This Town's Not Made For Walking

Tonight is my last night in this hotel room in the bustling sprawl of a town named for the nearby estate of First Leader, outside of Capitol City. Not that I’ll have time to tour the mansion or the gardens, or to go into the heart of the city and see any museums or monuments. We are here for a job, and having completed it today, will spend all day tomorrow driving home.

I like traveling, and traveling for work is no exception. It gives me an opportunity to see new places, to do different things, to meet interesting people. However, if there is a drawback to business travel, it is the tiny taste, the cruel tease. I have never spent time in this area before and it certainly seems worthy of dedicated exploration. We drive by the signs, but there is no time for touring. This afternoon we finished up a little earlier than expected, and returning to the hotel, my co-worker declared his intentions for a nap before dinner. It was 65 degrees and sunny, and even though we’d been outside all day, when I walked into my dark and stuffy room, it didn’t seem right. Every cell in my body screamed to go back outside. So I decided to go for a walk.

Four miles later, I’m back to the hotel room, and feeling a little better about being here. This town is just not made for walking. The hotel is on a busy four lane road, with a constant roar of traffic. I took the first possible side street, and finding no sidewalks, turned into a residential neighborhood at the soonest opportunity, looking for lighter traffic. Many streets ended at cul-de-sacs, with fences preventing foot traffic through to adjacent neighborhoods (and no dead end signs to warn the casual passerby). Sidewalks were almost entirely lacking. Except for a friendly woman walking her small dog, I saw no other pedestrians.

As much as I long to see the sights, I wouldn’t want to live in a place where roaring automobile traffic is the only means of conveyance, where pedestrians have been entirely squeezed out. Call me crazy, but I like to walk.

'Tis the Season

I disdained the umbrella on the walk to the bus stop this morning, lifting my face to the light rain, which almost felt warm. A carry over from yesterday, perhaps, for yesterday was a glorious spring day, sunny and warm and filled with birdsong. I was practically skipping along the street on my walk home, eager to change into jeans and take a walk in the woods, to pull some weeds and dried vegetation from the greening flower bed. Imagine my joy when I spied the neighbor's red maple! I've been watching that tree for weeks now, watching and waiting.

Yesterday was the day I'd been looking forward to: my first budburst observation of the season. Having tracked the phenology of this tree last year, I knew it would flower any day now, but that just heightened the suspense. When it comes to spring flowers, I'm like a kid counting down to Christmas. That makes Project Budburst so perfect for me. Whee! Someone cares about the tree I saw flowering!


Project Budburst is designed for anyone and everyone to participate. The target plants are common and easy to identify, and the site provides lots of great resources to help the novice. And you need not be surrounded by nature, as many common landscaping plants are included. Even denizens of the most urban areas likely see a lilac bush or street tree regularly. For returning budbursters, the website offers some major improvements: on the results page, you can download data reported last year, and see the 100 most recent reports mapped in real time. If you like gardening or wildflowers, or just get geeked up on little changes in your outdoor world, I encourage you to check it out. Is anyone else out there playing along?

In My Garden

The big leaves are daffodils, of course, while the small leaves are garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata). This is a weeding battle I can never win: I knock it back every growing season, but every spring is just the same -- like I never pulled a one.

Willow Sky

We live in the city, but our backyard abuts a hilly urban woodlot. It is not a pristine wilderness by a long shot; portions of the area were graded for a street that was never constructed, yet is still depicted on some maps of the area. This means stripped top soils, compacted subsoils, and lots of invasive species. Still, we enjoy our little woods: it is where we walk the cats; where mayapples and wild geraniums grow; where we see the first robins of the year.

3/14/2009

I almost always carry a camera with me on these walks, even though I'll frequently return without taking any pictures or with only lackluster shots. I am working on that, taking more photos, trying to train my eye to see the beauty in the mundane. One photo I seem to shoot repeatedly, especially this time of year, is of willow branches against the sky. When I download the camera, I breeze right by the photos, never finding them terribly interesting. And yet I take the same photo over and over and over. Witness:

2/24/2008
2/1/2009
2/28/2009
It was last weekend when I really noticed this strange recurring pattern, and started trying to figure out the reason behind it. One theory I came up with dates back to my childhood. When I was 7 or 8 years old, my family had to leave a rental house we'd all loved. My parents bought a new home in a growing subdivision, the kind of place where the sum total of landscaping was one stick tree in the front yard, along with two squat bushes, one on either side of the door. Of course they immediately set about changing that, planting oak and birch and hemlock, catalpa and dogwood and spruce.

Entranced by the magical rooms the drooping branches can create, my sister and I lobbied hard for a weeping willow. We were utterly unconcerned by the fragile, messy nature of large willows, but ever practical, my parents demurred, instead opting for honey locust and cedar, crabapple and horse chestnut. Could my photographic loyalty to this same boring picture date back to my unmet youthful yearnings for a backyard willow world? I've been mulling this over for the last week, and oddly the process of analyzing the mystery has caused me to photograph the tree less -- I didn't take pictures of the tree on any of my three most recent walks (yesterday, Monday, or Tuesday).

Ultimately, I decided the appeal is almost entirely in the bright colors. Woods are generally pretty monochromatic places this time of year, with various shades of brown bark and brown mud. No greens yet, no flowers, and the lovely white snow has all melted. The potential energy in those willow branches just screams against the blue sky. Yellow! Life! Like the robin, it's another symbol of what is to come. Here's a sneak peak from last year, what we have to look forward to in just a few short weeks:

4/20/2008

Welcome, Harbinger!

More Glum News

We had an office-wide meeting yesterday, never a good thing in this economic climate. I had been hoping it would simply be to announce the layoffs that occurred last Friday, so folks who weren't there at the time could hear the official rendition. No such luck. Instead we learned that the company will no longer be paying for our parking expenses. Our office is downtown; there is no free parking anywhere even remotely nearby. Apparently the passes the company has been buying for us in the garage across the street cost $75/month, and if we want to continue parking there, we now have to pay ourselves.

Effective immediately.

So starting today, I'm riding the bus. I actually enjoy riding the bus, and find it much less stressful than the idea of carpooling, which I'm also contemplating. However, the bus fare is $40/month out of pocket that I wasn't spending last week. [I have fuel efficient car, and a short commute, so only use about one gallon of gas a week getting to and from work.]

And the most depressing thing? The bus company has announced plans to raise fares in the beginning of May, and to simultaneously cut back on services. Of course my route is one of those slated to be eliminated. I will still be able to catch a bus, but will have to walk much further to get to a stop, and will have to pay $60/month. I have a feeling carpooling will look a lot better come May.

Where Mayapples Grow