Skyline Drive

Virginia, USA

From Skyline Drive

A romantic interlude along the ridgeline of the Blue Ridge Mountains on my way home from "church camp" with someone special.

From Skyline Drive

Virginia Hike

Radford, Virginia, USA

From Virginia Mountain Stream

In which I spend the last day of "church camp" hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains, swimming in a quick little creek, and starting my photography project of images suitable for making memes for a social media campaign.

We Didn't Mean To Break the Boat

South Bridgton, Maine, USA

From Boats and Beaches

The wind was up, the boats were in the water, and it was warm enough not to worry about an accidental tip-test into the lake. My friend Stephanie had come up with me from New York for the holiday weekend, and I don't think she had ever been sailing. "Don't worry," I said, "I'm a certified sailing instructor. I can teach you in an hour." It's true, I've done it.

Still, it had been a few years since I had been sailing on my own. Last summer, I let my brother Ben do all the actual sailing when we went out briefly on the Sunfish, because I wasn't sure I would still have the feel for it. So before I put Stephanie on board, I took the Sunfish out for a spin on my own. It turns out that sailing small craft is like riding a bike -- actually, better, because I falter an awful lot more when I haven't been on a bike that long! After a quick jaunt out and back, I ran aground on the much shallower-than-expected lake bottom, picked up Stephanie, and headed out to "sea."

Meanwhile, Dad was having a great time on his "new," "free to a good home" Force 5 sailboat. The father of his old high school buddy had this boat sitting around that he hadn't used in a long time, and he recently gave it to Dad. He and my brother had to re-fiberglass some large sections of the hull, and the missing top third of the mast had to be mail-ordered, but now it was ready to sail, and Dad was more than willing and able!

Stephanie and I launched at about the same time in the Sunfish. A few fishermen out in a small boat shouted, "Great sail!" across the water before powering quietly out of our way. Passing Dad, I shouted an old family favorite, "Swallows and Amazons forever!" He was definitely having a great time, heeling up on edge and flying over the water. We couldn't get going nearly as fast in the fickle wind of the small lake.

After awhile, Stephanie and I brought the Sunfish in, and I hopped on the Force 5 with Dad to try his new "go-fast boat." It certainly gave the feel of speed, the wind in my hair, the heel of the boat. We were hit with a particularly strong gust of the inconsistent wind, and I felt sure we had reached that critical angle that you can't recover from and were about to flip her over. As the sail inched closer to the water, I braced my feet under the lip of the cockpit opposite and leaned back as far as I could manage.

Then, all of a sudden, the hull was flat in the water, so was the sail, and Dad was gone, flown off into the water behind me. The mast had snapped clean off near the hull where someone had redrilled an extra pair of holes to reattach the boom. It only proves what Dad always says: "A free boat is the most expensive kind!"



For dinner, we went out to the sea in Portland for lobster. It was a great weekend away from the city, everything the Swallows might have wished for!

From Boats and Beaches

Van Cortland Hike

Bronx, New York, USA

From Van Cortland Park Hike

One of the things I love best about New York City is the abundance of public parks and green spaces, a wealth that is growing in quantity and quality as I live here. For the third summer in a row, it is my intention to see some parks this year that I haven't visited.

It's also my goal to do some Saturday hiking this year, to get in slightly better shape, but more for the renewal of a little time in green and nature. While I love New York, I'm not actually a city person by nature.

So when I saw that the Friends of Van Cortland Park was doing a highlights hike of the park on my day off, I jumped at the chance. Van Cortland is a huge park up in the Bronx with lots of more or less untouched woods, cross country and bridle trails, cricket and soccer fields, and some historic buildings.

There's a couple of golf courses with a swamp in between that I'd love to come back and spend more time exploring the edges of.

All in all, it was a nice little hike in the big city.

From Van Cortland Park Hike

Beacon Mountain

Beacon, NY, USA

From Beacon Mountain

Wow. Am I ever sore! At the top of the first switchback, David said, "Is everyone okay? Does anyone think they're not going to make it?" I almost raised my hand and said I'd meet them back in town after. Call it pride, chutzpah or the "stoic Maryah act," I couldn't bring myself to raise my hand. And I would have regretted it.

The views were spectacular, the clouds perfectly fluffy and just the right amount, the company delightful, and we stopped often to drink it all in.


After we had rested a bit at the top, we hiked across to that fire tower, which looks pretty far away in this photo, but was a pleasant walk, mostly fairly flat. It was worth it for the misty view of the New York City skyline over sixty miles away.

From Beacon Mountain

New Goal
I started using the step counter on my phone again on the first. My commute plus lunch averages out to about 3.5 miles of walking all told (home to subway, subway to subway, subway to work). My new fitness goal is to walk 5 miles a day, even on Fridays and Saturdays when I'm not working. Today I gave my average a good head start with 14.1 miles, doorstep to doorstep (by which I mean the apartment doorstep in my third floor walkup!)

Prodigal Magnolia

New York, NY, USA

From Finding Magnolia

I'm delighted to have my friend Magnolia back in New York, even for a brief visit. We are, as Anne Shirley would say, "kindred spirits." Between our Unitarian Universalist roots, and our crazy travel histories, we have such similar stories that we understand the parts of each other's lives that are hardest for some of our other friends to really empathize with in the same way.

Not everyone wants to hear the details when you come back from Somewhere. I've been fortunate to have a lot of friends and family who are not only willing but eager to hear all my long, sometimes rambling, often mundane stories about living abroad. What is much harder for many of my friends and family to understand is the emotional underpinnings of this addiction to multiculturalism. Maggie gets that, too.

While I was looking for Maggie, I took a nice stroll through Central Park. I've started using the step counter on my phone again with the hope of walking 5 miles per day (my average is 3.5 at this time). I also got some nice photos of the new set of flowers in bloom this week.

From Finding Magnolia

April Flowers

New York, NY, USA

From April Flowers

As the calendar flipped to April, even I started to hate the New York winter a little. Sure, the snow was still pretty when it occasionally fell, but six months of potatoes and cheese and days too frigidly cold for exercise were leaving their mark. I could feel the inertia, the lethargia, the first tentacles of depression creeping in. I joined a Y, but that was a temporary stop-gap at best. What I really needed were crocuses, followed by snowdrops, daffodils, tulips and forsythia. Some cherry blossoms would be nice.

My first attempt to find crocus was actually on a Sunday afternoon at the end of March. "I've got to get out of here," I told Alice, "and find some crocuses!" She wished me luck with doubt in her voice, but I didn't care. I needed some color. Camera in hand, I headed to the Jackie O reservoir in Central Park, but I saw more fauna than flora.

It was about a week later when I decided the wan sunlight was just about warm enough for lunch in Central Park, and my body was in need of a walk with my meal. That was when I found the first full-blooming crocus.

As the month progressed, the flowers got brighter and more and better.



Until the magnolias bloomed and allergies set in for me in earnest.

From April Flowers

Snowhattan!

New York, NY, USA

From Snowhattan!

While everyone else is complaining, I'm really loving the cold, snow and general winteriness of New York City this year. Sure, there was the day I fell twice within a block of my house on invisible ice, and the day that there were Great Lake-sized slush puddles on every other street corner in Manhattan. There was the day I thought my face would be sliced into ribbons by the sharp sleet on the whipping wind.

But I love it, and I'm completely unrepentant. Take, for example, the day that Maria Hernandez Park glowed golden on my evening commute home:

Or the day the city sparkled above the Jackie Onassis Reservoir in the icy wind of sunset:

And the day the All Souls Memorial Garden turned into a fairy grotto in the heavy snowflakes:

This day, too, of snow and fog in Central Park, was ethereal and beautiful:

From Snowhattan!

My glee hasn't diminished yet for the snow, but my coworkers have told me I'm no longer allowed to wear my snowflake earrings, because they're too effective at invoking further snow!