I walked around my mother's neighborhood this morning, first out through the back yard in the early morning sunlight, then back. The sun was higher, the light different but not yet high. These photos are being shown in the order they were taken, as the sky brightens, as I leave and return.
Aside from the lushness of the flowers, the first thing I really noticed was the softness of the air, the relatively low humidity, at least as compared with Tennessee, the gentle caress of a steady soft breeze on my skin. It is unusual to go from Tennessee to Texas and find a kinder, gentler climate. And although this is not the fist time this has happened, I continue to be surprised when the world upsets my expectations.
As I walked, my senses began to experiences the differences between the neighborhood and the one I had walked a mere 24 hours earlier. Both of us live in neighborhood with manicured lawns, where homes have sprinkler systems, and yet nothing was the same. Of course the plants are different in Texas than in my Tennessee neighborhood, but there were other signs of difference as well. Garland Texas is not in the midst of a drought, and the air is rich with the smell of earth, of green leaves and continued growth. Autumn is not advancing as quickly here.
Even though I live in a neighborhood filled with sprinklers, we cannot water enough to counterbalance the continued heat and the lack of rain. Texas as well has suffered a heat wave, but the availability of water, and the plethora of more heat tolerant plants is evident. Walking in Knoxville I smell dry dusty earth, browning leaves, decay. Walking in Garland I smell flowers, freshly mowed grass that smells of new growth, wet earth. The scent of a freshly watered lawn still in the flush of growth is markedly different than a freshly watered lawn that is nonetheless struggling to survive.
I notice other things as well. The birdsong is different. I hear the sounds of the marching band coming from the nearby high school, although I would probably hear something similar if I lived near a high school in Tennessee. I am reminded that it is Friday, that there will be a pep rally, and I am carried back to my own high school days.
I think about the drive to Texas, the long ride into the extended Texas sunset, broad and wide and filling the sky with a different kind of light than I see in Tennessee, where one feels closer to the earth perhaps, and less dwarfed by the sky. I think about how I watched the motion of the grasses on the sides of the road in Arkansas, the movement of the air through the leaves, the changes in wave motion and velocity as different vehicles passed in close proximity. I wondered why I had never noticed this before. I wondered about how easy it is to pass through life without really paying attention.
Sometimes I struggle with travel, with the idea of travel on an intellectual level, not the desire for it. Sometimes I think of travel as going someplace exotic, and put visiting family in a different category, travel that is not really travel with a capital T. But that isn't really fair. All travel, all experiences outside the constraints of our normal boundaries can open our eyes, expand our horizons. I remain unconvinced that we really need to travel in order to learn to open our eyes, but perhaps we do, perhaps we need to be forced out of the boundaries of our normal habits. Perhaps it is the interruption that is as important as the location, the interruption that allows us to stop our internal monologue for just a moment, and see something a little differently.
