Sunny Afternoon

Lows in the upper 20s this week. Highs in the low 50s. Our sun-room where we hang laundry to dry gets quite warm in the afternoon sun- and from its windows we can see snow on the eastern hills. Today we are cleaning house and listening to Congo to Cuba (thanks Krejci!). Shinay has added flavor to the day's chores by brewing eight treasures tea and fixing a delicious tofu-cabbage stew. I married a great cook! If you're in DC and want to try eight treasures tea- we recommend Ching Ching Cha in Georgetown.

Chilly Wednesday

I woke up this morning to the sight of what appeared to be snow on South Mountain. Our apartment backs right against the base of the hill, and about two hundred yards up there was quite a bit of white between the tufts of grass and trees. Not sure if was a heavy frost or a dusting of snow. I wanted to go inspect- but it's not that easy to get to the slopes that are so tantalizingly close, as I discovered on my walk there last weekend.

About 50 yards up the steep hill, a mud road runs parallel to the base. All along the road are the old style courtyard houses built without gaps in between save for a tiny drain here and there. It's maddening trying to go for a nice walk on the hill and having to walk for over a mile to get to a break in the houses. If one travels westward along the hill, the only avenue upwards is to a gated entry to a park. If one travels eastward, there is just house after house after house. All are mud or brick or concrete block. The mud and brick yards are swept clean, potted flowers grace the doorways and the windows are hung with colorful curtains. Huge laying hens cluck about and a few roosters crow throughout the day. Children run about happily flying little kites made of plastic bags and string. This is affordable housing and seems to be a healthy neighborhood of taxi drivers, laborers, and shop-workers. A mosque anchors the east end and to the south east is a broad field before the city resumes. Men, women, and children alike all seemed noticeably happy as they walked through the fields and mud streets chatting or playing. Every home bears a black, spray-painted designation on its outer wall: "for demolition".

I eventually gave up looking for a break in the houses and followed a young boy as he picked his way through some buildings to an ash and rubbish pile that doubled as a ladder up 20 feet to the next terrace. I tried not to think about what I was climbing and scrambled up after him. In a few garbled words I enquired about how to get up the hill. He just pointed and said to keep going the same westward route I'd been following. To my dismay, the brick path eventually led right back down to the previous terrace, but I did enjoy the expanded view and the sight of two different flocks of chickens waiting patiently at their owners' doorways for lunch! 

Abandoning the search for a legitimate route to the hillside, I ventured into an un-gated courtyard and looked about for someone to ask for permission to cross their property- but couldn't find anybody. The small rooms to the back of the courtyard used the hillside as their rear wall, but there was a little nook in the corner where one could pass. It was an outdoor room for a tethered calf, two walls being the earth itself and one wall being that of another building. I was happy to face a guard calf rather than a guard dog and carefully climbed the homemade wooden ladder eight feet up to the mud steps cut into the soil. 

Finally! Above the endless ribbon of mud and brick homes, above the noisy streets, I was almost eye level with the towering high-rises and facing a terraced hill of grasses, trees, and shrubs. I grew up in the countryside on a sprawling property just east of the Blue Ridge. Even the small town of Blacksburg was unnerving in its urban-ness and crush of people everywhere. Grass and trees and cows and bugs and bushes and streams and hills are what I need to breathe. Over the years in Blacksburg and then in DC I learned where to find little pockets of air and how to hold my breath longer and longer. At Tech it was the cow pastures and hikes along the Appalachian Trail and any stream Gabe and I could find. In DC it was wooded neighborhoods like Capitol Hill and long runs on the W&OD trail and walks at Great Falls and kayaking the Potomac. It became such habit that I didn't even realize how tense I was until I'd hit 29 South and the rolling fields lined with cedar trees approaching Charlottesville and all my being would relax like tight muscles in a hot bath. 

South Mountain is a little breath of life in this city of millions. As I picked my way through thornbushes and tall grass upward into bigger and bigger trees and then beyond them to high fields- I felt alive again. Fall is the time that I need the outdoors most and the time that I daily live with one foot in the here and now and one foot on the ethereal ground of memory. My body walks concrete paths between concrete towers, but my soul is with Gabe and Grandad cutting wood and walking in the pastures. At dusk I want to go somewhere- but I don't know where, I'm looking for something, but don't know what. I feel lost until I realize that my being is searching for the gathering in of family and friends around the Brickhouse kitchen table at dusk- but that is far off in distance and further off in time. 

Dusk instead found me sitting in a park with another old friend whose pages hold these worlds together- and also promise another better than the beginning. Sitting beside an earthen wall of a city thousands of years old, I read the words that accompanied me to the farm ponds of Appomattox and the banks of the James River, that fed me through hungry times and lit my way through dark ones, and I remember that there is no going back and there is no standing still- there is only pressing on.  

I have sucked in a breath of nature and have drunken a draught from the springs of life. I have looked into the ghosts of memory and it is time now to return. Homeward bound, I climb the dark hill to the apartment- knowing that the home I long for is both past and future, and that the home that I must build is now.

Signs of fall, smell of snow

The leaves on the mountainside are turning golden and the air is often crisp and cool. Outside of the gate trucks loaded down with apples sell to passersby. Besides the usual fall crops- huge mounds of red chili peppers are being carted all over the city on little motorized three wheelers that supply the small vegetable shops. In people's windows one can see strands of them as long as a man hanging to dry.

A couple of days I've walked outside to the distinct smell of snow on the wind. How odd, I thought- as there was no sign of snow clouds. As I hiked up South Mountain a few days ago- the source of the smell became visible. All of the high peaks beyond the dirt mountains surrounding the city were showing white at the peaks.

Walk on South Mountain

A man returning from the yellow pastures at the top of South Mountain. I crested the shoulder of the hill to find him packing and lighting his pipe. He lingered for a little while in the warm afternoon sun- probably curious to see what I was doing- then shouldered his load of fodder and gathered his grazing cattle with whooping calls and the cracks of a whip. 

Although not very visible in this picture, the ridge in the far distance is snow-capped.