Walking

I walk 10000 steps per day.

Sometimes that is a breezy delight, goes by quickly, and I end up with 12 thousand or even more.

Sometimes it is tedious drudgery. I don't want to walk but I do.

There is what I call organic walking, outdoors, in nature, in pursuit of all the little birdies for my obsessive listing of same.

Taken from the car on the way to walk

Sometimes it is laps inside the house with an audio book or my playlist buzzing in my ears. My favorite books for this practice are lo-o-o-ng ones like those by W.E.B. Griffin.

I figure any kind of walking is helpful in my ever-more-challenging battle to stay active and able. 

And surely we have found some beautiful places for the former sort of stroll. (There are also spots that are less scenic, require a bit of bushwhacking, which I hate, and intense tick checks upon arriving home.)

Here are some of the good places....also if you are in the area and want to join me for a stroll in pursuit of delightful scenery and interesting birds, hit me up...seriously, I would love to share.

See the bird?

Brown Creeper

Snow Geese

Not Dead

 

Snowing hard outside the hospital. Plow trucks weaving among the outpatients, trying to keep up with the fall. The ramp is long and snowy and the steps are way up the hill..

A long  way from the tiny, bent-over lady, dressed in white much like the snow. Frail, fragile, not much taller than a child and all alone.

Struggling with her cane to get to the bottom of the ramp through the snow that was inevitably building up between the cars where the plows couldn't go.

I was watching, thinking, "will she let me help her or will she be offended if I ask?" 

Before I could decide, a man came striding down the hill.

"Ma'am can I help you?"

She protested that she was fine, although she clearly wasn't, and was glad he asked. He was firm and gently took her arm and slowly helped her up the hill to the steps, and up them to the door, where she just as firmly insisted that she could take it from there.

Seeing him helping her along, others hurried to offer their help too, but she said, "No, he's got me."

I was never so proud of him...just coming out from a less than wonderful diagnosis himself, although not as bad as it could have been...but his mama taught him right.

Chivalry is not dead, even if it is getting older fast. There were plenty of folks who warned me against marrying him, but I am sure glad that I did.

Well done....

Tree Skins

 

Thanksgiving

 It's a quiet morning here at Northview Farm. I am the only one awake and I relish the peace and silence. The stars were so bright when I walked the dog today, that I swear I can feel them burning from inside the house.

Someone else is making the turkey this year and for this I am downright grateful. The boss has a set of new health issues and that is in the forefront of my mind most of the time. I am glad I don't have to race around juggling the oven and the microwave, turning the tables on the turkey, and all the other madness that goes with making Thanksgiving dinner.

I am glad too that yesterday I sent my mother's Golden Glow salad recipe to our daughter, Liz, who has taken over all the chaos. It was written in Mom's own words, joking asides abounded, and it was like having her here with me just to read it. That recipe has graced (or disgraced, depending on how you feel about gelatin salads) our family's holidays since my Grandma Lachmayer, all the aunties, and my mama, prepared the turkey dinner, while the men went hunting (that hasn't changed much either). I remember well how delicious, yet unsatisfying it always was, like swallowing wet air with a side of fruit and vegetables. I found mama's scalloped corn recipe and sent that one along as well. It was even funnier!

I am grateful the boss and I had another year to ram around the countryside chasing birds, mostly in the local 3-county area, with a couple of side trips to Western and Northern NY, and an adventure to OBX. I don't know how long we will be able to keep it up, but it's fun while it lasts.

Wildly grateful for family, blessed brothers, aunts, an uncle, cousins, nieces, nephews, clever, cute, and talented grandkids, and for our three adult children, each and every one of who could put on today's magical meal and do it well.

Love you guys, and Happy Thanksgiving to all. Hugs!

Connections

With today a whirlwind of blistering change, a chimera of magical technology laced with an underlying horror story full of nightmares, I find myself thinking about how many other changes my generation has seen and our connections with all that ancient history. 

I walk my ten-thousand steps a day listening to W.E.B. Griffin's Corps series in audio book form for the second time through...I read the paper versions too, a while ago. I was not born until two years after the Korean War began and was a baby when the armistice was declared but I am still connected to those days. My uncles must have served in occupying forces because I remember being awed when they came home on holiday leave...Christmas I think...in starched and pressed khakis, (remember starch and ironing boards?) bearing gifts from the other side of the world. My mother had a jewelry box that sported mythical dragons if I remember rightly and we were always warned to be extra careful when we pawed through the paste gems admiring it madly.

And even farther back to the Day that will Live in Infamy, Peal Harbor. Once again I was not born yet, but my parents were. Mom was 8 and remembered the day well. She and her siblings were playing upstairs at the house that grandpa built with his hands, in many cases of used lumber with nails he straightened before using them. There was a landing at the top of the stairs there, with not much of a railing at all and kids could perch over the edge near the kitchen listening to all that went on below. There must have been a radio....or maybe someone came by and told them...but she remembered the hushed tones of shock and horror that rose from below with the warm scent of dinner cooking and the oily air from the kerosene stove, on that fateful day.

And so I am connected to these world events and others, even if I didn't experience them myself. Listening to the books, remembering the stories told at family gatherings before everyone had a cell phone and no one told stories any more, makes me think of historical events like these as closer than the passing years would make them in real life.

I still find it a challenge to throw away a good cardboard box, a battered tee shirt or a still functional length of string, because my grandparents lived through the Great Depression and knew the pangs of hard poverty and loss. They saved everything until it was truly past any possible use and even long after that. I try to be more sensible, but our house is cluttered with things we might use someday.

As I listen, I see Ken McCoy, the main character in the books, as looking like one of my handsome twin uncles in grinning photos from their military days when their visits home were worthy of the utmost joy imaginable. I still feel the energy of Grandma and Grandpa Montgomery's kitchen when all the brothers and sisters and their kids gathered to eat good food and love one another.

I guess that makes me old, but I treasure the connections. I remember the people, the houses, one that exists only in memory, and the tales of times before mine, and the plentitude of years between, and feel connected.