Starlit Winter Nights

Were Made for Walking

While we're in the old neighborhood walking (see the previous post), let's take a left down this street. And go back about 15 years.

I worked in the newsroom of our local paper for over two decades. That meant going in later than most nine-to-fivers (which really means 8-to-5. Don't know where the nine came from.) and coming home late.

Newspaper work is often a response to the daily fire, figuratively speaking.

News happens in a haphazard fashion and the caffeine kicks in when the adrenaline fails. When the work is done; when editors are pleased enough with it to release the troops; reporters, photographers, graphics folks and whoever else had a hand the next day's stories, find the exit.

I used to get home still keyed up from it all and would go for a hike around the 'hood to work the edge off.

In the winter the sun sets around five-thirty or so November through February, so the streets would be dark for the walks of those months. Tallahassee rarely got cold enough to prevent a walk for me. I'd just put on a jacket of suitable thickness and take my coffee buzz to the streets.

The neighborhood was designed in the early 1950s, with large wooded lots and small houses tucked behind walls of azalea bushes. There were few straight-line streets. Most roadways curved in gentle arcs and coursed up and down the hills.

I would walk from one pool of streetlamp light to another. Eventually the newsroom would fade from my thoughts and I would begin to notice the play of lights and shadows among the trees and ground surfaces. Someone else would emerge from the distance, walking their dog (our dog wasn't even born yet). We'd pass in the night. Moving through our own shifting thought streams.

There would be nights like the one above in "Neighborhood Nocturne," clear and cold and filled with stars. The pace would slow in the dark spot between streetlamps because the stars were brightest then. The air was clear. Breathing was a sensation. Coming back into lamplight, I could see my breath.

At some point I would begin to feel the cold. It was time to circle back toward the house and some supper.