memories

Landscapes

Rae Spencer9 Comments

I once believed that I was not suited for any landscape outside of Tennessee. I was a green and rust girl, addicted to leaf-litter and streams, katydids and quail. How could I learn to love anything other than what I had known?

When I moved to eastern Virginia, I found everything too vast. Too much sky, too much ocean, too much horizon. The sand, pine straw, and salt marshes shifted unpredictably underfoot. There were no katydids. If there were quail, I couldn’t hear them for the gulls.

Virginia was blue and beige, flat and salty. It felt barren, a virtual moonscape compared to the ridges and hills of “home”. And I felt jaggedly out of place, a coarse river-stone rolled loose by some sudden flood and washed all the way down to the sea.

Fourteen years later, the coast has grown on me, and in me. I’m still a girl of green and rust, but no longer frightened by sky. The sand has polished me a bit. I’ve discovered that a little salt in the water does not equal poison. Best of all, there are green places here, too, where I can feel at home.

Squirrel in the Bird Feeder

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I photographed this little visitor in the first week of February last year. A full year has passed since then, a remarkable sequence of months that have been some of the most productive of my life, and the saddest. I suppose the same might be said of any twelve month span, as I tend to measure time by milestones of success and loss. But what if there is another way? What if I should learn to measure time as the distance between meals, as the difference between hunger and a handful of seed?

Chickadees and Downy Woodpeckers

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Early last year, while walking at First Landing State Park, I noticed a small flock of chickadees foraging alongside a pair of downy woodpeckers. The chickadees seemed like amateurs in such practiced company, but all of the birds appeared to enjoy success.

It was the first time I had seen chickadees exhibit this particular foraging technique, and the already beautiful day brightened. The euphoria of my new knowledge followed me home. It lingered for days, sending me back to the Park for another walk much sooner than I might otherwise have gone.

I was able to capture a few seconds with my camera, a fleeting glimpse that words alone would never convey. I find this difficult to admit, as I love words and am reluctant to acknowledge their limits. I find it even more difficult to accept that the moment can never be reproduced or shared in full. How unfair, that time and space conspire to render memory so singular and personal.

Pileated Woodpeckers

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Oversized, loud, and brilliantly crested, pileated woodpeckers command my attention like few other birds. When I hear their call, I find it impossible to keep walking. Curiosity (or is it obsession?) forces me to stop and listen for their foraging raps, creep a few steps closer, then stop and listen again. Each time I catch a glimpse of them, I feel as if I have accomplished something wondrous.

The Woods

Rae Spencer2 Comments

The woods of my youth grew complete with creek and wildlife. I knew every nest, den, and footprint. In summer briars, snakes, and mosquitoes swarmed into the woods. In winter they retreated, surrendering a fey, brittle place where I got lost for hours without ever getting lost. Escorted by a pack of dogs, sometimes by the bravest of our cats, I chased over and around and through the creek, straggling home at dusk muddy and matted with burrs.

In early spring lamprey came to spawn. I gloated over the lamprey, certain they lived nowhere else of consequence. Each March I knelt for hours beside the shallows where they dug their nests. I counted them and marveled at their spots and stripes. I cupped my hands under them and watched them wiggle free over my fingers.

I’m sure I did other things, had other habits and hobbies. But my memory is overgrown, buried in underbrush and fallen leaves, forever snarled in the woods. Should I return now, I don’t believe I’d find my woods. Only a few acres of trees and a little stream.

So where does my nostalgia lead? Not back into the woods. But spending time with these pictures feels like an invaluable luxury in my busy world of adult anxieties.

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I wrote this piece a few years ago. I’m reposting it now because these pictures have been calling to me. They are more than shadow and light, more than pixels. They rustle like leaves and smell like wet, happy dogs. (All four dogs are long passed and well grieved.) I can almost taste the crisp air from that misty day in 1992, a rare elixir of youth and solitude and happiness. Perhaps, despite my earlier claim, this nostalgia DOES lead back into the woods.