Sarah Wynde's Blog, page 61

The epitome of the everyday

I posted a picture of this morning’s sunrise, completely unedited, to Instagram using my phone. (You can see it on the side of the blog, in that Instagram widget, if you don’t use Instagram. I’d post it here but I’m out of data for the month on my internet plan.) It was so pure — the sun sliding up the horizon, completely unencumbered by clouds. The sunset last night was amazing in a totally different way—lots of clouds, lots of layers, many shades of purple and red, going on for what felt like forever. And the sunrise yesterday morning was pretty nice, too. The night before, sunset, also spectacular. Sunrise that day, also lovely.

Sunset and sunrise are so ordinary. We all get them, every single day. They are the epitome of the everyday, in fact. Ha. And yet, in my current life, I spend so much time appreciating them. It’s something about being in new places all the time. Well, okay, also sunsets (and rises) over water are twice as spectacular as the ones without water. It’s the reflection that does it, of course. And when you’re sitting on a bench next to a fire pit watching the sky while a giant, gawky bird with legs longer than its body goes flapping by, awing you with the miracle of flight, appreciation comes easier than when you’re sitting in rush hour traffic, worried if you’re going to make it to the daycare before they start charging $10/minute.

Of course, the corollary to spending more time appreciating sunset and sunrise, water and birds, spider webs and flowers is that I also spend a lot more time wondering how I’m going to get my laundry done. Or whether the grocery store is going to have coconut milk. Or how to find a vet when the dog has yet another ear infection. It’s like my life is simultaneously sort of ethereal and sublime and also really mired in the daily necessities of existence, much more so than when I lived in a house and the question was just, “Do I need to do laundry?”, not “How am I going to get my laundry done?”

On Saturday, I was walking the dogs with my friend, E. I was crossing the road when I glanced behind me and saw that she and B had paused. I was the one carrying the clean-up bags, so I paused, too, to see if I needed to go back. Z kept going, though, tugging me along, so I took a few slow steps forward. Then I looked around and realized that I was standing on the double yellow lines, in the middle of the road, walking forward along them. It felt… thrilling. There was absolutely no traffic coming, so it didn’t feel dangerous. But the yellow lines beckoned the way ahead of me, like the yellow brick road in the Wizard of Oz.

I said to E, “I don’t think I’ve ever walked on the yellow lines before. I’m not really a middle of the road kind of person. I’m a safely on the side of the road person. Or better yet, a sidewalk person. It’s sort of weird.”

She laughed at me and then her expression changed. I could see her go thoughtful  before she said, “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever walked along the yellow lines either.” So then she joined me in the middle of the road, and we walked down the yellow lines until we reached the corner and another sidewalk. It was ridiculously fun, in the way adventures that aren’t really adventurous can be.

On Friday night, I grilled steak and asparagus and roasted white sweet potato for a simple yet very tasty dinner. On Saturday morning, I made spicy sweet potato hash with a poached egg for breakfast. The sweet potato was orange that time. On Saturday night, I baked chicken thighs with lemon and capers and a little garlic salt, roasted purple sweet potatoes, and made a salad of mixed greens, apple, radish, cucumber, red onion, and a fig balsamic vinegar. Three different meals, three different sweet potatoes, all of them delicious.

I don’t know why those stories felt connected — something about the ordinary, the everyday, the sameness of sweet potatoes at every meal? But I don’t have time to ponder the relationship of adventure and the mundane in my new life anymore. Or to write about loneliness and joy, which was what I was thinking about while I watched the sunrise this morning and which is definitely worthy of a blog post of its own.

Instead, I’m going to solve the problem of getting the dog to a vet, not worry about the laundry, and write at least a few new words on Grace. May all our Cyber Mondays be productive!

Happy Birthday, Mom

On Monday, I gave a presentation at my dad’s computer club. I was chatting before it started with one of the women in the room and I couldn’t say how it came up, but she said to me, “We knew your mom. She was wonderful.” I had a fleeting moment where I thought I might burst into tears on the spot, but I swallowed them back and agreed, “Yes, she was.”

Today would have been her 73rd birthday. I wore a necklace that we bought together in St. Thomas on some one of our family trips — I think maybe a vacation as the year changed from 2000 to 2001 — and a pair of earrings that belonged to her, and all day long I’ve been thinking of her.

I know it’s okay that she’s gone — she would have been five years farther into her Alzheimer’s diagnosis if the pancreatic cancer hadn’t taken her and she wouldn’t have liked that at all — but I miss her. She loved Christmas and the holidays. She would have been baking up a storm, buying presents, and decorating like mad already and my wishy-washiness about where I was going to be for the next month would be driving her crazy.

But I made Christmas cookies with my niece today — sugar cookies, the roll-out kind — and my mom would have liked that a lot. It wasn’t deliberate. I didn’t think, “hmm, what can I do on my mom’s birthday that would please her if she knew about it?” and then decide to bake cookies with my niece. But if I had tried to do something that would please her, I probably couldn’t have picked anything better. And there’s something truly satisfying about that.

Happy birthday, Mom.

Lake Griffin

I’ve been thinking about blogging ever since I woke myself up to post on Monday night. I’m sort of a terrible blogger, obviously — I do none of that “building community” stuff, nor do I try to “provide value” for my readers. (Sorry! No value here!!)

I blog about whatever’s on my mind and erratically. Some years I had lots of posts, some years I had almost none. In 2016, I’ve tried to blog every Monday and Thursday and have tried to be restrained about posting more than that, not wanting to bore the audience that tolerates me. (Thanks for tolerating me!)

But when I sleepily decided Monday night to reassess my posting come the new year, it started me thinking about what I want out of blogging. I’m obviously terrible at the whole author business aspect of blogging — well, the whole author business in general. Really, the basic, bottom-line, requirement to be a successful author is to finish what you write and I’m not doing so well at that. But I also don’t do the promotion and outreach and giveaways and that kind of thing that one is supposed to do. When it comes to “growing my audience,” I am pretty much a complete fail.

So the question is, in 2017, do I want to grow my audience, build community, and provide value? I’m sure that those of you who know me or have been reading a while already know the answer: that just sounds like so much work. It’s never going to happen. Besides, if I can’t even finish a new book, what would be the point? And really, I like my blog because it’s a record of my life. It’s an online journal. Maybe I’ll be the last online journal keeper.

But I did realize that I really wish I was at least writing something — a few notes if nothing else — about each of the places I’ve stayed. I haven’t because I haven’t wanted to be boring — how many entries can I write that start with “I stayed…”? Answer: lots! Probably too many. But still, I’m already forgetting places. Last week I was thinking about all of the beautiful sunrises I’ve seen and two days later I remembered the wonderful Harvest Hosts farm in Vermont. How could I have forgotten that so quickly? And what will I remember two years from now if I’m forgetting places already?

So in 2017, I’m not going to worry about posting every Monday and Thursday (although I’m going to for the rest of 2016, just for the sake of finishing what I started.) I am, however, going to write at least a paragraph or two about every place I stay, and I’m going to start now, with Lake Griffin State Park.

Is a picture worth a thousand words? If yes, I should probably post an image of a tree instead of a sunrise, because Lake Griffin’s claim to fame is the second largest live oak tree in the state of Florida.

Oh, look, a tree pic! I have not yet run out of data in my data plan for the month, but with posting all these pictures I probably will soon. But anyway, second largest live oak tree. I tried to keep the Californian in my brain shut up as I admired it (not entirely successfully — redwoods really are very large trees, even the little ones). According to the sign, it was probably used as a landmark for the native Americans before Europeans settled Florida.  (Although, really, wouldn’t it have been a lot smaller back then? Isn’t the impressive thing more that it’s survived for so long rather than that it might have been big even a few hundred years ago? It’s only supposed to be 300-500 years old and you’d think that 400 years ago, when it was maybe 100 years old, there would have been some other 300 year old trees around that were bigger than it that are now gone… Yeah, my inner critic is always noisy.)

Anyway, nice tree! Nice park, too. It’s small — I think that Z and I managed to walk every trail this morning and our total walk length was still just under a mile when we made it back to the camper, but it would be a great place to kayak if I was feeling that ambitious. The campground only has about 40 spots and they’re fairly close together, but — as always — they’re much nicer, greener, and more interesting than the typical independent campground parking lot.

My highlight of this stay was probably my new grill. I used it (a little Coleman portable propane grill) for the first time yesterday. It worked remarkably well, so yay! I’m looking forward to the increased kitchen flexibility — I’m eager to grill fish on it, because smells linger in Serenity, so I’ve been avoiding cooking things that I don’t want to smell the next day. But I miss fish. A lot.

As with every state park in Florida that I’ve stayed at, I would happily stay here again. But this trip is only for two days — tomorrow I head out for Thanksgiving at my dad’s house.

Happy Thanksgiving!

A bed with a view

I just turned out the lights and opened the blinds, told Alexa to set a sleep timer for thirty minutes, wiggled my way around the dog that was sleeping on my pillow, apologizing to her when she grumbled but pointing out that it is MY pillow, not hers, and settled down to go to sleep.

Outside my window, the night is not totally dark. The camper next to mine has some kind of a glowy light on their picnic table and I can see the little blue & green dots of light from my surge protector. But I can also see stars through shadowed trees. Not a ton of stars, just a sprinkling of them, but enough to give the night a sense of mystery.

It’s also got a sense of chill. It’s going down to the high 30s tonight apparently, and the walls are cold. The heater works great, so I’m not cold, but when I brush against the walls and the window, there’s a definite chill. It feels like winter.

So I was thinking, as I snuggled down into my bed, “Maybe I should blog about that tomorrow. Feeling like winter. Sense of mystery… hey, wait. Isn’t today a Monday?”

I think today is a Monday. I’m pretty sure, in fact, that it’s a Monday. And I have blogged every single Monday of 2016. But today I just forgot. I gave a presentation at my dad’s computer club about self-publishing this afternoon and was still writing it this morning. Well, writing it but also finding pictures, positioning them, doing all that Powerpoint stuff. After I gave the presentation, I walked the dogs, then packed up and headed off to a new campground. Getting settled, cooking dinner, walking the dogs again… and suddenly I was in bed, settling down to a chilly sleep with a beautiful view and no blog post.

And now I am going to settle down to a chilly sleep with a beautiful view and a very brief blog post. In five weeks, I’ll decide whether I’m going to continue blogging every Monday, but meanwhile, I am glad I remembered in time not to break my streak!

Lake Louisa

This morning’s sunrise was beautiful, supremely lovely, beyond words to describe. The water was still and clear, not a person or a building in sight, and it was cold, so there was mist rising from the water. Enough of a breeze that the mist was drifting by quickly, a fast-paced cloud, and behind it, through it, over it, the sun was slowly changing the color of the sky. It was a pastel rainbow reflected in the water, so beautiful it was literally breathtaking. Surreal. Like being inside one of those scenic photographs that I skeptically think have probably been Photoshopped to death.

And there was a noise from behind me, not quite at the same time, but so loud and so weird that I thought some strange steampunk vehicle must be coming my way. It turned out to be a flock of tiny birds, shadows of black against the sky, spiraling up and away, and squeak, squeak, squeaking like tires desperately in need of some oil.

A huge spider — seriously, huge — had built a perfect web at precisely the distance from the walkway where I could admire how beautiful and precise it was without being completely freaked out by having a huge spider near me. One step forward and it disappeared, one step backward and it did the same, but at exactly the right angle, right position, I could see the fine lines of silk against the backdrop of blue sky.

The water had lily pads, lots of them, but also water grass, and the water grass looked like it ought to be out of some movie about the Jurassic. I’m calling it grass because it was shaped just like grass, flat stalks tapering to a point, but it was huge, probably at least four feet high, and thick as my arm, colored red and green, and when the sun finally rose high enough, golden as the sun hit it.

I should probably just grab my phone and go take some pictures. But it’s too late for the sunrise, and photographs, mine at least, never capture the real beauty of a scene. It would be missing the cool breeze, with air brisk enough that my nose got chilled. And the morning stillness that can encompass noisy birds, rustles in the brush, the occasional splash in the water, and yet still feel silent. And nothing about a photograph would ever convey the sense of awe I felt, the wonder.

Or, for that matter, the growl of my stomach and need to pee that finally motivated me to turn my back on the water and head home to the camper. Although I guess that’s probably just as well, although the idea of virtual reality photographs that convey the biological needs of the photographer really amuses me for some reason.

Anyway, beautiful, beautiful sunrise and Lake Louisa is a spectacular state park. I was only here for the night, but I’d love to come back here and stay longer while the weather is still cool. I was planning to get out of Florida as soon as I finished up some responsibilities and spent Thanksgiving with family, but it’s finally starting to get nice here. Maybe I’ll spend some more time wandering around the state parks instead.

Fighting to be flexible

On Tuesday, my writing group friends reminded me that our monthly dinner would be happening Wednesday night. Unfortunately, I was at a campground about ninety minutes away. Lynda offered me her driveway — a nice long driveway, with plenty of room — but my instinctive response was “No, I can’t, I’m at this campground for another two days.”

It took me a while to question myself. Why was I staying at that campground when I could be going out to dinner with friends? Why did I feel locked in to a commitment that I had made to absolutely no one? The campground didn’t care if I left early, and it was a Thousand Trails campground so it wasn’t costing me much money. And even if it had been, even if it had been a $50/night campground (which I have stayed at only once), the money was spent, one way or another, and it wouldn’t cost me anything to go spend the night in Lynda’s driveway instead.

So Wednesday morning, I packed up and headed north. What a great decision. I had a lovely day of writing with L, a really fun dinner with a terrific group of people and good conversations about writing, and although I didn’t sleep well, at 4AM, my characters got chatty again. Yay!

Today turned out to be another totally unexpected day: my plan was to find a quiet place to sit and work, but a friend needed some help and so I wound up venturing forth to unexpected places. I didn’t get much writing done — witness the blog post that I am finally getting to at almost 10PM — but if life were a game, I would have racked up some excellent karma points.

Last night at dinner my friend Angela (hi, Angela!) asked me what had surprised me about life in the camper. I don’t think I said this then, although I might have, but one of the things that has surprised me is how uncomfortable I am with uncertainty. I like knowing where I’m going to be spending the night. I like having my calendar mapped out. And while I want adventures and new places, I am much more prone to deciding where I’ll be camping two weeks out and then sticking to that decision than I am just going where the wind takes me.

But I think I want to work on that. I think I need more days of going where the wind takes me. Some of the nights that really stick out in my memory are the ones that were unexpected: the Harvest Hosts stay at a farm in campground, the parking lot in West Virginia. I’m pretty sure today will be a day I remember for a long time, too, even though I’m parked in a familiar driveway this evening. But being flexible, being willing to be spontaneous, being able to live with uncertainty… it’s all part of living in the now, being present for my life as it is and as it can be. I want to be able to embrace the uncertainty, because the surprises that come with uncertainty are worth the effort.

 

Here Be Alligators

The signs actually say, “Warning: Alligators may be present.” The signs below those, smaller, say, “Watch out for snakes!”

It’s astonishing how threatening I find them. Really, they don’t say, “Alligators, sure thing, your dogs are going to get EATEN! And by the way, the snakes are poisonous and deadly.” But I seem to read them that way. As a result, despite being camped right next to a lovely river, I haven’t done any kayaking and my walks through the nature trails tend to be hasty and paranoid.

Florida does have a lot of snakes, but they really aren’t interested in eating people. The most deadly was going to feature in A Gift of Grace, a coral snake. Mostly because we stopped making coral snake antivenin a few years back, because it was too expensive, and that seemed like such a statement about modern society. Bit by a coral snake? Tough luck. We could have saved you ten years ago, when we cared more about people than money, but those years are gone. Not that doctors won’t try, but the antivenin they have available is both expired and so scarce that they try to save it until they’re sure you’re dying, not just paralyzed and struggling to breathe.

Also, coral snakes are a very pretty snake. I saw one in my backyard a couple of years ago — several inches away from my bare foot — and stood frozen, watching it slither away, while my brain said, “red on yellow, red on yellow, red on yellow, pretty sure that’s bad, bad, bad. But there can’t possibly be a deadly snake in my backyard. Can there?” Once it was gone, I went inside and looked it up and yep, red on yellow = deadly. That’s how I found out about the antivenin. The experience would have made for a fun touch of realism in the book — I’m pretty sure I was holding my breath the entire time I watched that pretty little snake and I know my heart was pounding so loudly I could hear it in my ears, that sort of throbbing you can get in your head when your heart is working too hard.

But I finally gave up on the coral snake. For whatever reason, it never worked quite right. Maybe some future book.

Meanwhile, in this book, everything I’ve written for the past several days has turned out nihilistic and bleak. Grace would turn into a tragedy if I let it. So I’m going to delete everything from last week and try, try again. Someday I really will finish this book. It won’t, however, be this week. Drat.

 

A text exchange for the day after

Me: I need to be thinking gratitude thoughts, not rage thoughts.

E: I’m right there with you. I’m grateful for my life. For my family. I’m grateful for you. For the sun coming up. For smiling dogs and delicious food.

Me: Yes! I’m grateful for a beautiful sunrise this morning and a warm healthy dog curled up next to me, for good friends and a roof over my head, for food in my fridge… and that my son is Canadian.

My first county park

I am staying at the nicest campground I have experienced in my entire journey. It’s nicer than the state park in Pennsylvania, which was really pretty spectacular, and it’s nicer than the lovely independent campground in Vermont where I was so content, and it’s actually prettier than the state park on the beach in Florida that was recommended to me by multiple people. It might not be prettier than the beautiful campground on the coast in Maine, though.

But! The campsite is dramatically better. Better than all of them. It’s unequivocally the best campsite I’ve had in the past three plus months. It’s got a grill (would that I had charcoal) and a firepit with benches (would that I had firewood) and a view of the water. At the moment, I can’t hear anything but chirping birds and the sound of my fan, but there are also chattering squirrels and the occasional clunk of an acorn hitting the roof of Serenity. It’s serene and mellow but also efficient and ready for fun. I really do wish I had both charcoal and firewood, so I could grill some burgers and then sit around my comfortable fire after it gets dark. This being Florida, I suspect there are probably an insane number of mosquitoes after dark, but I’d pull out the heavy-duty insect repellant, because it would be so worth it. The benches by the fire pit look out over the lake and it’s probably incredible with firelight reflecting off the water as the sun goes down.

Here is a lovely irony about this campground: I’m only here because it’s really close to my dad’s house. When I check out on Wednesday, I’m going to find out how to make reservations for longer periods of time (today I just showed up) and I’m going to do my best to wind up with two weeks here (the longest you’re allowed to stay) at some point in the nearish future. It feels like a very good place to write a book.

And I have just wasted much time trying to upload a picture of the view from my window, but my internet is not obliging. So imagine trees draped with spanish moss, water with spiky grasses and a reflection of grey sky, and two sturdy benches around a fire pit. And I’ll stop wasting my time arguing with the internet — why, oh why, must you be so slow, oh internet? — and move on to writing my real words for the day.

 

 

St. Augustine

I am staying at a campground, a state park, on the beach. The lovely ocean with miles of sandy beach is easy walking distance away. And yet, I haven’t touched it and have only seen it once.

Traveling with dogs is totally worthwhile, but also more challenging than I expected. When I say “easy walking distance,” I mean easy walking distance for Zelda and me, not for Bartleby. It would be a long, long walk for him and an even longer walk for me if I wound up carrying him. But that’s irrelevant because dogs aren’t allowed on the beach. If I wanted to go to the beach, I’d have to leave both dogs behind in Serenity.

Want to know what else is not allowed? Leaving your dogs unaccompanied at your campsite. And actually, I’m pretty sympathetic to that one: the chance definitely exists that both dogs would bark in misery the whole time I was gone, if I wanted to leave them, which I don’t.

So I’m at the beach, but not enjoying the beach. Fortunately, I am enjoying my campsite. It’s pretty and big and quiet, tucked back in a corner of a reasonably empty campground. Two nights ago I was a little freaked out by its isolation as I listened to very loud rustling in the bushes, but I finally dug out my flashlight and shone it out on the raccoons climbing the tree about ten feet away from my window. I was then still a little freaked out — raccoons are kind of big when they’re so close and there were two of them — but hey, it wasn’t a bear or a serial killer, so I did relax enough to go to sleep eventually.

I’ve also had some really lovely walks around the campground. There’s a loop called the Ancient Dunes loop, which is supposedly a pleasant half hour walk (presumably for people who aren’t being walked by a fast-paced Jack Russell terrier), but is a fun up-and-down trek on a sandy path through the Florida forest. Lots of mosquitoes, of course, and they do love me, and a few too many spiders who built their webs across the path — sorry, spiders, for destroying all your hard work, and ick, ick, ick, spider webs on me — but it’s so primeval that you can almost imagine yourself in the Jurassic. Well, or at least a few hundred years ago. I think the trees are probably all too small to be good dinosaur territory. And the occasional signs explaining the history and the plants sort of destroy the impression. But it’s still fun to be taking our usual morning walk through such different territory.

 

I haven’t made nearly as much progress on Grace as I was hoping for — it’s been hard to get back into the rhythm that I had going so well in Vero Beach and I swear that the mere existence of NaNoWriMo now causes my writing ability to freeze solid — but I’m hoping for today to be a better day. So hi-ho, hi-ho, off to write I go.