remembering home

Yesterday I finally made it back to my childhood home in New Orleans. One of the levee breaks was on the London Avenue Canal which was next to the street where I lived.  Every home,  every school and every thing I remembered from my youth had been submerged by water when the levee broke. My old street and neighborhoods were ghost towns. Empty shells gutted of their innards waiting for decisions about whether to rebuild in this threatened land. Some souls in limbo were living in FEMA trailers parked on their lawns or in driveways--but the feeling was that of abandonment. Silence, waiting-

walking

Walking is my best form of meditation. With the first few steps I begin to notice things and fall into the present. My favorite places to walk are natural where I can focus on trees, birds, and weather and not worry about traffic and people. I prefer to walk in silence. Then I notice the natural sounds--birds, insects, the whisper of the pine needles, the brush of dry grass.
My dog comes along and her senses come alive too--sniffing and finding where the coyotes and deer were the night before. However, at age 14 she has lost her hearing and has to rely on her sight and smell.

My dad loved to walk too. Whenever he thought we weren't moving enough or the walls closed in on him he would suggest a walk. Back then we lived in New Orleans, and so we walked along the levee on the west bank of the Mississippi River. We would travel along the levee watching the ships and barges pass by--sometimes comb the waterline looking for interesting bits of wood or flotsam and jetsom on its way to the gulf.

I always took my kids walking, even when they were toddlers, sometimes carrying them or pulling them in a wagon. Often the dogs and cats would come along. Here's a picture of a typical trip when one of the boys was still a hip hugger and the other about 3 years old.

pine grove

I try to walk a few laps around the southern perimeter of our place everyday. The reason I chose the south end is because it is shaded in large oak trees, and in the summer the heat is more tolerable. The rest of our place has open pasture and in the summer months I try to avoid too much sun exposure because it makes me feel sick in a hurry. If I stay in the shade it seems I can walk forever. The first part of my lap takes me through these young pines my husband and I planted as 6 inch seedlings about 10 years ago. Actually we planted so many more all over the place, but that is about the time that we really began to notice climate change. The summers and winters became drier and many of the seedlings just fried in the ground. We are fortunate to have these and another patch to the east. It was tough work poking hundreds of holes in the earth, and then heeling them in only to have most of them die. Every time I walk past these I think of how lovely it would have been if they had all grown. Katrina took out thousands of pines and oaks in the area around us. At least these few will be around to fill some of the blank spaces.