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Walking to New Familiar Places

Morro Bay State Park Museum of Natural HIstory

If life is a story, the walk around Morro Bay State Park’s Museum of Natural History would be several chapters of mine.

Many years ago, maybe when I was not even a teenager, I traveled to this area with my parents. I remember being surprised at the golf course adjacent to the park, only to turn around and see there was something more to explore up the hill towards the bay. The stone pathways, the eucalyptus grove, the muddy beach seemed to mix into a jumble of memories about a place where so many things that shouldn’t be together existed side-by-side.

Then there were the visiting years, when I would escape the heat of the valley with my own young family. On long walks from the town of Morro Bay, through the nesting heron rookery, and up the stone walks, we would spend time in the Museum itself. Reading the history and looking at the photos gave us some good information and a rest stop. After all, we had a long walk back into town.

Today’s walk, though, is longer and more solitary. As a woman approaching seventy, I climb up past the museum onto the crumble of sandstone paths with only an occasional step-worn stone to steady me. The routine of walking to the back of the museum, around to the side on the path that winds nicely above and along White Point, then down to the estuary marina, is now a part of my life. I sit often on the wooden bench looking over the stone border wall to the tides coming in and then leaving the bay. I see people putting their kayaks into the water at the end of the public launch and watch pelicans hunting above the schools of fish. But I have not ever walked up to the crest of the hill. I think I remember knowing that you can walk it. I just never thought that I would.

Today, I turn left onto the uphill path instead of following the worn path I had always followed before. I will treat myself to a new version of this walk and a new view at the end of the pathway. It’s not as safe a trail as the other, having less traffic and more rubble. I reach several places where the route ahead is unsure. It’s certainly less marked. But eventually, the path reveals itself and I find that there’s a wide marked area to welcome me at the top, and one last treat that out-surprises that first impression I had of this area so long ago. The view.

What can I say about a view that extends farther than I ever would have guessed? How do I write about the freshness of the air? I am really not able to describe the vitality of this perch from the top of a hill I knew about, but had never visited. I think it’s better that you go there yourself.

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Walking Kherson, Ukraine

Ushakova Boulevard

When I hear news about Ukraine, I don’t think of global politics. I think about a man who sold me honey at Kherson’s outdoor market. I think of my former co-workers. I think of the bread lady at the kiosk down the street who would only sell us the very best of what she had to offer. Kherson, Ukraine was my home for nearly a year, and today I would like to take you on a walk down its main street as a tribute to a precious way of life.

Ushakova Boulevard in Kherson, Ukraine runs straight from the railway station to the Dneiper River quay. Along its sides, many of Kherson’s important buildings have stood for decades. The street is lined with broad pathways and sidewalks, covered by enormous green leaves from chestnut trees in the summer, made dangerous by ice and snow in the winter. If you walk one street in Kherson, it should be Ushakova, and it should be in early summer.

Like many post-Soviet railway stations this one impresses you with complex walkways leading from the arriving trains. There are overhead walkways, round and about walkways and zig zags. Follow the other passengers, and you will eventually find yourself in the building’s reception area, filled with high ceilings, wooden walls and Cyrillic-lettered notices. Head out the station’s entrance, and you have found the city’s Grand Avenue – Ushakova.

Near the station, the buildings that line the street are Lenin-era buildings, gentler than the newer concrete-block buildings. The Stalin-era buildings, the concrete ones, were built unemotionally, to last. The Lenin-era buildings were built with love, wood, and high ceilings. Many are beginning to slowly crumble, waiting for someone to decide their future.

Soon, you pass by one of those newer concrete buildings, and notice that even it is beginning a slow crumble of neglect. Other buildings on your walk, the Music College for example, are sturdy, well-tended and vibrant.

There is an extravagant Naval College and a long, industrial-looking post office. From your sidewalk, you peek through an open lot and see a beautiful little Orthodox church. Tall feathered stems from grasses wave between you and the church, surrounded as it is with a graveyard that grows field grasses high during a quick and vigorous spring.

Ushakova here becomes a true boulevard. Benches for sitting divide two wide walkways that line each side of the street. The traffic lanes of the street are narrow compared to these pedestrian walkways. More buses than private vehicles fill the avenue. But there are many, many people – like you – walking. To keep up with your Ukrainian sidewalk companions, you’ll have to quicken your pace. If you want to sit and watch for a while, pick a bench and rest.

But don’t stop long, for farther down the boulevard is Lenin Square. When I was taking this walk, in 2010, a huge statue of Lenin stood in the middle of the expanse of concrete. It is no longer there, having been pulled down during the Maidan protests of 2011-2012. Even empty, the size of this rectangle of concrete will impress you. Massive public areas, like this one, are here and there around Kherson. Once a city of 500,000, now retreating to near 200,000, this amount of common space feels overwhelming.

All along Ushakova, you have passed restaurants, many with cafe tables along the sidewalk. Now, as you reach the pedestrian street of Suvarova, you see there are many more, as well as shops and perhaps some sidewalk artists and vendors.

The avenue here begins a steep descent to the Dneiper River. There is a beautiful wharf walk along the river that runs through a park that is allowed to grow wild with spring grasses, then – just in time – trimmed with weed whackers in a fit of tidiness.

Something invades your peaceful river thoughts – the Hotel Fregat. A futuristic design sixty years ago, the building and grounds now look like a sad mockery of the 1960’s. It hasn’t fallen into disrepair, just fallen wildly out of fashion. Maybe a little disrepair, too.

But the river is glorious. Ushakova ends here, at the wide, powerful, decisive Dneiper. Large and small outboard motor boats can take you back and forth to the islands just across the current. Yachts sail by, but not often. Enormous commercial ships ferry goods occasionally. Most of the time, you can stand here at the quay with just you, your thoughts, and the steel-colored waves.

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Walking Morro Bay’s Park Ridge Trail

Over the shoulder of the town of Los Osos is the Pacific Ocean. Shielded by a sand spit, Los Osos hides from that deceptive and ill-named body of water that is not peaceful even when it appears calm, as today. I walk at low tide east from the Pacific and watch the ocean’s fingers snake their way to the back of Morro Bay until the sand sucks out the sea water and becomes a soupy mess. It pulls your shoes off if you venture out in a kayak at the wrong time of the tidal day and need to step out to unstick your ride.

But today, as I walk away from the coast, I head toward Park Ridge Trail in Morro Bay State Park. It’s nice to watch the ocean from a distance. The path rises and falls around a hill that gives a magnificent view of the saltwater marsh in the shallow end of the bay.

Imperfect wildflowers lay along the path and up the hillside. Taller than me, the golden yarrow shines bright and the tiny baby blue eyes brush my boots. Some plants are vivid today, but remind me that the wildflower season is past prime. Cow parsnip, morning glory, sticky monkey flower, milk thistle and purple salsify are saying their goodbyes.

The hills today still carry the mist from the coast, making the air mild and my cheeks refreshed. The sun here is powerful and insistent, but waved away by the breeze. A green blush on the hillside won’t be here next time I walk this path. Even today, weeks since the last rain, the hills are streaked with golden. A change has come about from winter’s green. The waving ends of aging grass and flowers sway over the crest of the hill, a fading springtime pastel against the blue of a balmy sky.

I walk on a path that has been visited recently by a run of bicycles and many feet. A diligent maintenance crew has kept the main paths broad. Smaller, happenstance cutaways lead to places I didn’t prepare to see today. Most are made by adventurous hikers who know the area better than I. Once I get past the first hill, I realize how broad and expansive is this parkland. There are a dozen break-off paths, some posting legitimate signs: Quarry Trail, Crespi Trail, Chumash Trail. The named trails are blazed by the park maintenance crews, but many others are side-lined single walking jaunts that lure me to break the rules. But I know it’s best in all ways to stay on the cleared paths. Safer for me and safer for the creatures who live here on the hillside.

I see some of these: little rabbits, a couple quails, a buzzard flying above. I hear others:  a scampering away as I turn a bend, a swish around a tall bush, several bird voices I can’t identify. I also see many off-shoots of trails that these creatures have made, so small I am not even tempted to change my route. Running under, next to and through thorny vegetation, they seem to head toward a cleft of water that I hear but can’t see.

Getting to know this area, I have been so entertained by the sea: the constant sound, the soothing beach sand, the shallow tides I can slip my toes into every day year-round. I have been facing west for years, in wonderment at this ocean home. Happily today, I am discovering a walking buffet to the east. I can’t wait for my next ramble through these coastal hills, and wonder why my feet have been so long in walking this way.

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Tumwater Historical Park

On a crisp autumn afternoon, I step onto a public pathway and fall in love with fall.

I’ve always tried to call the season by its proper name: autumn. I think it was never a true season for me. I lived in places where there were no real seasons, or where the change from one time of year to another was more like summer-winter (and a small winter at that.) Well, there was once that wild weather year in Ukraine, but that is best forgotten. Here, in Tumwater Washington, USA, there is a true autumn where leaves really do fall and weather straddles that divide between summer’s and winter’s extremes. Fall is here, not just autumn, and I can’t wait to see this season progress.

Today I step for the first time onto the path in Tumwater Historical Park, and there is nothing but delight all around. Breathe in, and the crisp smell of water-plants-mulch-dirt-leaves-flowers-moist air gives a refresher that must be more healthy than a million daily vitamins.

Photos do that wonderful trick of being perfect without any magic from me – not that I know how to put magic into pictures. The water reflects the image of perfect trees, perfect geese, perfect ducks, perfect buildings. Around the curves in this path, bushes arrange themselves into perfect arbors and before I can wish they were there, docks jut into the lake for me to walk upon.

I walk under Interstate #5, a phenomenally busy highway, without noticing any traffic noise. Maybe it’s there, but my attention is pulled ahead to Capitol Lake and a perfect view to the State Capitol building. The pathway is just busy enough with fellow walkers to keep me company, without blocking my views or making me run from crowds.

Walking is a physical venture. Sometimes that is enough. Every once in a while, though, a walk comes along and offers more than simply putting feet to ground. That this one came during my first fall here is just perfect.

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Walking with a book in hand

If you are still staying close to home, like me, you might be getting close to the end of your bookshelf supply. To help things out, I am serializing a novel I wrote, putting up a chapter a day throughout September until the book is done. Happy reading – I hope you enjoy “Vowels, Vodka and Voices.”

Hannah hears every voice around her. Every utterance, every syllable, everything spoken. When Hannah listens, intentions and hidden meanings are revealed. She hears things she may not want to know. She hears people’s secrets.

            Words – in eight languages – give her information normal people never notice. Hannah knows her skill is precious, but it comes at a cost. With each reclaimed secret, a pain grew in the soft bone behind her ear. Thousands of secrets over a 20-year career amounted to more pain than Hannah could endure. She sought peace. She left her agency, changed her name and hid for ten years, trying to escape the enormous hurt.

But an old problem has found its way to her former employer, and only Hannah can fix it. John Smith and Associates are in a tangle of vowels, vodka and voices that hold the past’s secrets. They send scouts to find her and bring her back. The question isn’t can Hannah solve their problem. The question is, does she want to? 

     

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Walking for Blackberries

Sharp flashes of brightness hide behind branches and foliage. Shining in the sunlight, the fruit lay dark against the green leaves of the hillside vines. Wild blackberry harvest is coming.

Being new to this area, I hadn’t known exactly what would spring from the vines I had been walking by for almost five months. First, I saw the woody clipped vine, then small new green buds, then tangling arms of leafy berry vines. Knowing USA’s Pacific Northwest is famous for its berries, I hoped for the exotic salmon berry. But I also knew that blackberries were better at growing in the wild. Then, as I saw the black globs mounting bigger and more numerous against the vines, I knew I could celebrate the abundant blackberry, tart and sweet.

But I didn’t know the berry-picking etiquette in this neighborhood of hillsides owned by everyone. For several days on my walks, I watched people inspect the vines. A few days later, the first neighbor returned with baskets. A day after that, I counted eight different pickers taking berry bounty from three different areas of hillside vines. On my next walk, I brought along my own small basket.

I knew to be careful. As a child, I had picked wild berries in the hills of the Northern Sierra Range in California. As an adult, I savored the Southern Sierra mountain berries. The vines guard their sweet fruit with hairy stickers that sting with more fury than their size should be able to hold. Did I see my neighbors wearing gloves? I should have remembered that little trick to berry-picking. But my small supply of fresh-picked berries gave me only one sting. I escaped home with a nice supply of shining blackberry harvest. Berry, berry good.

Today, I walk again along the sidewalks that border the berry hillsides. I haven’t brought my basket, thinking that berry harvest is a rapid season and I may have missed my chance for a second pick. I turn onto a slightly different path than my usual and begin a walk around a gravel section of a neighborhood park. There are vines alongside the path here, and I notice the dark berries have been harvested. But as I walk closer, I also see that a second offering of green globs hide behind the leaves, waiting to ripen. Berry goodness will deliver a second offering, just one more welcome to the neighborhood.

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Walking small

An American friend who lived for years in India tells the story of her first successful experience wearing a Sari, the traditional Indian women’s clothing. She was tightly wrapped into the fabric by a Sari expert. When she complained that she couldn’t walk in such a confining garment, the expert said “Take smaller steps.”

I am living this advice right now. It might be a philosophical outlook on life, or a good recipe for putting one foot in front of the other. No matter how I look at the moral of this small story, it fits. My walks now call for smaller steps than I am used to. Even the territory I cover is small compared to walks I have taken in the past.

I take a step and appreciate things I wouldn’t have seen five months ago. I remember the place where the bunnies hide, where to get the best view and how to avoid the crack in the sidewalk from all the past times I have come this way. I know how fast the plants grow and where the roots of the biggest tree loop over each other in a braid. Smaller steps give me the chance to be grateful for some simplicity in life and the fact that I can still get up and go.

There are so many things to look at when I am looking for details. Just three feet away hovers a huge bumble-bee-like creature. Its chubby body stays suspended mid-air. Two tiny frogs jump out of the wet grass, and bounce into the weeds. Weed or unknown local plant? Or both? If I study the growing things for a moment or two – or three –  I can activate my memory enough to investigate with my northwest plant guide when I get home. It’s a luxurious feeling, taking my time and slowing my steps.

 I notice I am measuring in units much, much less than a mile. In front of me is a curving stone path and I wonder if I can build something like that in my own yard. Three paces uphill and I see the berries are ripening on vines that have been growing since early spring.

Maybe I can even have a walk in my mind, and maybe that can be enough. So many great walks are there for the imagining. Or even remembering. Inside my head is a mental recycling plant that lets me enjoy rambles twice. In fact, it’s a good investment: Next time I go on a walk in a new place somewhere far away, the routine won’t be such a rusty old process.

Is your walk philosophical, real, or a nice blend of each? Is it long or short, and does it change with the seasons? Stepping out of our usual habits isn’t all bad – it’s something to think about next time we put one foot in front of the other.

Long walks or short, large steps or small, it’s up to each of us to keep going in our own way. Maybe we can’t make the Saris of the world adapt to us, but we can do small things to adapt to the world. If I can hear a great story from a friend along the way bringing me laughter and making me think, all the better.

Thank you, Ann

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Walking the urban forest

from regular neighborhood road…
into a forest..
with many paths
and many plants
so soothing

It’s heaven-sent. During this time of boundaries closing tight, someone had the foresight to keep pathways open. A person I don’t know, about 20 years ago, designed an urban forest to help me today celebrate the natural world. More precisely, someone made it so the forest that was already here wasn’t swallowed up entirely by new homes. I am a lucky sort today, because that space is where my walk takes me.

The pleasure of being able to step from concrete sidewalk to crushed granite path into soothing coolness gives me a moment to pause. It’s a quiet walk, no others within ear shot. Perhaps it’s the time of day – mid afternoon – when every creature takes a rest.

Except me. With each step into the shade, the distant freeway traffic hum, the occasional whirr of small airplanes, the in-and-out of neighborhood inhabitants, all these usual every day sounds are muffled, then fade, then are gone. A simple quiet surrounds the magic of light passing through a split branch of moss-covered old pine, the tender changes in green from tiny leaf to stem to vine, and the delicate yellow and pink of blossoms I haven’t yet named.

The route is adventurous. The trail veers down and makes me evaluate my mountain climbing skills. It’s a mini-mountaineering escape in a twenty-minute time capsule. Other walkers have slipped, leaving their mud tracks in three-foot long skids. I decide to scoot over to the edge. I side-step my way down, cushioned by a layer of old pine needles, crushed brown leaves and the wisdom of being in my sixties with no desire to see if I can recover from a slide down 30 feet of forest. Luckily, this particular path is kind. It exits the forest onto a separate side street and into the neighborhood without needing a return hike back up the slick incline.

But not before I walk through the section I have named Fern Gully. How did these living things survive an ice-and-cold winter? They sit to the side of the trail, ferns more delicate than the tatted-lace doilies my grandmothers’ mothers used to make. Right now, just entering full summer, they have uncurled finger-tipped leaves with hairy undersides in shades of the forest that change as the sun passes by.

Now, the trail feels like the backward beginning of my stroll: into the full sun, onto crushed granite, then hard cement sidewalk. It’s easy to think that the walk, so simple and small, was just a mind’s adventure, just a moment to escape a worried planet. I wonder if I’ll be able to find these peaceful footsteps next time I need an escape. But I smell the lingering pine and cedar, and don’t have to look back to know it’s really there.

As my walk ends, I step through a baracade of trees that reach up 100 feet and into my backyard. The fat leaves of a tree I still cannot name hang down to shield the sun. Climbing onto the small hillside of my back yard, I am home.

Thank you, urban planners. You made today’s walk a welcome relief  in an up-and-down world.

 

Please join the Monday Walk with RestlessJo and friends:

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Walking around a lockdown

Old chair, new place
Time for a walk
new views, old habits
into the Pixie Woods
freshness all around

 

It’s time to get up from my old chair, step out from a front door that is new to me and take an everyday walk around a locked-down neighborhood. The neighborhood itself is beautiful, and wonderful to explore. We have hills to keep us in shape, streets to walk, and glorious weather from sun to misted rain. There is even a forested neighborhood park that makes me believe I have moved far away from civilization.

But I have moved to Olympia, Washington and straight into a stay-at-home order. Like most everyone in the world, I seek some sense of normalcy, so I continue my daily walks. Now, instead of new cities and countries and continents, I explore near-by streets, and if I’m lucky, a new path through the close-by forested park.

Today I head out through my backyard onto a cut-off hilltop that I have named Pixie Woods. A tiny grassy meadow circles a large water tank, and trees – probably a dozen whose names I do not know – grow everywhere. I look straight up from my footsteps and I see limb after limb and leaf after leaf and beyond that, blue sky. I look down to my shoes and see moss and lichen and ferns and hundreds of small growing things. They might be weeds, but are so delicate that I cannot imagine anyone wouldn’t want them growing in profusion, as they are doing now around each of my footsteps. I am from a place of perpetual drought, so the faint color in the pin-sized flowers make me feel protective – how do these fragile growing things survive?

I pass through the small park and walk on a main road that takes me up to the top of the hill I live on. Overlook Park is here. Today clouds near and far hide Mt. Rainier, an icon  I had assumed I would have visited by now, two months after I moved to this place where there is so much to explore, but not right now, not for anyone, including me.

I am lamenting too much. In the midst of an earthly microbe showing us how powerless we are, everyone in my household is healthy. That, all by itself, should give me more comfort than I have ever deserved. Even the tiny weeds with their shy flowering bits should give me hope.

So, my walk is grateful. Really, truly filled with gratitude, even if I have to force it just a bit. Because day after day, the same walk can become boring in its beauty. Maybe I haven’t, by some good fortune, been infected with a virus, but I have always been infected with restlessness and that large failure of simply being human. My mind keeps craving a walk to Tumwater Falls, to Priest Point Park, and to the Nisqually Nature Reserve, all close-by but for now, off-limits. So I take a deep breath, and in good moments, am satisfied with the smallness of this neighborhood, beautiful and safe.

I walk back up to my new-to-me front door, and practice patience. This unknown home town will still be here in a little while, when it is safe to explore.

 

 

Finally, back with the worldwide walking group of the famous RJo!

Please join the Monday Walk with RestlessJo and friends:

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The Comic Relief of Violet and Doris

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I’ve been trying hard to find a fit and suiting place

to hide my head into the sand somewhat in disgrace.

News I tend to see in print and even on the screen

seems too often to display us all as just plain mean.

 

Search I did and then some more, but little did I find

to give me much hope for a loving humankind.

So I did what people have done always and again.

I found out my own response, wrote it down and then

 

put it onto a new blog with hope to inspire

a few laughs and grief relief enough to light a fire

of hope and cheerfulness or maybe just some fun

because if we don’t laugh a bit, we’d be happy-un.

 

Here’s a link to a new blog I hope will bring you cheer

or if not, at least a moment you won’t have to fear.

Please meet Violet and Doris , smile upon your face.

You’ll find they do exist online in a happy place.

 

https://violetanddoris.wordpress.com/