Today has been the first noticeably lighter 7AM walk. The dead of winter has passed, and though you wouldn’t know it from the tree branches, you can hear it in the bird calls.

Recently I’ve had some run-in’s with bird call curiosity. It turns out, that if you sit and listen to separate bird calls, it’s quite easy to identify the basics. I’m not entirely sure that there is any higher purpose to the identification than the satisfaction of the discovery. Though I wonder if sometimes the birds respond to human interpretations of their calls.

When I get back to Seattle I’m going to have to make a point to listen to city bird calls, because all I’ve ever really paid attention to are these Virginia woods. Memories of bird feeders with charts taped to the window: tufted titmice, warblers, hummingbirds and whatnot. And how the squirrels ended up ruining the party every time.
Meanwhile, we had a false start to spring last week, and as a result I see that the daffodil shoots have sprouted. These early harbingers of seasonal shifting are so gullible - this happens every year. Somehow they manage to stick it out until the real spring, where their warm tones bounce off the forsythias across the field, sprinkled by the dogwood blossoms in the background.

If I remember correctly - and there’s little chance of that - it is around this time that the cardinals and the blue jays take over.

My hair has frozen stiff, reminding me that this is all yet to arrive. Time to go inside and thaw, which I know I can do much faster than the ground.

In any city, Broadway is probably pretty much the same. Neon lights, garish displays of tourist-trap memorabilia, and bars. I’m willing to bet that every Broadway has a buzzing nightlife. Broadway is known for its happy hour specials, late night munchies, colorful characters. It is either the center or the former center of a city’s social landscape, and either way you’ll find it packed with people on a Friday night.

Try it at this time of day, however, and all is a different story. Bars and things are obviously shut down, chairs all on top of tables, lights off, not a soul in sight. Not a soul. Kitsch stores have yet to open for the day’s tourist crowd, and with the lights off, their window displays are shadowy versions of the dark side of nowhere - a jungle of ambiguous silhouettes.

And of the neon lights: left on, they bleat like a baby lamb left out in the cold, but turned off they become dead relics. In fact this whole street feels too damn silent. It needs the blasting music or else it’s just a picture in newsprint.

The people, it goes without saying, are elsewhere. Maybe in the cars, headed to work via a nearby highway. Maybe in bed - after all, this is Music City and musicians get to work when the sun goes down. Most likely they were just visiting and they’ve returned to their dorm room or their regular job in a nearby state like Missouri.

Well I’ve never been to Missouri so I don’t know about any Broadways there.

When you find yourself wandering historic grounds, you submit to a certain amount of nostalgia and respect for an older, presumably wiser world. When the historic grounds happen to also be your former place of residence, the narcissistic nostalgia overpowers almost anything else. Your own past becomes part of an ancestral history; your own adventures in that place become legend, if no where else than in your mind.

So this is where I am on today’s lovely Monday morning. Strolling the pathways along the brick and columns, no more a stranger than anyone else there is to see. There are few to see. At 7AM, I remember now, college kids are most likely dreaming their college kid dreams, hitting the snooze button, or figuring out how to sober up in time for their 9AM Econ class. And yet I am pausing in every doorway, making sure that certain things are still where I remember them, just in case.

Last night’s concert was so perfect. The performers (Devon and Paul) spent what probably added up to 30% of the time making sure their guitars were in tune. Unlike most situations, it was a pleasure to watch and to hear. Putting the pieces together in tiny parts that you hope are going to end up sounding just so. This morning, the campus feels like an entire population of folks who are tuning up as well. The sunlight creeps up the side of the buildings, turning the centuries-old brick into fire, as the echoing voices of students begin to approach. This sound, too, is quite pleasing.

When the sun starts to wake up earlier, the people start to wake up earlier.  A general rule of thumb. And for those of you out there for whom this is a horrible, daunting truth, allow me to illuminate, if you will, the silver lining.

The early morning is like a cleansing bath. Not only are we faced with the brand newness of the coming hours, but also we are offered glimpses of the purity of our surroundings and perhaps the people that inhabit them. The lines of the mountains are crisp and silent, the depth of field seems to go on for infinity. The folks spilling out of the coffeeshop in their ski gear are headed to that frozen altar, offering themselves up to the mountain and the winter air. In a few hours they will be cutting turns in the glorious powder, pure as angels.

But all is not roses, either. Skiers on their way to the Glory congregate around a large black Ford Explorer, kicking the tires, adjusting the skis, and wiping the morning out of their eyes as the car runs in place, defrosting. Five minutes? Ten minutes? Fifteen minutes, this massive car idles by the curb, the engine well beyond warmed, while its passengers drink their americanos. So much for clean.

And then another blow a bit later on. Turning the corner onto the street with the old, gnarly row of cherry trees, the ones that cover the ground in baby pink dream snow come spring, I am shocked to discover all but one of them completely dismembered. Is this some kind of ritual trimming, or will they be gone for good in a few days?

Waking up earlier is the gift of a few minutes of extra time. To go and see things that might not be there the next time you were planning to visit. To trump the proverbial tree-cutters. To bathe in the light of morning, half-dreaming, half-pretending. To wash ourselves of yesterday’s dirt, and to try and make less dirt today.  

Note: The next few weeks, the demands of that great force we call music will bring this writer to towns and cities across America. If the column begins to sound more like a travelogue, then so be it, but remember: it’s always sunrise somewhere.

A morning walk is a whole different beast when it happens in a snow-dusted arroyo. Trailed by or trailing Kanga, the ever-curious doberman sweetheart, I forget about the existence of direction or the semblance of a trail. Instead I just smell things, and realize that the wind can come at any time from anywhere, and sometimes you just have to follow.

Snow covers the Sangre de Cristo mountain range on one side, and the Sandias to the south. Much closer, hiking distance from here, loom the Cerrillos hills, behind which are the Jemez mountains. Cerrillos, Madrid, Galisteo - old mining towns that have yet to figure out how to thrive now that the hills have been scraped clean.

Kanga is above us, now below, now out of sight. What treasure does she find in this desert dust? I have always found it curiously oceanic: the unpredictable rolling and tumbling of the landscape is far more complex up close than from a distance, just like the water. Far more difficult to navigate than one would have expected.

The sky is blue, blue, blue, as if the state of New Mexico has a patent on this shade, like UPS or Yves Klein.  I try to imagine what this gully looks like after a big rain, gushing water along an ancient path, through what looks like such dry, dry land.

A new year, a new column. I have arrived at a solution for some of life’s more intolerable parts [frustration, restlessness, anxiety, etc.] - the Morning Walk. As far as remedies go, this one is part meditation, part exercise, part beauty. The wakefulness, the sleepyness, the promise of more and more light as the seconds tick by - these are precious moments that help to keep the calm.

And so with this column, I attempt to bring them to you. On your Monday mornings, when it seems as if all is for naught, as if you’ll never live down the events of this past weekend, as if you’ll never accomplish all the tasks on your desk, as if you truly believe you might be a different person by the time Friday rolls around.

I’ll remind you today of something we rarely think about but often experience - the puddles on our sidewalks. Every sidewalk has its own contours and ditches, and it seems as though lately the predictable spots have been perpetually filled with water. So much so that I find myself on autopilot, unconsciously steering around the small pools like landmines. I could do it blindfolded at this point.

I think the puddles will be there for a few more months yet.