Time & Space

The geography here is pockets of densely urban space divided by stretches of mountainous terrain. To walk across it is to pass through, on a smaller scale, Manhattan, Appalachians, then Manhattan again, then Appalachians once more.

 

Last Sunday, I went for a six-hour hike. An hour in the city. Then up into some small mountains, the city sounds receding to a distant din. Then down the other side, an hour walking along the shore with violent waves crashing into enormous rocks. Then the reverse walk back home at dusk.

 

When I was a child, there was a certain kind of weather that suggested possibility. A clear, cool, breezy May day. A deep blue sky. The wind sounds different when blowing through a forest with leaves. A kind of rushing sound it lacks in the winter. The combination of rushing wind and bottomless blue sky. The illusions have been peeled back. The petty ugliness of conventional existence reduced in size far below. The wide openness of time and space.

 

This was not that kind of day. Last Sunday was hazy. But I remembered.

 

 

From a pavilion at the top of a mountain, looking down onto the shore & ocean.

 

The waves and rocks.