Look to the Sky for Inspiration and Guidposts

When you find yourself out on the ocean, a glance to the sky will reveal what so many of us in the city have long forgotten. The sweep of the universe punctuates the black ball of the cosmos with pinpricks of light which, if you know how to read them, will guide your path.

Skygazing - Anacostia River - Washington, DC

The ocean sky is the birthplace of dreams, and I’ve found through my long distance walking that an occasional glance towards the vacuum of space gives both inspiration and guidance that I’d long ago abandoned in the wake of the seemingly perpetual rat race.

I’ve wasted far too many decades with my nose to the grindstone giving no thought to a glance at the heavens. I might have stayed in this state of somnambulation forever, but the persistent notion of walking long distances rescued me from myself. Like the clarity of the ocean sky, walking long distances gave me the space and the time to experience the presence of the moment fortified by the more than occasional glance toward the sky.

I’ve been once again filled with the wonder of the universe, and when I turn to the north, Polaris reliably guides my path forward.

Looking to the sky for guidance and inspiration, as the ocean once taught me, rekindled the ability to dream, that I’d long since forgotten.  For that, I am grateful.

Donation Boxes

The clouds parted, the sun came out, and although the weather was still a little cool I shifted my focus today and started locating (or at least trying to locate) donation boxes. I'm coupling this foray into minimalism with at least two other aspects of my daily practice. If possible, I'm walking to the "excess stuff" drop off locations, and I'm spreading the wealth in a fit of exploration. I don't know if it will all work out, but it feels pretty righteous right now.

Today, the walk to the donation box took me a different direction primarily along one of my more familiar routes. Due to the foot, I haven't walked this one since the middle of January, and this afternoon proved to be quite a bit more pleasant than 28 degrees and a north wind.

College Creek Under a Spring Sky

The watershed around College Creek shows signs of awakening, and the cherry blossoms around the Maryland Statehouse are still in full bloom.

Cherry Blossoms on State Circle

The sky was clear and blue, and although the air was chilly the sidewalks and streets and businesses were crowded with more than a handful of people eager to get out of their dens and start sucking the marrow out of life again.

Maryland Statehouse on a Glorious Spring Day

All the people out milling around forced me to think a little about some of my habits. It occurred to me that while I'd walked past the Maryland Statehouse at least a hundred times, I had never walked up the hill to get up close and personal. The one time that I ventured off the sidewalk facing the street, I took a quick picture of a statue and beat a hasty retreat to my familiar trail. I walk to explore, but somehow, during the execution of my ambulatory affairs, I forget that spirit of new horizons and push my nose right back into the comforting grindstone. It's a peculiar lack of creativity during an activity specifically designed to break my mold and reintroduce me to a touch of artistry and wonder. Weird.

Maryland Statehouse and Some Sort of Red Tree

However it happened, today the mold cracked a little, and some new vistas caught my eye. They showed a curious mix of the routine coupled with a whole new perspective, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to mix things up just a bit.

Adding the challenge of offloading things that have bound me to my past has been a good exercise for the first four days of the journey. I look forward to sending five more books out into the wild tomorrow and seeing just what kind of adventure those relics of a time past its sell by date bring to bear in the present.

Watching the Day Perish

Getting back on the trail has been a slow process over the last four days, but with patience, I'm confident that hill will be conquered. One of the good things to come out of the experience is the opportunity to spend a little more time in places that I've normally just breezed past. The distances covered art not nearly as long, and the pace is certainly slower. That's not all bad since it gives the opportunity to see a little more, to linger a little longer, and if I'm lucky, get in a few more photos.

Severn River - Looking North

This morning dawned crisp and clear. The sun was shining, and the weather, though a bit nippy was about as good as could be hoped for in Maryland during the month of February.  I was hoping to capture some shots of the river iced over this year, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen. We'll see how it plays out, but there is always next year.

Baltimore-Annapolis Boulevard Bridge - Severn River

A friend of mine noted that the calm wind didn't make for very good sailing weather, and she's not wrong about that aspect of the morning.  I like the calm. The photos are better because of the reflections off the surface of the water, and it would be a glorious (though bracing) day for water skiing.  I'll have to share the tale of water skiing naked behind under the Hathaway Bridge someday. Today is not that day.

Abandoned Boat Slips - Severn River

Now that the days are getting longer and the sun is setting earlier, sunrises on the weekends are getting a bit harder to capture.  I'm up in time, but have other commitments so early morning lighting will be what's on the menu until next fall. Perhaps I'll catch a few dawns while on travel.

Crossing the Baltimore-Annapolis Boulevard Bridge

The play of the sky and the water make the quality of light here in Annapolis a thing that competes with the best areas of southern Europe on the Mediterranean. One day, I hope to see these vistas from much, much higher up.

Hospital Point on the Severn River

The walk took me a little farther than I had planned, and my foot felt the burn. I'm pretty sure I didn't overdo things too much, but the freedom of the trail was calling, and pushing things just a bit seemed like it was worth a bit of discomfort. The morning ended my time on the trail, and that gave me the freedom to spend the sunset in a slightly different manner than has been my ambulatory habits of the past.

Sunset on Spa Creek

It takes some patience and a warm hat to fully experience the dying of a day. The warm hat is probably optional, but it proved to be an experience enhancing addition today. 

From the time this picture was taken, till the time the charcoal gray of the night sky had chased the warmth to the western horizon took just under an hour. I spend that time on the Eastport Bridge, looking west, and the experience is something that I think I'd like to repeat. I saw at least a dozen airplanes stream past. Their icy contrails were turned into orange fire as the refracted rays of the setting sun glinted off their lines in the sky. Like slowly moving meteors, the scribed their path to points south.

Spa Creek Sunset

As the blue of the sky faded to indigo, I saw duck and geese fly past with the bellies painted pink by the setting sun. As the death of the day unfolded, I was the only one on the bridge watching it happen. Cars rushed past behind me, and a large number of walkers stopped to snap a few shots. Time slowed down, and the distractions were easy to ignore. I don't get this kind of experience from watching an hour of television. Getting outside and seeing things happen at their natural pace is the only thing that makes me really want to come back and try to describe what it's like. The words are inadequate. The air was cool and the light breeze kept things antiseptic and not very nourishing. I actually loved the peppery heft that the man with the cigar brought to the scene. The fullness of that moment was fleeting as the breeze whisked it away up the creek. A couple of lovers stopped to canoodle up a few paces toward Eastport. A bit of hugging and a nuzzle or two, and they moved on inspired to come together but now stay for the end.

Nightfall on Spa Creek

The inky sky marched westward, and the charcoal blackness of night followed close at its heels. When I finally saw the last rays of the dying day slip below the horizon I turned to my car and walked back across the bridge with Jerry Macker. He's the best bass player in the state of Maryland according to his account anyway. He's certainly fallen on hard times, but it was great to make his acquaintance at the end of the day. He told me to look for him downtown this summer, and that he'd make every effort to play at the Eastport vs. Annapolis tug-o-war tournament. I'll look for him there. Meeting him and making the connection, however brief, was the gift of the day as it receded into history. 

On the Eve of a Road Trip

Tomorrow, I get on a couple of planes and head south to Alabama for a series of work related meetings next week. I've been feeling quite rushed in my daily practice over the last couple of weeks catching up after the Christmas holiday, so I'm planning on trying to keep things as low key and focused as I can next week.

In spite of the rush, I got in just a touch over the required distance I need to keep just ahead of the threshold goal for the month. I covered the eleven mile distance all in one shot, and although the pace lagged what I'd like, a nagging tendon irritation in my left foot seems to be waning. It was good to cover a medium distance all in one go, and I really feel like it's getting to be time to practice a relatively long day sometime in the near future.

In addition to the format, the temperature was quite a bit more temperate than it was earlier in the week. There were even hints of blue sky which is always a welcome surprise this time of year in the Mid-Atlantic region.

College Creek Reflecting the Hint of Blue Sky

I have really grown to appreciate the quality of the reflections on the water from in this part of the world when the air is calm. I've heard it said that the master painters used to travel to the Mediterranean because of the quality of the light. My own theory holds that it was the quality of the beaches and Spanish and Italian women as well as the wine and that the light was just a convenient excuse. My own hypothesis aside, if it truly was the quality of the light, I suspect they would have found the same sort of effects here in the coastal Chesapeake regions of Virginia and Maryland. The proliferation of calm water really amplifies the effects seen in the sky and add a richness to the natural lighting that I've only seen duplicated in Hawaii and Key West, FL.

It is a wonderful thing to be treated to the riches of nature on such a regular basis, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to experience it. 

Something to Do While Walking

Walking is its own reward.  Through my walking over the last year I believe I've become more observant and less critical.  I've embraced the concept that there is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing.  I have a much better idea what people living on the street have to face, and I've gained a higher level of empathy for their circumstances.  I've learned to appreciate finding a bathroom, a cool drink, and the little chemical hand warming pouches.  I've gotten to see things that I never imagined even existed in the neighborhood where I live and where I work.  I've been accidentally caught up in a Mardi Gras parade.

One of the more beneficial aspects of walking is that I've found extra time that I never knew existed.  I'm not quite sure what I was doing with this time before...probably watching television or something equally unproductive.  Having this gift of time gives me the space to create something to do while walking.  Some of this time...actually quite a lot of it, I've spent talking to Rory Conlan.  I've spent a fair amount of time on the phone with other people.  I've listened to some music, and recently, I've been listening to the extensive library of TED Talks.

Street Art Portrait of Edgar Allan Poe in Annapolis, MD

Today, I was listening to a talk by Louie Schwartzberg titled "Nature. Beauty. Gratitude." given at a TEDx conference in San Francisco, CA.  Mr. Schwartzberg is a nature photographer who specializes in taking time-lapse photos nature, but that's not really captured my attention. What really grabbed me was the gist of a project that he was working on in 2011 that dealt with the gratitude of living in the moments that make up a single day.  One of the narrators pointed out the unique nature of every moment. That when we open our eyes, hearts, and minds there are endless things that enrich our lives and make mindfulness of gratitude an easy and natural state of mind.

My shadow on the trail...feeling grateful

To open my eyes and observe is to break the bonds of generalization.  Weather becomes what's happening in the moment rather than something to be clinically described by a weather predictor on the television.  The currents in the air, the moisture or dryness, the clouds in the sky that show apparently endless variation, or the nature of a particular rain.  They're always different and always interesting. This talk I was listening to reaffirmed the sense of wonder that's come back into my life since I hit the trail a little over a year ago.

A Water Tower and the Sky - Annapolis, MD

Observing the day like it is the first I've ever seen and the last I may ever see is the sense of wonder that I relearned while out on the trail. Looking back, I'm not sure when that lesson began to sink in and I began to recapture that sense of wonder we're all naturally born with, but somehow, seems to fade with the intervening years.  By recapturing the wonder of life, the gratitude for the gift of the experience seems to naturally rush back into my consciousness, and a sense of contentment and happiness follows closely in its wake.

It was another great day, and I hope for the privilege of another tomorrow.