone until summer, hoping the dislocation would pass.

Somewhere between last April and this one, mixed in with a soggy summer and a beautiful fall, too much work and house guests galore and making friends and crying over missed ones it did, and Tennessee became home. Not just where I live, a pretty place, a nice house, friendly people – but home. I knew yesterday, as we ran errands and admired spring, that I was where I was meant to be. I’m comfortable. I like it. I miss it when I am gone and still gasp at the beauty of it when I drive to the store for a mundane errand. 

I marvel at my good fortune of landing here, in this neighborhood, this town, this area, this state, even, when there are so many other places I could have ended up.  Leaving LA was painful, harder than I knew at the time and still, sometimes, harder than I want it to be. The nice part of the reflection I am allowing myself today is that I know now that it was worth it, that it was the right choice. We both feel giddy to be home, happy and lighthearted and so pleased with where we are – the dislocation of last year and the anxious knot of two years ago have both gone, melted out of existence with the emergence of the daffodils this spring. Someone else can have those ruby slippers I wished for last year – I’m already where they would take me.

Waiting for the Martins

I’m hoping to become a landlord. There’s a lovely, shiny new birdhouse set up in the garden, positioned with lots of flight path and great potential for flying insects. The white exterior is just what fastidious Purple Martins want, close enough to the house to be sociable but not so close as to be crowded. No overhanging branches or wires that will allow squirrels access. Holes that are Martin sized, perches that are perfect for Martin feet. All the pieces are in place – except for the Martins.

Establishing a new Martin colony is proving more about waiting and hoping than I thought. Somehow, I believed that if I built it they would come, like legendary baseball players sliding through the cornfield. I thought that wanting the Martins and making preparations for them was going to be enough, and that by putting the house up early I’d catch those “early returners” riding north on the first currents of spring. I read the websites and the bird books, opened the required one or two doors on the house and expected to see Martins within a week. I’m still waiting.

We’ve had some false hope – starlings have come to the house twice now, once right away and once just this week. They’re dark, and about the right size, and I get excited that finally, my Martins are here – until I see the yellow beak that no Martin would countenance and I know my hope was wasted. This morning we had starlings inside the house, thrashing about to get in and out because the Martin sized holes really aren’t quite big enough for them. We lowered the pole and tipped the house on its side to encourage them to leave. Leave they did, both of them, in a flurry of feathers and squawking and wrenched wings as they flew off and gave me up close evidence that they were not the birds I was looking for. We closed and locked the doors to keep the marauders out, and still we wait.

I know, logically, that the birds we want, the juveniles who are looking for a new home, won’t be coming until later in the spring – early summer, even. I know that I have to be patient, that good things take time. That we don’t always get what we want right when we want it. That maybe I’ll appreciate my Purple Martins (if when they arrive) that much more. But I’m ready for them! I’m excited at the thought of hosting a colony of birds, counting the eggs and watching the fledglings. I’ll happily make them scrambled eggs and buy freeze dried grubs if the insect buffet is light. I’ll do what I can to make their little birdy hearts sing and give them a good home. Don’t they know that? Can’t they sense that I’m here, with my little bird house and my open field, just waiting for them to nest?

I’m looking for ways to improve my odds now – considering decoys and recorded bird calls. I’m certainly keeping the pesky starlings out of the nest and I’m trying to keep up the hope. I know that as we head into April and then May and then (gulp) June our odds are increasing, just based on numbers. But I worry, a little, when I see that waiting house out there in the middle of the quickly greening garden, worry that it will remain empty, that spring and new life will pass it by and that come fall it will be as it is today, just older and still waiting for a family that never arrived.

Mercurial

Definition of Spring, right? Mercurial? Changeable? Inconstant? Fickle, even? It certainly applies. Most of last week was gloomy and gray and generally down in the dumps. Then Friday was glorious – the daffodils started to bloom and spirits lifted. Saturday was somewhere in the middle – gray, sunny – gray, sunny. Sunday? Wrong term – it was back to rain. No sun in sight. My moods are mirroring the season, and it is driving me nuts – on sunny days I’m balanced, productive, positive. Cloudy ones find me dragging out of bed, plodding through work, sitting dumbly in front of the TV after dinner and generally being a lump. I knew the sun was important to me, but this season is making that terribly obvious.

We got some good work in Saturday, prepping to make hay while the sun shines, or some such Farmer’s Almanac drivel – tilled the entire vegetable garden, treated it with Black Kow fertilizer (call to Bob: hi, we have 500 pounds of shit in the trunk), treated the fruit trees (ambitiously known as the orchard) and I dug up the space for my soon to be cutting garden. I’m so excited to have flowers I can walk out back and cut with abandon. I can’t wait to look out my bedroom window and see waves of color. I sat with a friend last Monday and we poured over flower catalogs, picking out this and that and making sure we had the right balance of color to build bouquets. I tilled under a lot of dirt to make a home for the flowers - because I didn’t have enough garden to weed last summer…

Sometimes I think I’m best at biting off more than I can chew: the vegetable garden was 30x70 last year, and I just added 10 or 15 feet in length so as not to “crowd the corn.”  And then there’s the cutting garden I’ve created -  a whole new space behind the house, wrapping around the tree/bush combo that looms beyond the patio and extending into a sizeable rectangle to the right of it. I’m not going out there with a tape measure – I don’t really want to know how many more square feet of dirt I need to care for this summer. The vegetable garden is already like weeding a 2500 square foot house. My back and legs ache at the thought of bending over to take care of all that dirt, all those plants, all those bloody tenacious weeds. But then I look at the seed catalogs.

Seed catalogs suck me in. They convince me that growing three varieties of squash is perfectly reasonable, that four types of corn will give me the sequential harvest I’m looking for. I love picking the different varieties, looking at last year’s notes on what performed well and what didn’t (and thinking that the longer I garden, the better my histories will be), considering trying new things just because. I have a mental image of myself in a floppy hat collecting beautiful produce from well-manicured rows. This year I’m going to have fewer weeds, because it is the second year for the soil, because I’ve taken better care of it, because I’m going to learn from my mistakes. This year I’m going to manage my drainage and not let the tomatoes and melons drown. This summer I’m going to get the cucumbers trellised early, keep the weeds down early, actually thin my row crops correctly. This is going to be a wonderful gardening summer, unless we have another unusually wet season…

I know March (Spring in general) is the wet time of year here, but this rain, this gray, this damp – I’m afraid it is just a sign of ongoing dampness to come. What if we have another miserably wet summer? What if all my tomatoes drown again, sad twisted black wraiths in a mosquito filled swamp? All the nice garden tools I want, all the special organic fertilizers – what if they are all a waste of money because the summer dumps water rather than sunlight on my garden? And the cutting garden – I have no idea what I’m doing! Just because I managed one scraggly row of zinnias and cosmos last summer doesn’t mean that I’m going to be successful with flowers in bulk. I don’t know if I should plant in rows or scatter the seed randomly or maybe plant in blocks? What if it all dies and looks weedy, or it doesn’t get enough sun, or the cats roll around in it and break the flowers? Then what?

But the sun is shining today. The daffodils are blooming and I read my gardening books and made notes on my seed lists about when to plant what. I’m doing the hard work now, it will pay off in bushels of vegetables and armfuls of flowers later. I’m sure of it – until the clouds come back and the crisp shadows slide into muddy light – and then the garden is sure to fail. C’mon, sun, stay out, because my mood swings are driving ME crazy! I can only imagine how Mike feels.

Spring calling card?

I have three purple and two white so far. Keeping Mike away from them so he doesn't think this is a saffron harvest!

Bird Brained

I think maybe moving here has made my brain soft – I’ve developed a thing for birds. Not that kind of thing. Geez. But still – a thing.  Actually, the bird thing started in Africa, and it was completely unexpected. A safari is about the big five. Giraffes. Hippos. Exotic cats and baboons and baobab trees – not birds. A couple on our safari (who had been to Botswana) started the whole thing. Birds, they told me. Don’t neglect the birds.  My face must have given me away because they insisted. They weren’t “into” birds either, but in Africa…. I mentally filed that advice away as nothing short of bird brained as we bounced down the rutted track into the Ngorongoro Crater and strained my eyes to see if maybe those far off shapes were zebras. We stopped and I leaned over the edge of the truck to point my zoom at those – yes! they were! zebras! when Marvel stopped me. We’ll be so much closer later, she said. Look over there, in the thorn tree. We stopped for the bee eaters.

Bee Eaters? I looked where she pointed and there was a pair of tidily plump birds, backs as green as envy and chests like yellow crayons. A thin black mask extended front and back of the eye and turned into a long curved beak when it reached the end of feathers.  They were sitting closely together and when I pointed my camera at them I saw a smudge of turquoise eye shadow in the black band. Clickclick went the shutter, and again, clickclick and somehow in those fractions of seconds I was won over to the avian side, though it would take a few more days before I realized how totally I’d been converted.

Of course the ostriches were a great spot, striding along the crater floor with easy speed, giant flouncing dust mops of birds, pink neck and legs making them look like half naked girls in French Maid costumes. The flamingos, too, were a sight, just a smear of dingy pink along the edge of the shoreline, feathers in the offseason color of cream. The Secretary Birds were hard to miss, tall homely girls in black stockings with wide butts and confused looks on their faces. And then there were the guinea hens, roving bands of polka dots that swerved confusedly beneath bushes and bobbed their little blue heads in unison.  But when I got excited about a close up portrait of an all brown Hammerkopf I knew that I had gone over the edge. For the rest of the safari, I was as jazzed about good bird sightings as I was about anything else. The tiny and jeweled malachite Kingfisher, the swooping elegant fishing of the Spoonbill, the Egyptian ducks (heavily into eyeliner), the entire tree full of lemon-lime Lorikeets, even the vultures, one variety in particular looking like an aged and ominous undertaker in a shabby suit. All these I thrilled to (and more!) but nothing quite had the cachet of the famed Lilac Breasted Roller, LBR for short. Our safari friends had seen them in Botswana and were on the lookout – when we finally spotted one, I understood why. The body of the bird is a bit scrawny, but the colors! Miami Vice turquoise on the back of the head and underside of the lower body. A spot of metallic blue on the wing, a rumpled gray head and then the eponymous lilac breast, all in perpetual motion through the sky.

So, yeah. Birds. But that was Africa, vacation, a place with more variety than we can even imagine or take in. Who knew that the avian flu would lodge in my brain and move here to Tennessee? I knew I was in trouble last year when I spotted a pair of bluebirds outside the kitchen window, but the winter proliferation of cardinals has been my undoing. I love them, all cheeky chirps and saucy crest. The black mask and thick beak give them character far beyond their actual intelligence and I’ve set up a feeder right outside my office window so that I can lure them close enough to watch. I’ve made a friend, a vocal boy who sits on the top of the shepherd’s hook and complains about the type of seed I’m providing. He likes to chase off the other comers, too, but he can’t keep them all away, and over the past week I’ve seen house finches, bluebirds, sparrows, mockingbirds and a few others that my trusty pocket guide has failed to identify.

The robins have been flocking all of a sudden, great fat chests glowing warm in the sun that is venturing out from winter. I think there are blackbirds by the creek, but they don’t come close enough for me to be sure. I know I’ve seen a few jays and a few woodpeckers and there are hawks a plenty every time we leave the house, intently hunting from the telephone lines. I think it is only a matter of weeks before my wild turkey shows herself again, and as long as she doesn’t appear feasting on my tulip bulbs, we’ll continue to be friends. I’ve got a house to put up for the purple martins, in hopes of attracting a colony, and I think I heard the finch pecking at my back window last night.

I don’t want to jinx it, but the bird behavior and the sun and the feel of the air are telling me it might (just might) be the beginning of spring. I’ve liked winter, been pleased that it held on tightly to the cold and the snow and the sparkling frost, but I think I’m ready. Ready to work in the earth, sit in the sun, watch the birds and hear them sing. I want to see the bulbs bloom above the dark cold dirt, see the leaves appear on the trees, drink in the sweet smell of growth. As much as I love the cardinal for his flashy winter color in a sea of gray, I’m ready for the sweet spring of a pair of bluebirds.

Tsunamis and Turtles

Hawaii turns me into a morning person like nothing else can. Realistically, I’m sure the time difference is the culprit, but I like to pretend that I’m a better person there, kinder and more easy going. Pretend I wake early because the mynah birds are engaging in morning chorus that I don’t want to miss, because the flowers are turning their faces to the sun and I can, even in a hotel room, smell the pikake. Make believe that the fresh morning (so shiny I think each one is the first dawn, ever) is so irresistible that even I, a confirmed and crotchety night owl, want to greet the day singing. Prosaic reasons or not, I was awake Saturday morning when Anna texted me at 7:30. She was sorry it was so early, but were we ok?

I looked around the room, looked out the window, looked down and thought, yes, but, oh no. I suppose that like most of us after 9-11 my first thought was airplanes and I loaded CNN before Mike could turn on the TV. Once I saw “earthquake” and “Chile” I knew that the next topic was going to be “tsunami” and “Hawaii” and my mind had a moment of blank. That was the ocean I could see out the window, after all. Further googling and watching of local news plus a call to the front desk both filled in the blanks and alleviated any urgent worry. Our room was on the top of a 25 foot cliff, the waves were expected in the 3-6 foot range, and the disaster team told us we could stay put.

It was barely 8 and we had empty stomachs and three hours to wait until wave time, so we walked to the shopping center three hotels down, looking for food. There were other people out too, mostly talking on cell phones and (like me) taking photos of the beach for potential “this is what it used to look like on Ka’anapali” documentation. The restaurants were closed, the hotels were serving only $30 buffets and we decided that with the roads still open and a supermarket a mile away, we’d try for that option. Too late, as it turned out – the supermarket was turning people away at the door. We scored a smoothie from a gym and headed back to wait it out along with the rest of the island. Our block of rooms fell in a safe zone, so we split our time between the newscasts and the whale watching, with increasing time going to the whales as the morning progressed.

I’d seen a whale, actually, as we were landing, and it seemed unreal, a frame from a Discovery Channel show, a large gray shape in the water below, moving with surprising gracefulness past a toy sized boat. Driving from the airport to the resort we stopped at a crowded scenic overlook and stared, along with everyone else, and the three or four spots of whale activity not so far from shore. There were geysers of spray blown straight in the air, dark shapes breaching the water in low arcs and sometimes a billowing wave following the improbable sight of a whale coming vertically out of the ocean. I’ve never been whale watching, never had the desire, but I was entranced by the whales. Any time I looked at the ocean, there they were; it was harder to miss them than to spot them. Saturday morning was no exception and I think most of us held captive on our black and craggy volcanic cliff looked at that as a good sign. If the whales were playing, certainly they could sense no great malevolence in the ocean. And playing was the only way to describe what the whales were doing, really. I saw splashes and waves and rolls and more than one perfect tail fin waving at me before slipping back into the blue. A mother and calf were lolling close to shore and the baby was practicing the big kid moves – a breach, a pectoral slap, a little mini tail lob. It was particularly endearing to see it attempt the spyhop – slowly it raised its (comparatively) small nose and head out of the water, straight up. It wobbled, spun a little, then fell back in. I could only imagine that it was proud of itself for trying.

We were, undeniably, stranded for the time in paradise. The sky was brilliant cerulean blue, the ocean beneath it a gleaming rumple of silk. The breeze was soft and scented with the mix of flower and growth and salt that is unique to Hawaii and the sun was just on the uptick of hot, seeping into my skin as I shielded my eyes with my hand and watched the whales play. At the low lying resort in view to the north of us, the palm trees leaned over the empty, smooth butterscotch stretch of beach, white wavelets foaming over the sand before sinking into it entirely. Tropical postcard paradise, unaware by all appearances that a small wall of water might be, at that moment, headed towards it with destruction in tow.

I wasn’t afraid. Disconcerted, maybe. I knew we were safe, and I knew that most everyone else on the islands was as well – the evacuation procedures were through and the news media on the job. The possibility of the destruction of homes and shops and roads and potentially lives was certainly there, but I had a gut feeling that the entire situation would end up exactly as it did – a wonderful exercise in understanding that the islands can, with advance notice, handle a potential emergency with grace and minimal fuss. I couldn’t quite picture the worst. I would have preferred, as I think we all would have, to not spend the majority of a beautiful day wondering what the ocean was going to deliver, but that uncertainly and missing breakfast were the worst part of the day. I read a book in the sun, listening to the lulling and ancient songs of the whales. I watched the mynah birds bully the plovers over crusts from my sandwich.

Later, when the all clear was given and the pools and beach were again our playgrounds, I snorkeled among the Moorish Idols, the Trumpetfish and the Humuhumu-nukunuku-apua'a.  A puffer fish swam below, paused, eyed me and came closer than I felt necessary. I think my hands looked like potential food, and I was floated as motionless as possible hoping I would become boring. I did, and he slipped off, hunting for another treat. Close to shore Mike pulled my arm and spun me around, pointing – not more than five feet from us were three turtles, feeding on the coral. I floated and watched as they rolled with the surf, rocks doing ballet. Prehistoric and a little intimidating, they moved with amazing grace in the deeper water, but floundered and tilted when carried up onto the boulders of the shoreline. Their hooked noses were hard and sharp, and they tore at the growth on the coral, snatching bites as they wheeled past. I let the current maintain our separation and just watched the show, so much better than the turtle encounter we had in Barbados where the turtles were surrounded by flailing snorkelers and had a nasty tendency to bite. Honu are fascinating, heavy and laboring on land, almost avian under water, and I felt privileged to swim so close to them, the ocean’s apology, maybe, for the morning tension.

Most of the time we travel without incident, but I’m often asked about safety – do we feel safe places, do we think we shouldn’t have gone to certain cities, at specific times? Do we worry about the airplanes, the terrorists, the political uncertainty, the potential crises? We’re not daft – of course these things cross our minds, and we consider them when making a decision of where to go and what to do – but I would be lying if I said that I gave them undue weight. Something terrible can happen anywhere. It was hard, when we went to Southern Thailand, to not remember the scenes from 2006. Standing on that beach I did eye the water with a little mistrust, and again on Saturday, I eyed it in Maui, after the threat was past, and wondered what it might have in store for me – and then I waded in and found the turtles, heard the whale song floating past my ears. It might be safer to stand always, on the front porch at home, but I hate to consider all I’d be missing.

Just look how pretty it was: Maui Photos

On Hibernation

Thus far, I think Phil was telling the truth. I know we are only three weeks past the sight of shadow, but it does appear that the Seer of Seers, 
Prognosticator of Prognosticators, that rascally Groundhog … was right. It is cold here, and it seems to be staying cold. 

The first two weeks of the year didn’t manage to creep above freezing. We’ve had more snow than normal, by leaps and bounds. When the sky turns gray I’m as likely to see flurries in the air as I am lines of rain, and though it doesn’t tend to stick that often, snow is snow. (and hey, look, it is flaking out there right now!) We aren’t getting the piles of white that others have, but that abundance is close – we’re just below the real snow line. (A line that I think corresponds to the frozen custard belt in some symbiotic way, and probably has roots back to the Mason-Dixon… but that might be too much of a digression even for me).

Still, the point is – cold. We had a balmy almost spring Sunday and we planted berries and grapes, learning from last year’s mistake of waiting far too long. Berries need to be in before spring, and per Phil and the forecast we have no worries – those berries are spending nights under a twin sheet this week. The grapes are potted and living in luxury in the garage. We’re having our deck rebuilt and I feel sorry for the guys working on it – every time I stick my head out to see the progress or answer a question, my nose runs. Cold, cold, cold.

I think, in total, we’ve had less than five days so far this year where I haven’t wanted a scarf and my jacket, and the poor Olympics are having sunny days in the 50s. Our weekend in Seattle was downright mild, and the last day counted as – dare I say it – warm? Sunny, certainly. That’s two for two for us, by the way, of weekends where we landed somewhere with sun while it snowed and stuck at home. I’m kind of put out by that; I moved from semi-desert to a place where it snows only occasionally and I keep missing it. I like winter, at least this incarnation of it. I like the flurries and the desire to make soup, the wearing of gloves and the bite of cold air. I like the different views we have across the hills, the reveal of houses and landmarks that are invisible in summer’s flush.  And I like the groundhogs.

Groundhogs. Woodchucks. Whistle-pigs. Marmota Monax. By any name, I’m obsessed. This is not a California animal, and I don’t care if they are a nuisance, I love them. I first saw one driving to a friend’s wedding in Virginia, years and years and years ago. We had no idea what that grayish brownish furry lump on the side of the road was (Mike swore it was a beaver) but we liked the look of it. Moving here, they started appearing along the sides of the interstate somewhere near the Tennessee state line, nosing for lunch under the purple haze of redbuds. I looked them up, learned they had a colloquial southern name – whistle-pig – and that was it. Love. Allegiances to armadillos and llamas and hippos and perhaps even giraffes have been called into question ever since. We leave the house and are on the lookout for WPs, constantly. The only problem with winter is that the crabby little creatures hibernate, and our known WP spots are usually bare.

Like Phil, they’re asleep. The cardinals may be out and about but the crafty whistle-pig is deep in his burrow, dreaming of spring and fingers to bite. (I’m pretty sure Phil is a biter). I think they get hungry, though, and wake occasionally, because we’ve seen two this year, one just Monday. He was on the move, running across the road with fat tail bouncing along behind, and he was deliciously close to home. I’m sure he’s back asleep now (as is poor Phil, wrested from his warm burrow to prognosticate (and bite)) every February 2^nd. I suppose it is Phil that makes me associate the WP with winter, though my love for them is year round. And I suppose I sympathize with their torpor; I think I’m hibernating, at least a little.

Our bedroom is dim in the morning, and the bed is warm. It gets dark early, and though we’ve had as many clear blue beautiful days in the 30s as we have had gray ones, the cold itself makes me slower, sluggish like the sap in a tree, barely moving. I think if I cut myself the blood might just ooze out.  My brain feels muddled, tasks take longer, I forget things in the other room and then can’t remember what it is I’ve forgotten. Work is harder, my concentration is fuzzy. I just want to sleep. I read, recently, a theory that peasants in the Middle Ages engaged in a type of hibernation – that after the crops were harvested and the cold settled in they all huddled into communal beds and stayed there. The Bed of Ware had to have been that big for a reason, right? I like this idea, it gives historical precedent for my newly de rigueur nine and half hours of sleep. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think the whistle-pig and I have an appointment (yawn) with the pillow.

The things you leave behind

We snuck out of Tennessee just ahead of the storm, pushing through clouds heavy with snow on our way to Chicago and then San Francisco. I wasn’t sure we’d make it, actually, and for once I wasn’t sure I cared. The prospect of five inches of snow to a California girl who has a full pantry and works at home isn’t the most daunting, and I thought that a little sledding in January might be the most seasonally appropriate thing I could do. The weather was sluggish, slower than a jet plane, and we watched it swirl on the weather maps as we sped away, headed towards the fickle mix of fog and sun that is San Francisco in the winter.

Landing at SFO is waking from a long dream and not knowing if I am home or still lost somewhere in my mind. We started our flying career from there; spent many an hour under the early computer font gate numbers waiting for the fog to lift and the planes to leave. Am I coming or going? Is the dog waiting for us in Redwood Shores? Is the raccoon looking in my bedroom window to see if I’m asleep? BART took us into the city, the first time, actually, that we’ve been back here, alone together, since we moved to LA an unfathomable number of years ago. We rode all the way to Powell and Market and walked to our hotel and I thought what a change it would be to spend time in the city without Mike cursing at pedestrians. Radar said there was rain coming in from the Pacific but the skies were bright and breezy for the moment; we rode the cable car to Chinatown for the first real Chinese we’ve had in I don’t know how long. I don’t understand why Nashville is so lacking in decent orange peel beef but it is and we descended on that food like starving refugees.

It was a Muni pass kind of weekend, so we had to walk through old Jackson Square to find the bus that would take us to Alamo Square to the iconic row of Painted Ladies that I had never seen. The skies opened up along the way, so I saw them from under a dripping umbrella, but I saw them, finally. The city beyond hadn’t yet slipped under the rain and it was lit by the last rays of sun, a glistening swan song before the deluge. My pant legs stayed damp all night, but it didn’t matter much as we were hopping from cocktail to cocktail in the Mission before an epic bus and cab ride out to dinner in the Richmond, on the far west end of Geary. The venues were new but so many of the surroundings were as oddly familiar as the airport; the Beauty Bar, Ti Couz, the absurd feeling that maybe we shouldn’t be walking in the Mission but aren’t we reasonable people for doing so. I think the Thai restaurant where I turned a greener shade of pale was out Geary somewhere. I suppose we reminisced some – cocktails have a way of bringing that out of even the least inclined to the past – and that isn’t me. I don’t remember (see also, cocktails) but I do know that I felt both at home and glad that I wasn’t. One of the bars was a San Francisco scene of the most tedious kind – we’d paid before our drinks were gone and talked for blocks about the particular affectation that can be San Francisco. And yet …

I woke Saturday without a hangover but with a nagging sense that I was somewhere more comfortable to me than I imagined it would be. Leaving the hotel revealed one of those perfect days that used to make me thrill to where I lived, warm sun, cool breeze, light sparking off every surface. How could I not be enchanted, riding an old streetcar down Market to the foodie heaven of the Ferry Building? If I noticed, acutely, the astronomical prices of the organic beets and the handcrafted soda and, good grief, the oysters (and I did) it didn’t lessen the simple pleasure of seeing abundance displayed in a beautiful space, lit by light reflecting off water. Shrimp breakfast burrito, tangerines, unctuous cured meat, caramel pots de crème, perfect, perfect, Italy level cappuccino. And then, a gift, a friend I haven’t seen in years, discussed the previous night (I guess I must admit fully to the reminiscing) in the flesh. We exchanged phone numbers and I feel that this is the most wonderful souvenir of the trip I could possibly hope for, to stumble on a part of myself from the past in the universe of this city, just the right place at the right time on a Saturday morning.

We chose an afternoon in the de Young mostly for its location; Golden Gate Park was made for days like this. The American painting collection was luminous, so many landscapes and so much a profile of the country through its growth and I am sorry it has taken me this long to see it, though I think that like so many things lately, it presented itself at just the right time. Leaving where I am from, living far from what shaped me – this has changed my perspective and broadened my understanding in ways I wouldn’t have previously imagined. I can’t claim it has made me a better person, but if I marvel over a painting that I might have previously skimmed past, well, I’ll take that as growth too.

A walk through the park, another bus ride – people are such dramatic characters, aren’t they? A bus ride, for even a few blocks, is a minor stage. The Bob Marley’ed dad taking his pre-teen daughter out for the day and chastising her for forgetting something, turning it into a colossal relationship bummer, talking to her like they’d been seeing each other and she was a difficult woman rather than a forgetful child. The woman who wanted change for a $5, all round shapes held together by belts and denim, looking for change or a free ride. The wan and younger than she looked (I bet) business woman who gave it to her, expensive shoes looking wrong against the worn rubber of the bus floor. Punky kids leaning against the doors, cowed by the little Asian auntie who climbed over them, us and a seat back to sit where she wanted. The toothless man who swore he ‘usta eat armadillos. I suppose we fit in, or didn’t, as much as the rest of them, and we didn’t ride far, just to the corner of Haight and Ashbury, the old center of a lost universe, now a crass commercial imitation of itself. Curio shops and tchosky vendors and faux head shops with penis shaped glass pipes – thankfully we were there for a bar with a cool vibe and good cocktails, bone marrow and sardines and a table in the window next to a couple with a baby in a stroller. From there it was off again on another round of drinking; a speakeasy without a sign, a tiki room with rain showers at the top of a hill, a funky bar with a good bartender and then a buuuuuussss to the Marina for another late dinner and an arrest scene that seemed surreal even considering the amount we’d drunk. His ear hurt, man, and the cops were hassling him all the way to the station.

Sunday bounced in equally clear and bright and we rode the train down to Millbrae for dim sum and friends, then rode back into the Presidio with them for the Disney Family Museum and then Crissy Field, an amazing Golden Gate Bridge view, a visiting pinniped and more of that unshakeable sense that some part of me, certainly, was left here in this city where I’d lived, sort of. It wasn’t that I wanted to move back, really – I’d spent a good part of the glorious weekend wishing I were in the snow, in the place that I’ve been calling home with less shrugging, lately. The city was never my home, and in some ways I feel more at home in Tennessee than I ever did in the Bay Area, wonderful friends and memories notwithstanding. But there was just something about San Francisco that I couldn’t let go of, can’t, even now, snowbound and cozily home, forget. At the risk of sounding maudlin and older, perhaps, than I am, I think it might be about the age I was when I lived in the Northern California fog. I was young, optimistic, newly free of school and then newly married, un-bruised by the general tumble of life. This weekend reminded me of that shiny self and I thought of how nice it had been to be her.

Reminisce with me: San Francisco Photos

The Lady’s Tennessee Almanac

I’m obsessively listy. Seeing all my “to dos” and “to buys” neatly arranged like dominos is satisfying; seeing those dominos tumble is even better. A list that has been lined through and completed really warms my ocd soul. A good list is a neat list – I’ve been known to compose one with scribbles and arrows and then rewrite it before it goes into actual circulation – but the crossing off can be more freeform. Neat lines, crossing out, tearing – even some violent scribbling is acceptable, depending on the tedious nature of the item completed.  I have a bad habit, too, of adding an item I’ve already finished to the list then instantly crossing it out.  This might be because I’m a show-off, or because I’m a perfectionist with a love of categorical accomplishment, but it is also (and less embarrassingly) because I’m a historian by both education and temper if not by employment, and I like knowing all of what’s been done before. Which is why I’m starting a diary.

I’ve written diaries before, but they never seem to last. I get distracted or busy or, truthfully, embarrassed at the drivel I seem to put in them. Even as a girl I remember thinking that I sounded like an overworked soap opera in my private writings. I remember reading about girls who “poured their hearts out” in diaries and felt that I had a heart to pour out too, but my own seemed to produce less literary flame than that of the fictional girls I knew through books. I wasn’t boy crazy, I didn’t have parental or sibling heartache, and I felt that my simple observations weren’t worth the paper. Somewhere around fourth grade I tried committing more of myself to paper, only to realize that a friend was picking the lock and reading my feeble attempts. My mom suggested I write a note asking her to not read past a certain point – and I knew that was futile even as I wrote it on a blank page and circled it with the little stylized hearts that were our friendship symbol. Needless to say, not much more was written in that diary, banal or otherwise. Later blank books were started with fervor, reread with the same embarrassment (and greater self criticism) and abandoned in disgust. This time, though, it is going to be different, because I think I’ve learned my lesson; I’m not going to write about me.

Living here has done something odd to our brains – awakened some farmer gene long suppressed. We watch the weather. Discuss it. Speculate about it. Wait for it. I feel like it is some game that follows rules I don’t understand, and I think I’m going to require more than just conversation and memory to really get it. Instead of writing about my hopes and dreams, I’m setting out to be my own farmer’s almanac this year. Weather, birds, plants, oddities and anomalies are all worth journaling, so that next year, I’ll have something to reference, a list that I can fall back on when I see something and wonder why. In our first year here we had a ladybug infestation, a week of crazy caterpillars and a few turkey and deer sightings. This past year (I am shocked to call it “year two”) we also had the ladybugs – and a terrible bug summer, caterpillars that ate most of my cherry tree, a possum invasion and a week where it seemed there were dead skunks all over the place. We called it the skunk suicide season – and I can’t remember when it was but I am fairly convinced it is happening again.

Living here has made me more aware that there is a pattern to things that I can’t quite see. I thought that I would care less the longer I was here but I find, perversely, that I care more – I’m over the perfect newness of a lot of things, but I’m more interested, now, in how they work and why. I’m also facing down my second gardening season and I want to be prepared. I don’t just want to know what’s coming – if my garden is going to flourish, I need to know.  I have a feeling those gigantic green moths appear at about the same time every year. Ditto the cardinals and the bluebirds. Does the finch peck on the window starting in April, or May? When will I see the whistle pigs pop up again, glowering at the world and munching greens?

With so much to observe I think I can manage a diary that will last – no room in nature sketches for naval gazing - and anyway, I’ve taken that public with this blog.  I am feeling a bit old – no longer am I driven to immortalize the dark secrets of my heart. No, not me. I’m getting excited about recording the first date this year that I see a tulip peeking from the ground, or the first week that I see the bluebirds nesting. Pot boiler to Victorian sensibility, and I’m still technically in my early 30s. Something seems – wrong. I don’t know that I should be admitting this, and certainly not publically. An intervention could appear any day at the door, or I might be forced to give up my heels and my mascara. Is that a granny apron I see in my immediate future? Still, I might be turning into a Victorian (I have this image of writing outside in the springtime, sketching the flowers – could I be any more shudderingly precious?) but it might turn out to be better reading than teenage angst. And if not, well, at least I’ll know when to open the counseling hotline for the skunks.