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 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?

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.

The healing power of forest bathing

 

Here’s one writer’s explanation of forest bathing, from The Atlantic:

In 1982, Japan made shinrin-yoku, or “forest bathing,” a part of its national health program. The aim was to briefly reconnect people with nature in the simplest way possible. Go to the woods, breathe deeply, be at peace. Forest bathing was Japan’s medically sanctioned method of unplugging before there were smartphones to unplug from. Since shinrin-yoku’s inception, researchers have spent millions of dollars testing its efficacy; the documented benefits to one’s health thus far include lowered blood pressure, blood glucose levels, and stress hormones.

I start to feel very ill at ease when I haven’t spent time in nature and in silence there; after two tedious months of physical therapy aimed at loosening and strengthening my arthritic right knee, each session consuming two hours, I was sick to death of only relating to machines and being stuck indoors.

On our trip to Montreal we continued north to Mont Tremblant and spent two days enjoying what was left of the autumn leaf colors and stunningly warm weather.

The area is full of walking and cycling trails so we took one through the woods down to the Diable River where we sat on the rocks and listened to the rushing river. The woods were largely silent except for one nearby blue jay.

I loved the lush moss, peeling birch trees, sun-dappled leaves and ancient stones.

I loved the soothing sound of the river rushing over and around rocks.

I loved watching leaves tumble into the water, only to be swept under and away like little yellow boats.

The day before, I ventured to the edge of the hotel property and found a grove of trees whose thick, twisted, intertwined roots looked like nothing I’d ever seen before anywhere, like something out of a fairy tale.

I sat on them for a while, just being still and present, watching the sun glow lower and lower through the trees. The woods were silent — no chipmunks or squirrels rustling past, no birds squawking to one one another.

It was eerie and disorienting.

 

But so, so good to be out, once more in nature, as always reminded that humans are just one more species.

Here’s a link to a blogger who lives on a farm in western Australia, offering beautiful images of its flowers, birds and landscapes…

 

 

Are you a forest bather?

Where do you go to savor nature?

A summer week on Fire Island

By Caitlin Kelly

 

It seems impossible, but within a few hours’ drive of crazy, congested New York City is a ferry that crosses the South Bay and lands on a quiet, dune-speckled 32-mile spit of land called Fire Island.

Created by the National Park Service in 1966, it’s a barrier island that’s home to hundreds of privately-owned low-slung homes, nestled into thickets of gnarled, twisted lichen-covered trees and tall stands of speckled grasses.

It’s the anti-Hamptons, where A-listers and millionaires fly to their enormous mansions by helicopter; here everyone crams into the ferry, in flip-flops.

Deer casually graze everywhere, unafraid, as swallows and seagulls and mourning doves flit about.

Lots of brown bunnies and monarch butterflies.

The local lending library and post office

 

Friends who’ve owned a house there for more than 50 years were kind enough to lend it to us for a week of silence, sun, plane-spotting, and the gentle sound of waves lapping against a fleet of boats just off-shore.

 

 

Getting there is easy, leaving from the town of Patchogue on the south shore of Long Island, about a 20-minute ride. Day-trippers can enjoy the beach and a local bar and resturant, while residents keep enormous wooden carts there with which to transport groceries and other necessities.

There’s a restaurant near the section we were in, Davis Park, and a general store and we waited eagerly on Sunday morning for the ferry to arrive with the newspapers.

 

The island has no roads, so no cars, so it’s really quiet.

The only motorized noise comes from motorboats, Jet-Skis and helicopters — and the low, persistent hum of the ferry.

Typical sounds include mourning doves, the rustling of tall grass, the squeaking of a playground swing, the roar of ocean surf.

As aviation nerds, and passionate travelers, Jose and I loved watching aircraft descending in their final few minutes into JFK airport — we watched them through binoculars arriving from Lisbon, Madrid, Dubai, London, Edinburgh and the Ukraine. (If you don’t know FlightRadar24, check it out!)

I caught up on my reading: Transit by Rachel Cusk (meh); Appointment in Samarra, from 1934 by John O’Hara,  (which I enjoyed), On Turpentine Lane (given to me by the publisher, a light read) and How Music Works by Talking Heads’ David Byrne — which was amazing and I only got through half of it so am ordering it in order to read the rest.

(Highlight of the week — chanting the lyrics to Psycho Killer with our French friend, 70, who’s also a huge Talking Heads fan.)

I spent my days reading, napping, taking photos, kayaking, walking the beach, chatting with my husband and, later in the week, two friends who came out to join us. And, (sigh), a bit of work as well.

It rained for two days, which we used to read, nap, play lots of gin rummy and read social media and two daily newspapers.

Some homes on the island are for sale — the least expensive one I saw offered on a public bulletin board was $475,000, and weekly rentals from $1,900 to $4,200 — one dropping to $900 a week in the fall.

We left with sand in our shoes, sunburned, well-rested — and looking forward to returning next summer.

 

A mid-winter walk

By Caitlin Kelly

We’d endured day after day after day of cold, gray, wet, sunless weather.

Cabin fever was setting in — not to mention Vitamin D deficiency.

Finally (yay!) a January day, unseasonably warm for a downstate New York winter, about 45 degrees F, and it was finally a chance to get out for a walk!

Here are some images I shot with my cellphone, along the pathway near our home I’ve been walking in every season for decades.

It’s nothing fancy. No amazing, jaw-dropping views; it’s a mile in each direction, and there are several benches at the reservoir’s edge so you can sit for a while and savor it.

I love how the light shifts season to season, how the woods, in spring and summer, go from silent to full of animals and birds.

This time of year, the only sounds I heard were dried leaves rustling in the wind, a brook and some cars circling the reservoir.

Winter is a season whose beauty is easily overlooked, subtle and quiet — water reflections, pale leaves, lichen and moss.

There is something so deeply soothing and restorative, for me, walking in nature alone.

No music.

Just air and light and water, trees and rocks and plants and sky.

Do you get out into nature often?

Do you also find it healing?

Savoring beauty

By Caitlin Kelly

Every day, beauty sustains and replenishes me, whether natural or man-made.

It’s everywhere, every day, just waiting there quietly for us to notice it.

The sky, clouds and ever-shifting light.

The moon, at any hour.

The stars.

Trees, barren or blossoming.

A friend’s loving smile.

Early buildings with carving or terracotta tiles or gargoyles. (Look up!)

Here are a few of the many things I find beautiful — I hope you’ll savor them too!

I was so inspired by this — Charlotte Bronte’s dress and shoes. What an intimate memory of a fellow woman writer. (thanks to the Morgan Museum.)

Love discovering and poking around quirky/interesting shops. This one, GoodWood, is in Washington, D.C.

This is part of the Library of Congress, also in D.C.

A reservoir-side walk near our home in Tarrytown, NY. I know it in every season — and see amazing things when I slow down and look closely.

That same walkway in deepest winter

Looking down the stairs at Fortnum & Mason, London

In our rented cottage in Donegal. The essentials of my life: tea, laptop, newspapers and tools with which to create.

The doorknob of our friend’s home in Maine

A lamp on the campus of Pratt Institute, Brooklyn

That reservoir walk — in spring!

Our view

A Paris cafe

Lincoln Center, Koch Theater, one of the great pleasures of living in New York

7:30 a.m., Lake Massawippi, North Hatley, Quebec

A Paris door

Florida

The Grand Canyon

A Philadelphia church window

Dublin

The healing power of beauty

By Caitlin Kelly

We need beauty as much as we need food, water and air, whether it’s visual or auditory. Ignoring that fundamental need parches us.

In a time when so many people spend their lives staring at a screen, encountering beauty in real life — a flower, a bird, a sky filled with stars, a painting or piece of music — can be transformative.

We’re lucky to live in a small town — pop. 10,000 — 25 miles north of Manhattan, named one of the nation’s 10 prettiest by Forbes magazine. If you’ve seen the films Mona Lisa Smile, The Preacher’s Wife or  The Good Shepherd, (one of my favorites), you’ve glimpsed our handsome main street in each of these, filled with Victorian-era shops and homes.

Our apartment has great views of the Hudson River, tree-tops, acres of sky and clouds. We savor spectacular sunsets and birdsong, butterflies and fireflies in the cool, green dusk.

In New York city, we have access to museums and art galleries and parks, grateful for every bit of it.

 

Here are some of the things I find beautiful, that nurture and calm me…

 

Beautiful architecture — this is Union Station in D.C.

 

Color, design, elegant neo-classical murals — part of the Library of Congress, in D.C.

 

Every patch of earth, if you kneel down and really look closely, is a tapestry of color, texture, growth and decay

 

More neo-classical fabulousness — this, a corner of Bryant Park, midtown Manhattan

 

I’m crazy about textiles — the purple floral is now curtains in our sitting room

 

Pattern is everywhere! This is in Soho, Manhattan — glass inserts to allow light into a basement of an early building there

 

Nothing unusual — lawn furniture in autumn — but I love the symmetry of it from above; this at Hovey Manor, Quebec

 

This plant was outside our Donegal cottage

 

 

I love this painted tin wall, one of the shops on our main street in Tarrytown, NY

 

Looking down the stairs at Fortnum & Mason, London

 

 

Beauty is everywhere — like this Paris cafe

 

 

I love this view — Bucks County, Pennsylvania — out the window of a 1905 farmhouse a friend used to rent

 

Every year I wait with bated breath for this lilac tree near us to bloom. Swoon!

 

Nicaragua is the second-poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere after Haiti — but its wooden houses are amazingly colored and cared for

 

A lamp on the campus of Pratt Institute, a private college in Brooklyn

 

Where in your daily life does beauty manifest itself?

 

Simple but lovely — cut glass, silver plate, curves — and cool water!

A hundred million miracles…

By Caitlin Kelly

A hundred million miracles

A hundred million miracles are happening every day

And those who say they don’t agree

Are those who do not hear or see…

— Flower Drum Song, musical, 1958

 

Take a walk now, anywhere there’s spring.

The light.

The wind.

The warming sun.

I love the in-between-ness of spring, how tentative and hopeful it is, all those delicate green shoots bursting forth from the pale detritus of last fall’s dead leaves and twigs and scattered acorns.

And I know this path so well, after decades of walking it in every season, so I know when the light is low and slanting, and highlights every bit of moss and lichen and leaf.

I wait each year for a nearby lilac tree to blossom into purple fragrance. My favorite smell!

And what a basic, taken-for-granted miracle to hear the wind, to feel the sun, to walk easily and without pain. Mobility itself is a great gift.

I think of the many people who lie in a hospital or hospice bed, or waiting in a crowded and noisy and dirty refugee camp, or beneath the bombs of war…and walk in grateful silence.

It is such a simple thing, for some of us, to have a clean place to walk freely and safely, as a woman alone.

Here are a few of the lovely things I spotted on a recent walk near the reservoir in our town, 25 miles north of Manhattan:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And a very persistent little leaf who came along for the ride…

 

Out for a walk

By Caitlin Kelly

Only a few weeks ago!

 

Are you — fellow Northern Hemisphere folk — feeling as cabin feverish as I am?

In mid-winter, it’s either gray or rainy or windy or bitterly cold or the streets are too icy.

But today….aaaaah.

Today was a blessed 57 unseasonally warm degrees and out I went to enjoy the walk along the reservoir.

Our view of the Hudson River

One of the things I love most about living somewhere for a long time is getting to know a landscape intimately, like the face of a dear friend or the hands of your sweetie.

I’ve walked the reservoir path, a paved mile in each direction, shaded the whole way by tall trees, for the past 27 years now, in all four seasons, alone and with my husband and, a long time ago, with my lovely little terrier, Petra, who died in June 1996.

Here’s some of what I saw, heard, smelled and savored today:

 

The stream is starting to rush again as the snow and ice melt

 

Trees are showing the tiniest bit of bud

 

Winter-weathered leaves rustle gently in the breeze, the soft creamy beige of a very good camel hair overcoat

 

The white flash of a swan’s bum as it digs into the lakebed

 

The tang of woodsmoke from someone’s chimney

 

Soft emerald moss, tossed like a velvet duvet

 

Strengthening sun gilding the edges of the forest

 

Vines clinging to weathered granite

 

The soothing lapping sound of water on rock at the lake’s edge

 

Two Canada geese honking overhead

 

 

A jet heading southwest

 

A tiny Yorkie in a pink coat running very fast

 

Warm sun on my cheeks