Walking with the green man

In London, they call this "the green man."

"Wait for the green man," the walking tour guides would say as they shepherded us through busy intersections. "We'll wait for you on the other side if the signal changes, so don't do anything dangerous."

Painted at each pedestrian crossing are helpful reminders to look right before crossing. With arrows to tell you which way "right" is. Especially useful for all of the Americans, Germans, French and Netherlanders who are conditioned to look for traffic coming from the left.

Once I got home it took a couple of weeks before I was solid on looking left again instead of right. I still tend to walk on the left side of the sidewalk, though...possibly my only behavioral legacy of living in London.

Here in the U.S., things are slightly different. While I was in London, and the green man was called to my attention, I was all, like, wait--has the man always been green, and I just never noticed? No. The man here is white. But no one ever refers to this as "the white man"--it's just called a "walk signal." Which is a bit dull, don't you think? Why don't we have a green man?

Of course, when I hear "green man," I think of the Green Man, not the green man, so those first couple of references confused me a little. (I am easily confused.) I didn't see many representations of the Green Man in London, aside from public houses named after him. I counted three or four without even trying to find them.

 Below are the homely sights I captured today on my walk to/from my favorite cafe and bakery in Minneapolis, a town bereft of Green and green men.

But we do have Million Dollar Bars for $2.39. Top that, Kensington.

Don't ask why the "Y" is bigger than all the other letters...nobody knows.

My doughnut, latte, beans and book (Wilco on the sound system) kept me content for an hour, then I hit the sidewalks of Minneapolis again. Which are still a puddly mess in places, but that's what spring is all about.

Delicate-blue spring sky with biscuit-like clouds--a sky cobbler!--as the cardinal sang from this treetop:

Ducks paddled on the open water, dogs gallumphed over the soggy turf, and all the city's winter weary were out in force. Including a friend from my last job, who I met by chance on the creekside path. We caught up on life as the bicycle wheels whirred by. A Golden Retriever took a dip among the ducks.

Happy spring to all!

Winter in three parts

Part 1.
I was surprised to find the magazine “Men’s Journal” in my mail today. I checked the label. Maybe my husband had developed a heretofore-unknown-to-me interest in articles like “How to Trim a Beard” or “The Truth About Herbal Supplements.”

But no, the carrier had delivered it by mistake. It was meant to go to a gentleman living a block away. And how disappointed he would be if he had no magazine to read on these frozen January nights, which is what would happen if I just chucked it in the recycling bin.

So I pulled on the jacket, the boots, the mittens, the hat with faux-fur-lined ear flaps, and the infinity scarf (for the infinity winter), dodged the cats hovering around the door, and ventured out into what Minnesotans fondly refer to as “the tundra.”

Thirteen degrees. (That is -10.5556 degrees to the rest of the world.) Bright sun lancing off the fresh fall of snow. Cold, cold wind from the north, the direction in which I was walking. A brisk and beautiful day, actually, with all the diamond brilliance of deep winter above and below, if you could just raise your face from out your scarf for a moment to see it.

On the way home, I saw a Pomeranian wearing a white-and-red doggie coat dash out into the intersection, all the while barking at the wheels of a giant blue dump truck that was trying to make a turn. The little dog so small, brave and foolish. He came to no harm. The driver kept his foot on the brake until the dog’s person came puffing up and nabbed him. Pom scolded and held tightly in his person’s arms, smile on my face then and even now.

It takes a while to feel warm again after going out. I switched on the heating pad to bring my toes up to room temperature as I sat writing. But after a while, I felt the westering sun reach through the window to cup my elbow, then stroke its warm golden fingers along my arm, like the hand of a friend.

Part 2.
January’s sun is low in the sky. Any cloud not directly overhead looks damson-hued, colored like sunset all day long.

The other night, snow was falling as I drove home through the park, whirling down from the misting gray clouds like fairy handkerchiefs. And the song went: White snow, black branches, gray sky. The elemental story, the original lullaby, the essential shapes of the winter, all singing cold, sleeping songs like water rippling, fire burning. Did you know that cold burns like fire?

Tonight, the full moon shines in the east, exquisitely wreathed by gauzy cloud, softest pearl edged with opal. That aurora whispers of hypnotic snowfalls soon-to-come in a language the night birds seem to hear. I see them—first, a mass of black crows, then mallards silhouetted against the murk, winging southeast along the corridor of the Mississippi River, flying with the prevailing winds.

Part 3.

So you must persist 

in asking where my heart goes

all the long, cold night. 

Like following trails left by birds

who vanished with yesterday’s sky.

—Japanese poet Kōhō Kennichi, 

    translated by Sam Hamill

Through old glass

The view through rippled glass from Burgh House, Hampstead Village

I mentioned that I've been going on a lot of guided walks. If this sounds dull to you, think of it this way: it is really like going to listen to a storyteller, who skillfully links what you see now with that-which-was-before. Combined with walking through one of the world's great cities.

A good guide makes connections and creates a narrative that places in context the churches, inns, pubs, alleys, lanes, place names, geography, and historical figures who walked these pavements, enabling you to see past the surfaces. She or he reveals the secrets of a place...those oddities, nuances, idiosyncrasies and stranger-than-fiction truths known by those who care about the events that help define a place, its culture and its peoples.

That is the main thing that strikes me—how much these guides and ambassadors love their Place. Some may be doing what David Abram calls "the practice of spinning stories that have the rhythm and lilt of the local soundscape, tales for the tongue, tales that want to be told, again and again."

Like all storytelling, it is interactive. Together, you conjure up the ghosts, imagine what was, and see how it connects with what visibly remains. While it is impossible to encapsulate THE story of such a place, or any place, it is A story, one of millions of stories.

Sometimes, you'll turn a corner and walk down a narrow but beckoning lane, and whoosh! The relentless noise of construction and traffic is gone. You're in a peaceful Georgian courtyard with flowering trees.

Apothecaries' Guild or Livery (mortar and pestle on wall

Or you've happened upon a church built by the Knights Templar in 1185, and the sound of cellos and violins floats from the windows.

London Walks guide Hilary

And occasionally, you'll hear a vendor singsonging on a corner about why you should buy what he is selling, or hear the clip-clop of horses' hooves on the cobbles (Mounted Patrol), and just for a moment, you'll be transported to Victorian or Edwardian London. As if the Past just swept up these old streets and tapped you on the shoulder, whispered in your ear.

How living amid this must shape your view of the world. London endures. From waves of invaders, plagues that wiped out half the population, the great fire of 1666, civil war, and the Blitz to terrorist attacks, London endures.

The possibilities

It was lovely to see such a huge sky.

One reason why people love and need open spaces is that they create a sense of possibility, a mirroring openness within ourselves. I visited Hampstead Village for a guided walk and wandered a bit on Hampstead Heath yesterday, breathing in the peace of London's largest open space and one of its highest spots.

A few days ago, another London Walks guide, Corinna, a sixtyish lady who lives in Highgate Village bordering the Heath, told us that she swims in one of its bathing ponds every morning, year round (like Katharine Hepburn, who swam every morning in chilly Long Island Sound).

I want to go back for a proper ramble, in hopes of spotting one of the foxes, owls, hedgehogs and grass snakes that make their homes here.