Morning Thanks -- of my own

For the record, this was Sunday, an afternoon walk out to the river.

And, for the record, this was December, 2017--same place, same time.

ditto--late spring, 2019

I don't know that I dare to use the phrase--I mean, given my gender--because the line has such deep associations with Virginia Woolf's work and life. By using it the way I do when I take a walk to the river, I'm misappropriating it, because if I use it, I can't help but extend its meaning in a way that takes a bite out of its original intent. 

I'm talking about "a room of one's own," the title of a long, Virginia Woolf essay (1929) that argues that if women were kept from poverty and provided with space that is entirely their own, the world would have fully as many women writers as men. Today, without a doubt, they do. 

I have a room of my own, a spot on the river I visit every once in a while.

In June of last year, the path to get there was overgrown. I took a grass whip along and cut out the path I'd taken for more than a year already so that I could get right down to the river's edge to try to channel Thoreau at Walden.     

Hasn't happened, but I keep going back, and about a week ago, when the world was all marshmallow, I couldn't help but smirk when other people's boot prints ended where the park trail did and I set down the first recorded trip to the spot I like to sit, the place I can't help but think of as "a place of my own."

Almost always I bring a camera, even though there's nothing particularly gorgeous about the spot. I bring a camera because I long ago pledged myself to look for beauty when sometimes it seems there's so little of it (that's an old man talking). So, through the years, I've accumulated a ton of pictures that will undoubtedly pass away when the photographer does. Here's a couple from a place of my own.

plus a couple of geese.

. . .early summer, spring really, bedecked with flowers

same spot, December, 2021, the Floyd only half-frozen;

same spot, summer, plus a mudhen.

Last Sunday afternoon, from a room of my own.

I'm not alone, of course. It's the Floyd, after all, a river with a real history, but I'm still working at channeling Thoreau. 

This morning I'm thankful for a place of my own.