Morning Fog

Whenever I wake to fog, I always think of Carmel Valley, California, where I grew up (pictured here) like Great Barrington was at 7:00 this morning. On my walk, the fog-shrouded hills looked like thoughts that had not yet come to the fore. Back there somewhere, getting ready.


So. My walks. I'm doing them. I'm still, some mornings, forcing myself out of my apartment (when I get enough sleep, I'm usually more eager) to get my sneakers on. I'm still in awe of early morning and the fact that I'm out in them walking around. I promised myself 4 times a week, and I've not made bad on that promise yet.

Some things:
The birds delight. Every morning. Boisterous and busy and constantly distracted.
My legs are getting stronger.
I don't get as out of breath when I walk up Castle Hill Rd.
I'm always, always glad that I went.

There are more things I want to do to make way for more delight:

*Like turn my computer off MUCH EARLIER at night, and get more sleep, and hence increase my walking eagerness first thing. (I need an RA, like in a dorm, to enforce quiet hours!)

*Give myself more time for reading (I'm embarrassed to tell you how long it's taking me to get through the last third of Carver: A Writer's Life, and it's one of the better biographies I've read).

*More poetry. Always more poetry. My own, and others.

On that note, take a listen to this poem from one of my current favorite poets (tho he's been around a long time, I've just only discovered him), reading one of my favorites (it's hard to get out of your head afterward: "...a grain and an inch, a grain and an inch and a half.."):

"When You're Lost in Juarez in the Rain and It's Eastertime Too" by Charles Wright

Sunday, Sunday

This morning I woke to a battle-free zone.

I'd had only 5 hours of sleep, and couldn't get back to it, so at 7:30 am, morning air coming through my window, I thought: I have to get out there. Not to exert myself, necessarily, but to get out in it. I was missing the morning.

Up until a couple of weeks ago, this thought would have been so small and so quiet and the enactment of it so unpracticed, that it would not have entered the realm as something I'd actually do--get out of bed and put comfy clothes on and get out in it.

When I got to the top of Castle Hill and started walking toward Lake Mansfield (I'm embarrassed to say that even after living here for over a year, this is my first glance at Lake Mansfield) I knew what the problem was with yesterday's walk, why it wasn't as enjoyable: I'd walked into the end of a morning rather than into the beginning of one. Granted, this morning I was not up at sunrise or anything, but yesterday, when I started my jaunt at 9:00 a.m. or so, the world had already opened shop. I was a latecomer, and walking to walk, to know later that I'd done it.

When I go earlier, like I did this morning, and when all I want to do is be out in the early air, it's not about exercise. It's about being outside, inside the morning, seeing what's happening.

And I was so rewarded. It was BEAUTIFUL out. Cool. Green. Blue skies. Hazy. The trees busy with birds and squirrels. A little wind. A few dogs out with their people. Two neighbors--a burly guy in his late 40s with a tool belt on and an elderly woman with her pooch--talking about the water that had gathered on the fairway where he'd golfed the day before.

That was the image I walked with the rest of the way: "Water on the fairway" (in a heavy Boston accent).

I am surprised (and sheepish) about how little I know of this town. Every day, so close by, I am walking into neighborhoods I've never been in, down streets that are completely new to me. I see people I've never seen, ever, anywhere (that I know of).

I feel like a visitor--in a good way. A visitor getting to know her town.

(p.s. I tried to find a good image for this post, but decided next time I'll just take my own pictures.)