Sunday, July 11, 2004
"I don't know where I'm going. But I do know that I'm walking."
This afternoon, I took an unexpected, magic walk in Discovery Park. I love this place, this expansive park on the edge of the water in Seattle. Seven years ago, I went there for the first time. Blown open by grief about something potent, I drove there, blindly, moving my body to hug the curves of the road. And I hiked along the bluffs, into the trees, and found a bench not covered in rain water. And wrote, for hours, about something I had never been able to tell before. Since then, it has been one of my sacred spaces.
So why am I not there every day?
Now that I live in Queen Anne, it’s only a twelve-minute drive to the entrance of Discovery Park. And yet, I have only been there a handful of times in the last three years. A walk with Meri, her sister, and brother-in-law, in the rain, when I was heartroken about a relationship that just broke up and nearly incapable of speaking. A picnic with my family, years ago, just before I moved to New York, and every one of them angry with me and not able to say it. Picking berries with Jessica and Brian until our hands were stained purple and our calves covered in scratches from the thorns. A glorious, stumbling run in the early autumn, when I was just starting to run seriously, dreaming of a marathon for my fortieth birthday, before the car accident cut short that dream.
This afternoon, I had been writing. But there was also the house to clean for Carlos’ visit on Tuesday. (yea, Carlos!) And phone calls to return. And a nap, possibly. But mostly, my body had started to hurt. No Hydro-fit this morning. No yoga. An indolent morning instead. And my neck began its achy, seizing dance. (“Reber, I need a neck rub.”) Within an hour, I knew I’d have the migraine sprouting from the muscles bunching densely in my neck. And so, I needed to move.
I’ve been walking around my neighborhood for days, slowly dropping into my space. But this afternoon, the sky loomed enormously blue. The air warm as baby’s breath. I just couldn’t be around people. I wanted to be in the woods. So, without thinking about it too much, I let the car drive me to Discovery Park.
I cinched up my sturdy, Salomon hiking shoes, the ones I didn’t wear in Sitka this year, improbably. There, I dressed up every day. Here, I’m wearing my Moroccan pants, the baby-blue tank top, and my hiking shoes. Nearly everywhere. I had my iPod, of course. And when I stepped out of the car, the warmth of the air caressed my shoulders as I turned on the music.
I downloaded Rufus Wainwright’s new ep from iTunes, and I listened to it, over and over, the entire walk. (I still don’t understand how this works. I open a page on the web--and I don’t know how that exists either--press a button, and within fifteen minutes, there are four new songs on my computer. I connect this slender white cord to my computer and wait. After a few moments of it dangling from my keyboard, I have new songs I can carry through Discovery Park. Really, the world is amazing.) I love his music. Lush and honest. Deeply harmonic and simple lyrics. Self-conscious and cutting through it at the same time. Solemn and funny. And I can tell when certain songs are going to seep into my consciousness, because I have to listen to them ten or fifteen times in a row until I know every word.
So I took off walking, at my own slow pace, in no rush at all. “I don’t know where I’m going. But I do know that I’m walking. Where? I don’t know. Just away from this love affair,” Rufus was singing in my ears, and I was nodding, already moved. And not just by his voice, his lyrics, and the eerie ability of music to match exactly what is happening in my life. But also by the trees above me. Ten minutes from a parking lot, and I’m hiking uphill, my muscles already loosening, slowly. I look up, and I can’t see the sky for the dense interlacing of leaves, entangled with each other, stretching across the path. And I’m in the middle of a city.
Another few moments, and the path circles around the park, within it, skirting away from teh city. But to my left, jumping out from among the trees, are white tombstones on a green field. It’s always there.
But after a few more moments, and another turn through the songs, I’ve stopped thinking. I’ve entered the part of the path with ancient, enormous trees. They stretch far into the sky, their many limbs branching out toward the ground with far more grace than I can ever muster. No matter how slowly I am walking, and thinking, all my turnings and wonderings feel frantic next to their girth and silence. They make a patch of shade as large as my home. I want to curl up under one and fall asleep, safe in their arms. Or just look up at the broad green leaves, overlapping and making darker green shadows, fanning themselves out against the rich blue July sky.
I’m smiling, now. I’m starting to sweat, the muscles in my back relaxing.
Within another few moments, I turned a gentle corner and opened into an enormous vista. On the right, blond-wheat-grass-colored hills, gently sloping down, toward the bluffs on my left. Abutting the water. Puget Sound, sparkling and blue, waiting. Blue water, white sails, and a large cruise ship just taken off, probably headed to Alaska. And the Olympic mountains, rising craggy and blue, above the blue-grey land.
I stopped walking, for a moment, spinning around and around, trying to take in the entire sky with my eyes. I couldn’t. I just felt my mind grow wider and wider with each turn.
And in the distance, a small black kite, like a hawk, soaring and dipping in the sky.
I walked even more slowly, running my hand along the tall grasses along the path, feeling their soft scratch in my palm.
Enter into the trees again, after that patch of dazzling sun. And here, dozens of low-lying bushes along my legs, with glossy green leaves. Pale purple blossoms where the blackberries will be, a month from now, just after my birthday. And the smell of summer hits me: days of warmth, acrid green leaves, a slight sweetness, and everything refulgent. Except refulgent means light, the way something can shine from within. Is there a smell version of this word? If so, I would use it here, the way the smell of everything offers itself up to those of us passing in the moment.
And it’s quiet. All the fast people have passed me. And it’s just me and the trees. And Rufus Wainwright walking with me, the soundtrack to my own life. Sometimes, not being able to hear everything makes every sight more potent.
Almost to the parking lot now, about three miles in. I pass a little family: a mom and dad my age, or a little older, looking harried and happy. Oldest boy with a walking stick and Australian hat, feeling important as the first of the line. A little girl in pink, maybe three, holding onto the straps of her dad’s backpack dangling down, saying Hubba Hubba over and over again, just to play with the sound. And as I pass, I see the little boy in the backpack, just over one, looking at me intently. And when I smile at him, his face breaks open in lovely joy. And he waves at me.
Sometimes I feel so in love with the world. It’s physical, not an emotional decision at all. It’s along my entire body. And when I am that in love with the world, as I was in those moments of walking toward the parking lot, I feel like my heart will burst. And I welcome it. Finally, I can remove that final skein that separates me from the world.
I’m moving slowly now, but this time to feel the juicy openness of all my muscles. I pass the last open field. Two men throwing a red frisbee, their arms loose and bent toward each other. A little girl in the middle, wearing Mickey Mouse sunglasses, and grinning at everyone going by.
I know how she feels.
And as I walk toward the car, I see pair of pale white feet hanging out the window of a long green car, bouncing to a song on the radio.
And my body feels alive.
This afternoon, I took an unexpected, magic walk in Discovery Park. I love this place, this expansive park on the edge of the water in Seattle. Seven years ago, I went there for the first time. Blown open by grief about something potent, I drove there, blindly, moving my body to hug the curves of the road. And I hiked along the bluffs, into the trees, and found a bench not covered in rain water. And wrote, for hours, about something I had never been able to tell before. Since then, it has been one of my sacred spaces.
So why am I not there every day?
Now that I live in Queen Anne, it’s only a twelve-minute drive to the entrance of Discovery Park. And yet, I have only been there a handful of times in the last three years. A walk with Meri, her sister, and brother-in-law, in the rain, when I was heartroken about a relationship that just broke up and nearly incapable of speaking. A picnic with my family, years ago, just before I moved to New York, and every one of them angry with me and not able to say it. Picking berries with Jessica and Brian until our hands were stained purple and our calves covered in scratches from the thorns. A glorious, stumbling run in the early autumn, when I was just starting to run seriously, dreaming of a marathon for my fortieth birthday, before the car accident cut short that dream.
This afternoon, I had been writing. But there was also the house to clean for Carlos’ visit on Tuesday. (yea, Carlos!) And phone calls to return. And a nap, possibly. But mostly, my body had started to hurt. No Hydro-fit this morning. No yoga. An indolent morning instead. And my neck began its achy, seizing dance. (“Reber, I need a neck rub.”) Within an hour, I knew I’d have the migraine sprouting from the muscles bunching densely in my neck. And so, I needed to move.
I’ve been walking around my neighborhood for days, slowly dropping into my space. But this afternoon, the sky loomed enormously blue. The air warm as baby’s breath. I just couldn’t be around people. I wanted to be in the woods. So, without thinking about it too much, I let the car drive me to Discovery Park.
I cinched up my sturdy, Salomon hiking shoes, the ones I didn’t wear in Sitka this year, improbably. There, I dressed up every day. Here, I’m wearing my Moroccan pants, the baby-blue tank top, and my hiking shoes. Nearly everywhere. I had my iPod, of course. And when I stepped out of the car, the warmth of the air caressed my shoulders as I turned on the music.
I downloaded Rufus Wainwright’s new ep from iTunes, and I listened to it, over and over, the entire walk. (I still don’t understand how this works. I open a page on the web--and I don’t know how that exists either--press a button, and within fifteen minutes, there are four new songs on my computer. I connect this slender white cord to my computer and wait. After a few moments of it dangling from my keyboard, I have new songs I can carry through Discovery Park. Really, the world is amazing.) I love his music. Lush and honest. Deeply harmonic and simple lyrics. Self-conscious and cutting through it at the same time. Solemn and funny. And I can tell when certain songs are going to seep into my consciousness, because I have to listen to them ten or fifteen times in a row until I know every word.
So I took off walking, at my own slow pace, in no rush at all. “I don’t know where I’m going. But I do know that I’m walking. Where? I don’t know. Just away from this love affair,” Rufus was singing in my ears, and I was nodding, already moved. And not just by his voice, his lyrics, and the eerie ability of music to match exactly what is happening in my life. But also by the trees above me. Ten minutes from a parking lot, and I’m hiking uphill, my muscles already loosening, slowly. I look up, and I can’t see the sky for the dense interlacing of leaves, entangled with each other, stretching across the path. And I’m in the middle of a city.
Another few moments, and the path circles around the park, within it, skirting away from teh city. But to my left, jumping out from among the trees, are white tombstones on a green field. It’s always there.
But after a few more moments, and another turn through the songs, I’ve stopped thinking. I’ve entered the part of the path with ancient, enormous trees. They stretch far into the sky, their many limbs branching out toward the ground with far more grace than I can ever muster. No matter how slowly I am walking, and thinking, all my turnings and wonderings feel frantic next to their girth and silence. They make a patch of shade as large as my home. I want to curl up under one and fall asleep, safe in their arms. Or just look up at the broad green leaves, overlapping and making darker green shadows, fanning themselves out against the rich blue July sky.
I’m smiling, now. I’m starting to sweat, the muscles in my back relaxing.
Within another few moments, I turned a gentle corner and opened into an enormous vista. On the right, blond-wheat-grass-colored hills, gently sloping down, toward the bluffs on my left. Abutting the water. Puget Sound, sparkling and blue, waiting. Blue water, white sails, and a large cruise ship just taken off, probably headed to Alaska. And the Olympic mountains, rising craggy and blue, above the blue-grey land.
I stopped walking, for a moment, spinning around and around, trying to take in the entire sky with my eyes. I couldn’t. I just felt my mind grow wider and wider with each turn.
And in the distance, a small black kite, like a hawk, soaring and dipping in the sky.
I walked even more slowly, running my hand along the tall grasses along the path, feeling their soft scratch in my palm.
Enter into the trees again, after that patch of dazzling sun. And here, dozens of low-lying bushes along my legs, with glossy green leaves. Pale purple blossoms where the blackberries will be, a month from now, just after my birthday. And the smell of summer hits me: days of warmth, acrid green leaves, a slight sweetness, and everything refulgent. Except refulgent means light, the way something can shine from within. Is there a smell version of this word? If so, I would use it here, the way the smell of everything offers itself up to those of us passing in the moment.
And it’s quiet. All the fast people have passed me. And it’s just me and the trees. And Rufus Wainwright walking with me, the soundtrack to my own life. Sometimes, not being able to hear everything makes every sight more potent.
Almost to the parking lot now, about three miles in. I pass a little family: a mom and dad my age, or a little older, looking harried and happy. Oldest boy with a walking stick and Australian hat, feeling important as the first of the line. A little girl in pink, maybe three, holding onto the straps of her dad’s backpack dangling down, saying Hubba Hubba over and over again, just to play with the sound. And as I pass, I see the little boy in the backpack, just over one, looking at me intently. And when I smile at him, his face breaks open in lovely joy. And he waves at me.
Sometimes I feel so in love with the world. It’s physical, not an emotional decision at all. It’s along my entire body. And when I am that in love with the world, as I was in those moments of walking toward the parking lot, I feel like my heart will burst. And I welcome it. Finally, I can remove that final skein that separates me from the world.
I’m moving slowly now, but this time to feel the juicy openness of all my muscles. I pass the last open field. Two men throwing a red frisbee, their arms loose and bent toward each other. A little girl in the middle, wearing Mickey Mouse sunglasses, and grinning at everyone going by.
I know how she feels.
And as I walk toward the car, I see pair of pale white feet hanging out the window of a long green car, bouncing to a song on the radio.
And my body feels alive.
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