Simple pleasures, midwinter edition

By Caitlin Kelly

Re-watching comfort films and TV shows for the umpteenth time. Of course, we know the dialogue by heart — half the fun! Life is so chaotic and unpredictable, knowing for sure what will happen next is a lovely thing. Mine include The Devil Wears Prada, All The President’s Men, Spotlight, Dr. Zhivago, Billy Elliott, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy, Casablanca, The English Patient and Good Will Hunting.

A pot of tea and maybe a little something sweet to go with it. I recently made this date/nut bread and it’s soooo good! I skipped the icing.

An afternoon spent in the company of a dear friend.

Looking at art.

Savoring a great novel.

Snoozing under a blanket on a cold, gray afternoon.

A kiss from your dog.

A kiss from your sweetie!

A late afternoon game of gin rummy, possibly with a nip of single malt.

Fresh flowers in every room.

A scented candle by the bed.

The eternally glorious music of Bach, Handel, Erik Satie.

Trying a terrific new restaurant.

A long lunch with old friends visiting from Toronto. We went to my favorite Manhattan spot, Keen’s, in business since 1885. Push through its front doors, and you’ve stepped back in time: white tablecloths, a ceiling covered in antique clay pipes, a tank with live lobsters (their lobster bisque is so good!) There’s a pub room with its own bar and a fireplace and the bar, of course, has a huge painting of a nude woman above the bar.

Trying a new, fresh fragrance from my favorite perfumer, Penhaligon’s…This one, Castile, smells deliciously of orange blossoms, a memory from when I was 21 and traveling alone through Europe for four months. I was in Seville in orange blossom season. Amazing!

A day spent with a young pal visiting from Montreal. We had Chinese food for lunch, then I drove her around Manhattan to its southern edge, spotting Lady Liberty and the orange Staten Island ferry. We parked in the South Street Seaport and walked around a bit, enjoying its history and architecture.

I love quirky windows. This was in the Seaport, a private home.

Same window

A catch-up call with my bestie from university.

Longer brighter days as spring sloooooowly approaches.

A cozy new winter jacket, on sale.

The brief moment when the rising sun behind us hits the windows on the western hillside of the Hudson River. I call it the ruby moment.

Finding a surprise bit of money in a coat or jacket pocket.

Discovering a surprising and lovely find — recently a terrific dive bar a block from New York harbor and this amazing cut-metal mural on the side of the Peck Slip School, honoring a Dutch ferryman of the 1630s.

A North Ontario cottage visit — bliss!

By Caitlin Kelly

If you grew up in a place you loved, and have since moved (far) away, the landscape is an indelible part of your history.

It is for my husband Jose, who misses the Sangre de Cristo mountains of his native New Mexico.

It is for me, the very specific landscape of what’s known as the Canadian Shield, a northern part of the country with slabs of red granite, wind-bent pine trees and lots of wildlife.

Evidence of beavers!

I was lucky enough to attend Ontario summer camps ages 8-16, so this landscape is full of happy memories for me, and also not easy to return to.

I was invited for the long weekend to a friend’s cottage, reachable only by motorboat — which was filled with 6 adults, a cat (in a cage), a large black dog and everyone’s stuff and food for all of us for three days. What an adventure!

Even navigating through those waters — Georgian Bay — meant somehow avoiding hundreds of rocks and shoals. Impressive!

We stayed in a separate cabin, called a bunkie…but no heat! That meant sleeping in a wool hat, wool scarf, wool socks and buried beneath a massive Hudson Bay wool blanket.

But also — amazing stars at night, with no light pollution.

I sat on the dock one morning at 6:00 a.m. and saw a beaver swimming past, a loon and two minks. That was cool!

It was also so cold I could see my breath and watched mist rising from the warmer waters into the colder air.

The silence was absolute — only the wind in the pines.

There are a few things I miss a lot about Canada…and this weekend ticked all the boxes:

old friends

new friends

wildlife

a spectacular landscape

clear skies

boat rides

delicious dinners

no agenda at all

It was a difficult return to the U.S. the day after the latest massacre, this time in Texas, and of small children.

(I started that day looking, once more, at real estate in France. No, not kidding.)

A winter walk in the woods

By Caitlin Kelly

It had been weeks, maybe months, since I’d walked our reservoir path, the reservoir to the left and hilly woods to the right. I’ve been walking it for decades, in every season, and know it well. But there are spots I’ve still not explored, close to the water’s edge, like the moss colony I found this weekend.

In winter, the trees are bare, except for one species whose stiff, dried leaves — a pale biscuit beige — stick straight out as if in a breeze. I spied many nests and two squirrels but the silence was absolute, the only sound a tiny creek.

There’s a busy road circling the reservoir so there is some traffic noise, but no birds or animals now.

There are plenty of big flat rocks to rest on or sit on and a few benches at various points to sit and enjoy the view.

It was cold! Thirty degrees Fahrenheit, plus a 16 mph wind.

This anorak — which I’ve worn for 20 years — is the best garment ever: warm, windproof, water-resistant, elastic cuffs, a hood, multiple pockets. Even after gaining a lot of weight since I bought it, it still fits, thank heaven. I was absolutely cosy, plus lined wool hat and lined suede gloves.

It felt so good to fill my lungs for an hour with fresh cold air.

To be alone.

To sit in silence.

To look closely at natural beauty, which always soothes and refreshes me.

To see how different the familiar appears in every season.

To savor such a respite a five minute drive from home.

To know it hasn’t changed in decades and likely won’t, even though our suburban village is starting to add a lot more density and buildings, to our dismay. Some will basically wreck our fantastic Hudson river shoreline, so every unchanged vista matters even more to me.

Some images:

The value of solitude

By Caitlin Kelly

“Loneliness creates sadness, but solitude is quite lovely because you really start to think of — and take care of — yourself.” — artist Marina Abramovic, quoted in How To Spend It magazine in the FT

If there’s one thing the pandemic has imposed on us, it’s either way too much solitude — those living alone, isolated, shut-in, vulnerable to the virus — or far too little, for people living with lots of children and/or parents or in-laws.

I really value solitude.

If I go too long without it, I feel ill and angry and resentful of having to constantly be social. I find it tiring.

So my recent four days away, even in a place I didn’t love — small-town Pennsylvania — reminded me how much I need it.

The very best moments were an hour or so at a nature sanctuary, filled with old, very tall pine trees and total silence. No one else around.

It is so rare now, anywhere, to just be totally free of people and their noises!

I lay down on my back and stared up into the trees, their glossy green branches glistening in the sun, waving in the breeze.

I watched a Daddy-Long-Legs amble past.

I got pine sap on my arms and sneakers.

Then, to my surprise, I started to cry, hard.

Months of anxiety and grief and frustration had piled up, unacknowledged and unprocessed.

My mother died February 15 — on my best friend’s birthday — and even though she and I were estranged for a decade, I grieve all the losses we sustained because of that.

I grieve the deaths of 200,000 Americans from COVID.

I grieve the loss of the hopes so many of us had for 2020, let alone 2021 and beyond.

It felt good to let it all out, alone and in private, surrounded by beauty.

Even driving the two hours home again, alone, singing along to my favorite music, was replenishing.

I really enjoy others’ company and my 20 years, so far, with Jose, my husband.

But time alone is as necessary to my happiness as time with others.

Women, especially, often have to fight hard for time alone, tending only to their own needs. We’re expected to keep everyone else happy, and it’s depleting when you have no equal time to just be quiet and by ourselves.

And there’s a big difference between precious privacy — which usually implies others, and their noises and their needs, nearby — and solitude.

Do you need and value solitude?

The woods, as metaphor

 

By Caitlin Kelly

 

In the decades of living in our suburban New York town, I’ve walked the reservoir path — a mile each way, paved — many many times, in broiling summer heat (blissfully shaded by old-growth trees) and in the dead of a snowy winter.

There’s something really special about getting to know a landscape well, to know what to look for and anticipate — from the fragrant purple lilac bush at the western end of the walk to the benches at the other end, a perfect spot to stare out across the water at sunset.

I love to watch the woods change with each season, always with my favorite smell in the world — sun-dried pine needles.

 

 

 

I know where the creek is, and love to hear it gurgling — now disturbingly silent and completely dry after weeks without rain. The enormous pond has also shrunk, and I can now see rocks in the reservoir that reveal its drop as well.

 

 

The pond in springtime

 

 

I love the landmarks — watermarks? — like the beaded strand of little black turtles that line up along a rubber tube on one edge of the water.

The cormorant who chooses to stand on the same rock every year to dry his wings.

The elegant swans.

The screeching red-tailed hawks.

The rustle of a chipmunk fleeing through dead leaves.

There are many trees wrapped tightly in vines — like people who so desperately cling to others.

 

 

 

 

There’s a rock split in two by a tree — reminding me how much force we can bring when needed to even the toughest problem.

 

There are many live trees with dead ones propped against them, where they’ve fallen — like dear friends sustaining the ill or grieving.

 

There’s lacy ice in winter

 

When I bend down and look closely, there are entire worlds in even just an inch or two beneath my feet: moss, acorns, lichen, stones, earth, leaves, bits of feather and foliage. Everything contains multitudes.

 

 

Hobbit holes?!

 

 

I value an intimate relationship with nature.

 

Do you have one like this?

“Trapped” — perfect pandemic TV!

By Caitlin Kelly

 

Thanks to a Nordic pal here in the U.S., we recently discovered Trapped — and loved! — this Icelandic cop show.

It’s the most expensive series ever filmed there, two seasons of 10 episodes each, from 2015.

I might be the only person left in the world who has yet to visit Iceland, but I can now really see why people go. What a spectacular and dramatic landscape it is!

It only has 364,000 people, and 60,000 in the capital, and is the most sparsely-populated nation in Europe.

The characters in Trapped are all very human, often confused, working either in Reykjavik or an isolated small town on a fjord — where the evil runs mighty deep and sometimes for generations.

There’s Andri, the police chief in Season One, who’s a tall, hefty guy with a thick brown beard and hair that always needs brushing, His assistants, Hinrika and Asgeir, are small town residents, and a real contrast — Hinrika is tough, smart and cynical while Asgeir is always vaguely goofing off and playing chess on his computer.

Their police station is small, and, like everything here, absolutely dwarfed by snow-capped mountains.

The sense of being trapped in this show has many layers: by small town life, by family dramas and secrets, by unsolved murders and disappearances, by ambition. Mostly by weather! So much snow, rain, ice! Roads get shut down and planes and helicopters grounded.

The opening credits are visually very strong and the music very good, initially composed by the late and very talented Johann Johannsson.

By Season Two, Andri has moved back to big-city Reykjavik, and Hinrika is now police chief. But her marriage to Bardur, 20 years her senior, is ending and Andri’s oldest daughter has become a rebellious 15-year-old in a lot of black eyeshadow, living with an aunt.

The pace is slow, but there’s plenty of plot development and it takes a while to finally reveal who’s the true baddie.

Along the way, we get to see Icelandic sheep farmers and ponies and an enormous ferry that is key to the first season plot. There’s a female minister whose formal collar is a white ruffle that looks positively medieval.

Several people die in gruesome ways — consumed by flames, and one with a bolt gun used to kill sheep.

But it’s really compelling and the murder of one character left us on the the verge of tears.

Here’s the Wikipedia entry about Baltasar Koromákur, its creator.

 

Have you seen it?

 

 

Valles Caldera; NM’s gorgeous national preserve

 

By Caitlin Kelly

The silence!

Only broken by….the squeaks of dozens of prairie dogs, the first time I’d ever seen one.

 

 

A caldera is the bowl-like depression in the landscape after a volcanic eruption — in this case 1.25 millions years ago, 300 times larger than Mount St. Helens in 1980. Valles Caldera is one of the world’s best examples of an intact volcanic caldera.

 

 

Since then, of course, the land was inhabited by natives and later (after 1500) by Spanish settlers.

 

 

The site contains a few log cabins, from 1915 to 1963, but no one is allowed to stay in the park overnight although hiking and skiing in winter are allowed.

 

 

It’s a stunning place in its scale and also gave me my first sightings of wild iris and elk — we could only see a large herd of elk thanks to a telescope offered by the park rangers.

The caldera is about a 90 minute drive northwest of Santa Fe.

 

 

Climate change: what next?

 

By Caitlin Kelly

I won’t repeat the endless warnings I read daily.

If you follow the news, you’re also well aware.

We were back up in Montreal last weekend where I was heartened to see this large street protest — calmly protected by multiple police officers — as students took to to the streets for their Friday school strike.

 

 

“Don’t adapt — act” …

 

 

 

They were inspired by a high school student far away across the ocean, Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg, recently profiled by Time magazine as their cover story, extraordinary in itself.

An excerpt:

Castigating the powerful has become routine for the 16-year-old. In December, she addressed the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Poland; in January she berated billionaires at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Her London speech was the last stop of a tour that included meeting the Pope. (“Continue to work, continue,” he told her, ending with, “Go along, go ahead.” It was an exhortation, not a dismissal.)

Just nine months ago, Thunberg had no such audiences. She was a lone figure sitting outside the Swedish Parliament in Stockholm, carrying a sign emblazoned with Skolstrejk for Klimatet (School Strike for Climate). She was there for a reason that felt primal and personal. While Thunberg was studying climate change in school at the age of 11, she reacted in a surprisingly intense way: she suffered an episode of severe depression. After a time it lifted, only to resurface last spring.

“I felt everything was meaningless and there was no point going to school if there was no future,” Thunberg says. But this time, rather than suffer the pain, she decided to push back at its cause, channeling her sadness into action. “I promised myself I was going to do everything I could do to make a difference,” she says.

 

I confess to feeling daily despair over a changing climate wreaking havoc worldwide: floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, cyclones, droughts, incredible heatwaves, all of which are damaging agriculture and the oceans, drying up crucial sources of water and causing millions of people living in vulnerable areas to wonder where else they might possibly live safely.

Indians recently fled a cyclone thanks to receiving in advance millions of warning text messages —- while Ottawa, Canada’s capital, recently coped with the worst flooding in 25 years.

 

No one is safe.

 

What, if anything, are you doing to deal with climate change?

 

Is it affecting your life?

 

Will it affect how you vote?

 

A mid-winter walk

 

By Caitlin Kelly

When it’s bitterly cold for long weeks, it’s easy to stop going out for a walk. But then cabin fever sets in…

These are woods near our home, in a town 25 miles north of New York City, with a paved trail a mile long that runs beside a reservoir, whose landmarks — officially, watermarks, I guess — can include several white swans, enormous flocks of geese who rest on the ice mid-migration, and, in the summer, multiple small black turtles and a cormorant who stands on a rock to dry out his wings.

In the winter, though, the woods are silent. I can only hear planes overhead and traffic circling the reservoir and the gurgling of a stream. No scurrying squirrels or chipmunks or birdsong.

It’s a more austere world, the remaining leaves bleached, bare branches etched against the sky, thick fungi crowding a log.

And, of course, the Rockefellers (yes, those ones, who live just up the road) affected our landscape, as did millionaire Jay Gould.

Here are some images, full of subtle beauty:

 

No idea why that little structure is there!

 

 

Love the reflections

 

That little bit of down, memory of a bird…

 

 

The patterns of the ice were amazing — shifting with the water’s movements

 

 

 

 

 

This week’s best moment

By Caitlin Kelly

 

 

It always starts with a bang.

We now know what it is — a tiny bird has hit our sixth-floor windows mid-flight and fallen, stunned and possibly injured, onto our balcony.

I heard it, jumped up and was there within seconds to find a tiny gray bird lying there.

We have a routine now. We get water and, very gently, pick them up, hold them and drop a tiny bit of water onto their beak.

If we’re lucky, they revive.

It takes a while — poor wee things are disoriented from the impact.

This little one sat very calmly in my left palm for maybe 15 minutes as (s?)he came back to himself.

What an amazing privilege it is to see and hold a wild creature, even briefly, and help them recover.

Our apartment is literally at the tree-tops so, after a few uncertain hops on the balcony, he flew back into them.