 Many have thought in this Thoughtful Spot. Great minds have pondered wondrous things beneath this old London plane tree (Platanus hispanica). Somehow I think their thoughts have lingered, and have changed this place. Is that possible, I wonder - can the thoughts, conversations, ideas seep into the fiber of a place and leave some vestige of their power when the thinkers have long since gone? I doubt it, yet my imagination likes it so. And if ever there were a place to make one believe such a thing, it is this place. I wonder anyone does anything at Oxford but dream and remember. - William Butler Yeats  ...that peculiar air of Oxford - |
 |  |  |
All that is gold does not glitter/Not all who wander are lost...
- J.R.R. Tolkien
A magpie scampers across the grass in front of me, and two ravens strut by. Could it be they enjoy smugly walking across that grass that students' steps may not touch? Magpies are beautiful creatures, blue-black and purest white, he seems to sparkle in the sunlight. And the sunlight is brilliant now, for the wind has driven the grey sky away. The banks of the water are alive with goldenrod (Solidago canadensis) and blue woodland phlox (Phlox divaricata), and cattails (Typha latifolia) bob placidly along the path. The bells have rung, all out of time and characterful. Jagged, cross-tipped spires reach for heaven, towering cross-tipped spruces reach beside them. Ancient ivies and climbing hydrangea (Hydrangea anomala) hide man's handiwork with God's, granting these stones a harmony with creation, and a sense of belonging in these woods and fields. It is a strange, nostalgic, contemplative place. Will my thoughts, too, linger here, waiting to be reclaimed?
The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing... to find the place where all the beauty came from...
- C. S. Lewis
Magdalen College, Oxford
There is a wild wind here on my Thoughtful Walk, but not the sort that heralds a storm or threatens a change. It’s a constant, steady wind, the sort that shapes trees over years, bending them into fluid shapes, the sort that races into your lungs with every breath you take, and makes the grasses with their filigree seed heads ripple like the marks left in the sand of a gentle shoreline. I’m in love with the moor.
It’s been raining most of the day, which has been just right. I was thinking a moment ago that this place would not be right in the sun, it’s so gloriously alive in the rain and mist. But then the sun came out, and it was like a new world had been lowered down for a moment and swallowed this one, then it was gone. The sunlight is resting on a distant hilltop for a moment, racing now across the land, here for a fleeting instant, then off again. The cloud's shadows whisk the light along, but never for more than a moment or two, it always returns.
And the peace which I always found in the silence and emptiness of the moors filled me utterly.
- James Herriot
 |  |  |
One or two fireweed torches (Chamaenerion angustifolium) are just beginning to bloom, fields of them are in bud. Between those blooms and the heather (Calluna vulgaris), I imagine these moors will be a sea of pinks and purples in a month. Birds whose names I do not know squabble among the ripening wild blueberries, and the wind-sculpted hawthorn trees (Crataegus monogyna) are covered in green berries. The clouds are low, or perhaps the land is high and closer to them, yet they do not settle as dreamy mists in the hollows and dells as I would have expected. These clouds alternately float and race just over my head, like an ever-changing roof of painted greys.
... A lonely moor / silent and dark and tractless swells,
The waves of some wild streamlet pour / hurriedly through its ferny dells.
- Charlotte Brontë
Stone walls and old stone homes are etched into this land, not built upon it. They cut, in beautiful disorder, through the coarse, sponge-like grass, through the sturdy heather, the deepest imaginable moss, down to the sandy soil beneath. It looks as though these stone structures have grown out of that soil.
 |  |  |
So sweet, so soft, so hushed an air;/And, deepening still the dream-like charm,
Wild moor-sheep feeding everywhere. /That was the scene, I knew it well;
I knew the turfy pathway's sweep,/That, winding o'er each billowy swell,
Marked out the tracks of wandering sheep.
- Charlotte Brontë
This is a place of contradictions, or perhaps of an odd balance. The vastness and the wind gives a sense of wildness, yet somehow the clouds and the little hollows make it feel sheltered, and homely. The land looks untamed, yet sheep graze it placidly. Tufts of wool are caught in the grasses, self heal (Prunella vulgaris) dots its bright purple face among great swaths of nettles (Urtica dioica). The horizon seems limitless, and strangely reachable.
I’m in familiar forests today. A trail that I’ve walked several times before is just visible amidst a jungle-like chaos of weeds and wildflowers and undergrowth, the river is misty and lazy down a cliff on one side of the path and a canopy of green and birdsongs overhead obscures the sky, but not the sunlight. And best of all, I’m not wandering this thoughtful spot on my own. Chattering along the trail before and behind are my family, the best people to share in a thoughtful walk.
Flowers were the sun and fiery spots of sky strewn through the woodland.
-Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
Countless daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare) bloom along the way, and purple explosions of wild bee balm (Monarda fistulosa) are dotted in little clusters. That surest scent of spring, the perfect harmony of moss, wild privet, and honeysuckle are in the air. All three plants line this trail in abundance, the viney honeysuckle (Lonicera periclymenum) and privet shrubs (Ligustrum vulgare) almost touch across the path above my head, creating an archway of flowers. I wish I could blend a perfume of that scent!
 |  |  |
And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
Indian Pinks (Spigelia marilandica) in yellow and scarlet pop up here and there, tucked in little rocky crevices rocking into the steep slopes or in between the gnarly roots of old trees. And Mum has made a new wildflower discovery- a small bell-shaped bloom on a vine, perfectly shaped with thick yellow petals turned back at the tips like a fuchsia, in the loveliest shade of pink. It’s a wild clematis variety, (Clematis pitcheri) and not a very common one. Its vine and leaves look similar to its cultivated relatives, but its unique blossom, with thick, sturdy petals, give it the common name Leatherflower.
 |  |  |
…there are so many things that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring there is a different green.
- J. R. R. Tolkien
At home the first day lilies are blooming, the roses are just passing their prime, and the vibrant green of early summer is beginning to overtake the land. I’m glad to be returning there for when I leave this thoughtful spot. It is good to turn my steps towards home for a while, and delight in the familiar companionship of family. Particularly as my next Thoughtful Spot will be very far away indeed…
 |  |
It's Spring. Full-blown, gleeful Spring. I've found a field today, off of a little trail that has been the site of many a pleasant walk. I've no idea who the property belongs to, and I'm not entirely sure if I'm supposed to be here or not, but here I am, nestled in a clover patch, delighting in the reassuring excitement of a friendly, familiar sun.
... April, dressed in all his trim,/Hath put a spirit of youth in everything.
- Shakespeare, Sonnet 98
There are few delights comparable to laying in an un-mown field of spring grass. No stalk is grown enough to be prickly or uncomfortable, and the tiniest of flowers are hiding beneath the Johnson grass and clover. There are wild strawberries, and violet wood sorrel (Oxalis violacea), and the first of the dovesfoot cranesbill (Geranium molle), and two dainty Venus looking glass stems (Triodanis perfoliata). And the world looks so wide and different from this grassy vantage, I imagine this is how the little rabbit I passed on my way here might look at this field. Isn't it odd how we tend to love the idea that we have the ability to see the world the way birds do, yet we rarely stop to look at it the way squirrels and rabbits do. Don't you think their view is quite lovely too?
Spring won’t let me stay in this house any longer! I must get out and breathe the air deeply again.
- Gustav Mahler
 |  |  |
While on the topic of quotidian joys, I must stop and praise the lovely experience of writing with a pencil. My pen fell out of my hair as I biked here, no doubt I'll find it on the path when I ride back, but until then I'm using the pencil that I found in the depths of my purse to write this, and am remembering how pleasing it is to write with a pencil, and feel lead instead of metal move smoothly across a page. A honeysuckle (Lonicera x bella) is blooming across the field. It's a cloud of white and yellow blossoms, with slender trumpet throats and that unmatchable scent they simply can't contain, it must leap out of those trumpets and flood the air with fragrance. And in the very middle of this field blooms a single, shockingly yellow ragwort (Jacobaea vulgaris). I'm tempted to pick it, yet it stands so tall and proud I think I should leave it be. Oh and the cornflowers! (Centaurea cyanus) What a color! Of all blue flowers, they must be the truest blue, like late afternoon skies without a cloud in sight, the color of an indigo bunting when the light hits the feathers just so.
Tiny green aphids crawl across my page and onto the magenta bud of a vetch flower (Vicia americana). I love it when the vetch begins to bloom. Though I hear the sounds of heavy equipment nearby as work proceeds on a new highway that I fear will cut far too close to this wild haven, the sound of the wind in the trees is louder, and the chatter of birds and squabble of squirrels is nearer, and I am grateful this haven exists. The mundane and the spectacular of creation thrive together in this thoughtful spot, awaiting marvelers. What a perfect gift is spring.
For the past week I have traveled, almost daily, beneath a large, single cherry tree. When this week began, the tree was subtly bedecked in pale buds, but slowly, coaxed by rain showers, sunny days, and a warm spring, the buds have burst into bloom. Today they are glorious pink pompoms, and the first few petals have begun to fall.
 |  |
In March the soft rains continued, and each storm waited courteously until its predecessor sunk beneath the ground.
- John Steinbeck
Red buds and crab apples are blooming too; my walk today is almost entirely beneath pink and white arbors. The sky is grey and towering with storm clouds, as it has been for several afternoons this week. But with the warmth of the spring air, the blooms on the trees above me, and the delightful scent of new grass and damp mulch in the air, the grey skies don't seem threatening at all. It feels instead as though this dim spring day is wrapped in a grey down quilt of clouds, and it makes today the perfect day for a Thoughtful Walk.
 |  |  |
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now, / Is hung with bloom along the bough
And stands about the woodland ride / Wearing white for Eastertide.
And stands about the woodland ride / Wearing white for Eastertide.
- A. E. Housman
This morning I was wakened by a rather portly robin scuttering along the gutter outside my window. Winter is almost gone. Now I sit on a sun-warmed stone with my toes in an icy, chattering creek, sunlight streams through leafless trees, and there are songbirds calling from every side. Though another frost or four will certainly still come, it feels safe to say that spring is on the move.
|  |
My thoughtful spot today is a lovely corner off a trail behind a neighborhood. Long ago some kind soul set stepping stones across this busy creek, or at least it looks as thought is was long ago, for the stones are very deeply set and covered in moss. And there is a quiet, thoughtful bench, and a picnic table, slightly the worse for weather, yet somehow made friendlier by that.
 |  |
Then was winter shaken, and fair was the earth's embrace.
- Beowulf, ll. 1136b-1137a
Green leaves are peering through the buds on a wild rose bush (Rosa canina), which is currently also home to a little nest. It is clearly last year's handiwork, but I've no doubt it will be made shipshape by new inhabitants in the near future.
Chickweed (Stellaria media) and henbit (Lamium amplexicaule) and blue creeping speedwell (Veronica repens), nestled deep in oft-overlooked obscurity, herald in their tiny, joyful way the sunny days and warmth ahead. And a single, bright faced dandelion (Taraxacum officinale,) on a tiny stem is the first brave one of its kind to emerge in this little thoughtful spot.
Chickweed (Stellaria media) and henbit (Lamium amplexicaule) and blue creeping speedwell (Veronica repens), nestled deep in oft-overlooked obscurity, herald in their tiny, joyful way the sunny days and warmth ahead. And a single, bright faced dandelion (Taraxacum officinale,) on a tiny stem is the first brave one of its kind to emerge in this little thoughtful spot.
 |  |  |
Nothing ever seems impossible in Spring, you know.
- L. M. Montgomery
The creek running over the stepping stones almost drowns out the construction trucks near by. There are millions of dancing stars on its surface, and gleeful little clusters of bubbles at the corners of the rocks. There is a sunbeam on the field across the creek, and I must follow it...
A solitary, empty, stone urn sits in front of me. A patinated pedestal filled with frozen earth, and beyond it a tidy holly hedge blocks this little corner of nature from the surrounding houses. It is a sheltered, sun-dappled place where I have sat often before, quiet and very nearly warm on these brightly brisk winter days - a perfect thoughtful spot. These really are the best days of winter: when the mornings are frosty and the air is almost too cold to breath deeply, then those mornings fade into afternoons like this one, afternoons of crystalline skies and almost warm enough sunshine.
 |  |  |
Glory be to God for dappled things!
- Gerard Manley Hopkins, Pied Beauty
If you sit on the ground one of these afternoons, and close your eyes in a sheltered spot where the sun shines through and the wind is stilled, sometime between the frosts of morning and evening, you can almost imagine a whole host of tiny roots slowly waking up in the earth beneath, tempted by the sunshine warmth to rouse from their winter's rest, and beginning to think about sending out new shoots and new life. It feels as though all creation around me is tentatively, half-way waking. Perhaps, when the frost returns tonight, all those curious little roots and sprouts with nestle back down into the warm depths of the soil once more, realizing that winter isn't yet over with that wonderful feeling of waking too early on a Saturday morning, and discovering that there's no need to dash out into the chilly world just yet.
It was one of those days when...
it is summer in the light and winter in the shade.
- Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Wild daffodil noses are peering up in the dappled patch of woods along the sidewalk. And a cacophonous pair of Canada geese have taken up residence, despite the glowering disapproval of the neighborhood homeowners' association, in the undergrowth of the tidy holly hedge. I've heard these next few weeks referred to as the quickening of the year. What a lovely phrase. It is the season when the first tiny glimpses of waking life are just beginning to appear again.
 |  |
... a new year, full of things that never have been...
- Rainer Maria Rilke
Though ice still clings to the grasses around the mouth of a little culvert nearby, and the bushes are still white with frost most mornings, still it seems that perhaps, slowly and happily, the world is indeed beginning to quicken.
It's been a balmy December. The warm, damp, mizzle-filled days have felt almost spring-like, and the scent of moss and old logs is at once new and nostalgic. I'm wandering through the woods today with the people I love best, and finding perfect thoughtful spots around every corner of three winding miles of trails. The green, almost rainforest atmosphere of these woods is deliciously conducive to thoughtful spots, and every other step there is a log or a stump or a lush moss carpet on a stone, just waiting to be comfortably sat upon as a vantage point from which the deep valley and the creek below us might be enjoyed.
Along a stream that raced and ran / Through tangled trees and over stones,
That long had heard the pipes o' Pan / And shared the joys that nature owns,
I met a fellow fisherman, / Who greeted me in cheerful tones.
- Edgar Guest, The Fisherman
 |  |  |
We stumbled upon the foundation of an old home beside the trail. It was settled in a perfect corner between large trees, and just a few steps down the path away from it a bridge led over a small waterfall. What a pleasant place to live it must have been. The dried flowers of the wild hydrangeas still look as though they're blooming, and the mountain laurel is everywhere. In the spring this path must be overwhelmed by their pink and white blooms.
An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
- Henry David Thoreau
 | These are also the sort of woods which provide fairy-house trees in abundance. Hollowed out trunks with tiny violets sprouting at the base, and little ribbon streams leading to puddle-sized lakes. And, oh, the mushrooms! Ruffled white tree ears and tiny toadstools that look as though they've been lifted straight from the illustrations of Beatrix Potter, and dainty umbrellas nestled in the soldier moss. |
Fairy places, fairy things,/Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,
Tiny woods below whose boughs/Shady fairies weave a house...
- Robert Lewis Stevenson, A Child's Garden of Verses
 |  |  |
But then, then we clambered through a creek, rounded a corner, passed a tall ledge of sharp layers of slate and bedrock, and arrived at a waterfall of glorious proportions. No words can do justice to this glassy torrent. It was magnificent.
The landscape sleeps in mist from morn till noon;
- John Clare, A Shepherd's Calendar: November
The morning mist is frosty. The dried seed heads of the iron weed are encased in a feathery shroud of white, and they glitter in the early morning light. The air is cold and bright, and all the world seems awake and gleeful and scattered with twinkling dust. I'm in somewhat unfamiliar woods, I've walked them before but I don't know them like my woods at home, so there's an air of discovery around every turn: a little bridge to span a marshy patch of trail, a bramble of wild roses covered in hips, a little grove of cattails. They all come as a surprise, little gifts of wonder on this most stunning of frosty mornings.
| Listen… With faint dry sound, Like steps of passing ghosts, The leaves, frost-crisp’d, break from the trees And fall. - Adelaide Crapsey, November Night |  |
A mocking bird is trying to balance herself on a swaying wild hydrangea, the beautiful dried flower head is tossing even in this gentle breeze, yet she is holding her seat gracefully. Her long grey tail flicks this way and that as the branch moves, the only sign that she is having to exert any energy at all to keep her delicate perch.
 |  |  |
The frost flowers have bloomed in abundance this morning. The delicate tendrils and ribbons that cling to the dead stalks are utterly marvelous, and every one unique. I wonder what it would be like to watch them form, to see that thinnest, most delicate layer of frost twist and curl out from the stalk and create these magical little clusters of ribbon-like ice.
November has always seemed to me the Norway of the year.
-Emily Dickinson
I love how the frost makes everything sparkle, yet at the same time hides things, just a bit, from clear sight. It softens the edges of the dried grasses, and accentuates the broad veins of the fallen leaves, and harmonizes in such a bright yet gentle way all the colors of the landscape. But there are some colors it cannot soften, for here, lurking patiently beneath a twining profusion of grey-green, frost-embroidered leaves, is a spark of red. A brilliant, red, still-blooming honeysuckle, it seems a reminder that summer has only just fallen asleep. This ice-encased flower must be one of the most beautiful discoveries at this misty morning thoughtful spot.
Autumn is a second Spring, when every leaf is a flower.
- Albert Camus
I am sitting on a bench overlooking a small duck pond, which is currently divested of its few waddling inhabitants, as it is late afternoon and they know by habit that if they wander over to a certain house in the neighborhood about this time they are ensured a hearty dinner. This sun in bright and mellow, "the maturing sun," Keats called it, and that seems to describe it perfectly today, it is not exuberant, but constant. Above me is a canopy of brilliant orange, made even more intense by the sunlight, and just across the street is a row a gold.
As long as autumn lasts, I shall not have hands, canvas, and colors
enough to paint the beautiful things I see.
- Vincent van Gogh
Four young ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba) trees, resplendent in drooping branches of brilliant yellow leaves stand there, to walk beneath them is to enter a great hall of golden arches, with a golden carpet underfoot. I've always loved ginkgo trees. I love their tenacity and longevity even in harsh environs, their legendary benefits for the mind and memory are fascinating, and their graceful, almost willow-like branches, which earned them the common name "maidenhair tree," are stunning. But I think my favorite thing about them is the curious fact that these leaves must not be harvested while green and thriving, as one might expect, but now, in all their golden glory, just as they fall from the tree.
Lo! I am come to autumn / When all the leaves are gold...
- G. K. Chesterton, Gold Leaves
Along the tops of all the yellow trees,
The golden-yellow trees, the sunshine lies;
- George MacDonald, Autumn's Gold
I cannot resist gathering up a great armful of these brilliant leaves and tossing them into the air to watch them tumble down. This cheerful little thoughtful spot is chilly but bright on this glorious, final shout of color day. What a perfect ending to autumn.
