Crossing Sleepy Hollow
From September to January I walked to school. I walked 4.5 miles to school over a nice sized hill. Many of those days, I spent my best moments getting to school. I had been walking to school since the first day. My route took me past Landsdale Station and down a little lane of a street (San Anselmo Drive) before temporarily attending to the morning rush of traffic while crossing Sir Francis Drake to Butterfield which would take me past many moms, dads and kids on their way to school towards Fawn Drive, up and over Sleepy Hollow, arriving finally in Terra Linda and eventually to the Montessori school. By the time I arrived, I was usually ready to be there.
I maneuvered my way across Sir Francis Drake with the assistance of the charming crossing guard, Rosanne. You have conversations with the morning crossing guard when you are the only one waiting on most mornings for a very long light and when you take the walk every day. One day while we were standing and waiting for our green light, I noticed what a glorious spot Roseanne had; how the sun shown directly on her corner and I remarked on her view. She admitted it was “the envy of all crossingguards” and I felt a new admiration for her and the serious way she approached her task. I’ve never been interested in posts that require that you to be responsible for the lives of others–airline pilot, doctor, counselor, but crossing guard looked good to me that day, in the same way that mail delivery person looks like a fine occupation until it rains or snows or a big growling sharp-toothed dog appears.
Sleepy Hollow preserve only spanned 10 of the 50-60 minutes it took to get to school. It wasn’t even the highlight and sometimes I even felt a tinge of envy for the people merely out walking their dogs and not going to work. By the time I reached Sleepy Hollow my workplace lay only 15 minutes down the road.
One of the discoveries I made on these walks was the wonderfully eclectic details on the houses and in the gardens. Such a mixture of elements more finely crafted than I am used to seeing in similar neighborhoods in other towns of this size I have lived, exists.
I constructed my Halloween costume on those walks to school, collecting for two weeks all the bits of plants that would make me a wood nymph. There was such a variety of species I had never seen. Some of the children remember the day I granted them an earth wish in my costume. I still tell them that was the real me and the one they see every day is just a partial version of myself.
Just before the beginning of the new year I considered changing my path to school. Someone suggested to me an alternate route with the promise of delivering me sooner into nature. Before truly considering this option, I began exploring the route on my days off because a change this radical needed testing. It is only when I considered changing my route to school that I began to feel a sense of nostalgia for my former (and it was still present) route. Considering a change made me aware of my attachment to those walks and how I had become accustomed to the routine.
Now I live in a different neighborhood and there is no convenient way to walk to school, but I think about Roseanne, the vegetation, the deer, the grapevines, the weather, the smells and the part of myself that lives in all those things.
