Someone I know casually through work leads hikes with local meet-up groups, and and today I acquiesced to his well-meaning pestering to join the outing at Radnor Lake. We covered somewhere around 3 miles, though as luck would have it I forgot to take my FitBit off the charger this morning so I am not only not certain of how far we went, but was also denied the satisfaction of watching the little flashing numbers increase with my effort. I am pleased to say that really did not matter. The hike was rated easy/moderate, just easy enough for me, a regular but lapsed walker and occasional hiker, but challenging enough that my muscles will definitely ask me tomorrow what we did today! The sights were lovely: fall leaves in all their glory covered the path, with the trees' branches bare enough to allow for glimpses at a beautifully expansive sky, when I could take my eyes off my feet. One tree had grown particularly bulbous at a point about 5 feet from the ground, before thinning out and resuming growth. It made me wonder what had injured it, what it had been protecting it from, at that point in its growth. It made me think about how we do the same: grow bulbous and ungainly protecting our own injured areas. Also, there were deer, and best of all, a varied group of humans generally eager for a little chit-chat during the easier stretches of the trail.
On my drive there and home, I listened to Anne Lamott's book Small Victories, which I love. Actually I love everything of hers that I've encountered. I think she could write a grocery list and I would enjoy it. For those who are already fans, you know what I mean. For those who may still be new to her, I could not encourage you more to become acquainted. She writes of the real stuff of life: depression, anger, loss, grief, hope, encouragement, accompaniment, addiction, despair, and the eventual triumph of goodness. She is a wonderfully left-wing Christian, with a Jesus far more interested in feeding the poor, abolishing systemic oppression, and accompanying you to A.A. meetings than in the fine details of correct doctrine. She believes, as I do, that where truth and love are, God is too. In any case, listening to her (literally, as she is the reader in this recording), puts me in a peaceful, pensive state, at once soaking in her artfully penned words and eager to pour forth my own.
I recently took a peek at Joanna Gaines's book Homebody, from which I gleaned that to be comfortable, our spaces should reflect us, with all our quirks. Do mine? I wondered at the time. Looking about now, I see backpacks, piles of purchases, boxes of now-outgrown sentimental things waiting to be sorted all scattered about my living room. Joy and pain, busyness and productivity. Carved pumpkins sit sentry, still smiling but collapsing in on themselves, perhaps not unlike me sometimes. The Happy Birthday banner still hangs where we put it 3 months ago, because putting things away is SO much more difficult than getting them out, and because after all, it's always Someone's birthday anyway.
Last night I watched the last couple of episodes of The Haunting of Hill House, a genre out of character for me, but it does such a beautiful job of weaving together familial mental illness and the paranormal that I was soon drawn in. One character's spirit appeared to some of the others, reminding them that despite her death, she was not truly gone but just scattered, that time is not a line, but rather that "moments fall around us like confetti." I mused on this. It is an appropriate expression of this stage of my life; maybe it always will be. For now I sit, seated comfortably in my moments, content with a second cup of coffee.
