Walktober wanderings

A walk in the woods here on the Wabi-Sabi Ranch.

We are adept, if occasionally embarrassed, at saying what we make of places – but we are far less good at saying what places make of us…

~ Robert Macfarlane, The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot

Joy in the garden

In the garden yesterday.

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

~ Maya Angelou

If we were having coffee: Blustery day edition

Passing by the beach again. (From Thursday’s outing in the kayak on the Manokin River.)

Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time? That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future.

~ Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

Points and meanders on a foggy morning

Standing on the beach at the Point where the Manokin River meets Tangier Sound.

It should not surprise that so elemental a word as point has several geographic meanings.  Wherever land meets water, from Point Barrow, Alaska, to Point Pleasant, Florida, point describes the projection of dry ground into the surrounding sea, bay, lake, or river.  In Appalachia, point may refer to the termination of a mountain ridge projecting into a confluence of valleys.   Even on prairies, points abound…In river morphology, a point is the inside or convex curve of a meander, where sediment tends to aggrade.  The condition of vegetation on a stream’s meander point is a useful indicator of its ecological health: if vegetation is colonizing the point, the health trend is likely positive.  The state of the meander point is usually a better indicator of the stream’s overall condition than the presence or absence of erosion on the concave or outer curve of the channel.  Erosion and consequent bank collapse on the outside of the bend can be a natural feature of the stream’s morphological dynamic.

~ William DeBuys, Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape, edited by Barry Lopez and Debra Gwartney

A Monday meander: Walktober

Autumn light.

Lift is created by the onwards rush of life over the curved wing of the soul.

~ Robert Macfarlane, The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot