Sounds of pedestrian life

I can hear the sounds of the city all around me, and nature. Birds sing and chipmunks scurry, while a trash compactor runs down by the recycling yard, and a power hammer smacks somewhere down by the interstate highway.

The train should be coming through in a few. It whistles in the distance, but not in this tucked-away suburban dream. And it stops, if you ask the conductor to, or wave down the guy from the nearside track – so at least I know when the shockwaves wake me up to make the great escape, there’s a way out so long as the conductor’s on board.

Walking with the dogs to catch the late-morning inbound, Khiz, the boys and I were stalked by a stunning great white coyote. It leapt into a clearing downhill from us along North Street and followed our movement toward Church Street en route to Kendal Green. Maybe they want Remydi for food, but it’s not going to happen. Khizer swears he’s got some magic Xena shout that will scare all beasts away!

Today we’re planning a hike along an abandoned rail bed in Weston, walking from home, and tomorrow we’ll be training it to North Station and Orange Lining to Oak Hill for a trek through the Middlesex Fells.

Captured by New England outdoors

Florida is wonderful, for what it is. But the hills call to me every time I'll listen. And while Albuquerque calmed my soul after the shock of '01, now that '11 has come and is almost gone, it's New England that's captured me, and I'm off to the hills every chance I get.

Two weeks until the semester begins, so I'm getting in as much outdoors time as possible while living in the conserves, and am taking interspersed urban jaunts into Boston or out to one of the rings.

Today, the ring is Gloucester. Again. Gloucester won over Khizer's heart yesterday after an afternoon walk down Main Street and a windows-down drive around Cape Ann. Today we're returning for a walk through Dogtown followed by fruit and veggie shopping at the farmer's market in Salem.

The pic I'm posting above is from today's walk with my pups, heading up Cat Rock in the Weston woods. This place is a 10-minute's walk from the commuter rail station at Kendal Green, just a couple miles south of Walden Pond. What a find!

The mid-afternoon mist inspires me to watercolor

The sky in Philadelphia has been hazy for the past few days, to the point that I've seen even modestly-tall structures capped off by dark and sinewy clouds hanging amidst the mist. This doctored photo was taken from the Walt Whitman Bridge coming into Eastern South Philadelphia on Sunday afternoon (07-06-08). I used one of Adobe Photoshop's easy editing features to create a watercolor impression.

Lives changed on the evening commute

I hate it when I get stuck somewhere in the Philadelphia grid, in a traffic jam caused by some random act of violence. It's hard enough making my way home through all of those four-way stops after a long day at work, but add to that the horror of sitting there, unable to do anything to help, as they zip a body into a crinkly black bag and place it into an ambulance for a futal trip to the hospital to be officially announced dead.

One day on my way home a Chinese man got popped by a stray bullet while leaning into a car window; he was apparently saying goodbye to his family as they were heading out to do the week's shopping. I heard the shot from just a block away - I heard it but didn't see a thing - and I passed by before anyone had the chance to start screaming, or call the ambulance to block the traffic for that matter.

Lives were changed in an instant on my evening commute. And that evening the story got all of a 10-second highlight on the evening news, which is where I learned about what I'd barely missed.

Anyway, I guess the traffic around here shouldn't really bother me, huh? In some places, traffic is the greatest problem on people's mind. Here in Philadelphia, traffic is the least of our worries. You just have to take it in stride.