{"id":3236,"date":"2011-05-19T07:01:19","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T11:01:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=3236"},"modified":"2011-05-19T07:02:16","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T11:02:16","slug":"my-piece-of-the-potomac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=3236","title":{"rendered":"My Piece of the Potomac"},"content":{"rendered":"

I get a glimpse of the River from the bus stop I wait at Monday through Friday mornings, a view framed by two, ten story brick\u00a0apartment buildings.\u00a0 We lived in a 400\u00a0square foot efficiency in the building on the left, our first two years back from abroad.\u00a0 We could truthfully say we moved from overseas to\u00a0a brick place on the Potomac River.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

My Framed View of the Potomac<\/p><\/div>\n

The view seldom fails to inspire me.\u00a0 Even this snapshot between buildings affords glimpses of the many moods of the river.\u00a0 This morning, the water is calm and gentle, not still, but not raging.\u00a0 The Maryland shore wears a faint mist, a comfortable loosely-worn cape on its shoulders.\u00a0 The trees’\u00a0 green comforts me.\u00a0 Near the Virginia shore, the side where I live, a herd of lily pads graze, bobbing with the gentle flow of the water.\u00a0 Ever since we arrived here four years ago, a tugboat has been moored within sight of the shore, pulling nothing that I’m aware of.\u00a0 It’s not natural but that’s okay.\u00a0 There’s a lot of nature around here to see, even in the heart of the city, but you seldom see it without the man-made interfering.<\/p>\n

I marvel that wild places, wetlands, forests and a river are so intimately intertwined with a major metropolitan area like Washington.\u00a0 I sometimes get the feeling that nature is barely kept at bay here, that without constant work it would burst out of its bonds and take over again.<\/p>\n

I love the river, including this view of it, but why do all my encounters with the natural world I so love seem to be bracketed, framed, fenced in, limited?\u00a0 Even with the interference, the vibrant beauty of the earth socks me square between the eyes, or maybe someplace deeper.\u00a0 If nature so boundaried packs such a punch, what would untamed, unframed, limitless wilderness do?\u00a0 Would that muse overwhelm?\u00a0 Maybe most people, me included, can only handle the raw world in controlled pieces.\u00a0 Taking in these daily bits makes me want a bigger dose, but I’m grateful for what I get now, even a glimpse between two buildings.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Any view will do<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I get a glimpse of the River from the bus stop I wait at Monday through Friday mornings, a view framed by two, ten story brick\u00a0apartment buildings.\u00a0 We lived in a 400\u00a0square foot efficiency in the building on the left, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[261,444,174,441,443,442],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3236"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3236"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3259,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3236\/revisions\/3259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}