A season of finding wonder in the everyday, every day. Inspired by StreetWisdom and their annual World Wide Wander, I’m slowing down, noticing what I notice and finding the beauty in what’s around me.
My periodic entries are presented here in reverse chronological order, in hopes that the occasional visitor will find it easier to come along with me on this joyful journey.
If you want the unfolding journey, start from the bottom.
Come, choose to be curious with me!
2025.09.26 How Did It Get to Be Fall?
Early-mid-month (9/10-16) found me in Spokane for the Grassroots Radio Conference. That trip included a great walk in the foothills outside Spokane with the wife of a local DJ I’d befriended. (They’re just nice in Eastern Washington, I don’t know how else to explain it.) It was good to be in different and very wiiide open spaces with very tallll trees. I didn’t know I needed that.
Later-mind-month (9/18-23) found me in bed with COVID, a Spokane souvenir I hadn’t planned on. This is the second year in a row I’ve come home from GRC with COIVD; might forego that meeting next year, but for all those lovely people.
But before dawn on the 22nd I donned my mask and tiptoed down the emergency stairwell to be outside to greet the sun and the coming Fall. On a true East/West axis the monuments, Capitol and sun all line up. That view was mostly obscured by trees from my vantage point, but the step effect wasn’t so bad. Half the fun was photographing people photographing the sunrise. And while we were all looking in one direction there was a pretty fabulous sky all around us. There’s a lesson in that…
Thanks for joining me for these spins around the block for one season of our spin around the sun.
Walk on!
2025.09.08 In Memoriam Sometimes the lessons aren’t in the street but alongside it.
I walked through Arlington National Cemetery this afternoon. I go there often but, no matter my route, I always come away having seen something new.
Today I reflected on all the wisdom in the ground around me.
And all the stories. I wondered who remembers them, hoped someone does.
There’s nothing like a military cemetery to give you some perspective on service and love and loss and being consumed by forces beyond your control…
2025.09.02 Ornamentation, or Not? Inspired, once again, by Rob Walker and his monthly savor challenge, I set off in search of “ornamentation” today.
The first, and recurring, question — of course — is: what do I mean by ornamentation? What definition? Purpose? Expression? And that would be the point. Walking with an idea helps give it dimension, depth. Heft, maybe.
Are architectural flourishes enough? (enh) Where on the form-and-function scale does ornamentation reside? What does this between holidays season suggest might show up on doors and windows? How important are spontaneity or incongruity? (in a place with little sense of play right now, I ached for this)
It occurred to me that ornamentation creates visual moments.
With this idea kicking around in my head, I walked along one of the bridges I frequent with the local Visibility Brigade, expecting little ornamentation on this early Tuesday morning. But Street Wisdom reminds us to let go of expectations and there, at the far end of the expanse, was something wired to the fencing with bread ties.
I don’t know who Hugh Schaefer was or why this particular otherwise unremarkable bridge memorializes him, but of all the ornamentation, of whatever season or serendipity, this visual moment in the one that sticks with me.
2025.08.28 A Trip Down Someone Else’s Memory Lane, The Challenge Inspired by this marvelously iterative conversation about what “ain’t dere no more,” kindness of the wonderful Rob Walker’s Substack The Art of Noticing, I took up the challenge to write directions using way-finding features that no longer exist. The result does not strictly adhere to the rules and includes — I admit — just a little poetic license. It’s its own kind of street wisdom, I think…
2025.08.22 5×5 DC Style: The Plan was to spend the day hiking in the mountains, but The Plan fell through, so I headed out the door to reclaim our nation’s capital. The military occupation is both omnipresent and oddly invisible. I saw nary a one on my 4 mile loop.
What I did see were some delightful snapshots (snap sketches?) instead.
I made up this 5×5 game and I like it.
- Set a timer for five minutes.
- Walk.
- Stop when the timer goes off.
- Set a timer for five minutes.
- Sketch.
- Stop when the timer goes off.
- Repeat.
The space around me emerges more vividly, the spaces between the spaces around me, too.
I sink into a scene, trying to make sense of the light and perspective, noticing what I notice.
I carry those thoughts with me until the next stop takes their place.
It bears repeating.
2025.08.15 DeLight! My morning walk had me wishing for a bit of a theme, something to help both focus and unfocus my over-active mind. Look for little surprises, I thought. The beauty in the every day…
And then there, of course, it was: the utterly delightful jewel-toned play of reflected light on a parking lot.
A parking lot! Not where you expect to see color or anything of note, really. But never underestimate the bounty of bouncing light. Within minutes the tableau would be gone, victim to the rising sun and sharper angles. I savored the moment.
The day shifted into a gentler gear.
2025.08.10 What Happened to Rosy-Fingered Dawn? I’ve noticed a funny thing related, at least potentially in part, to my devotion to Sophie Howarth‘s lovely “sky before screen” encouragement. When I open my eyes in the morning and look toward a window, the light often looks green. Not for long — a moment, really, just a hot second — but decidedly green.
I’ve read various theories, everything from light wave lengths to degradation of my retina, so I don’t know what causes it and for now I don’t concern myself with that.
It’s become a bit of a game: will the world be green when I awake?
2025.08.06 Out of the Woods
In these mountains,
on this lake,
I find a stillness
in
myself.
I carry it home
like the treasure
it
is.
I disappeared into the wilderness for a few days, as is my annual wont. Into the woods, off the grid. The news fell away, the only evidence of an outside world the haze of smoke from fires in Canada.
2025.07.27 It’s a Global GeoARTBlitz! I needed a little something-something this week, and this turned out to be it. A combination of walking, sketching, and forest bathing, inspired by Wild Wonder Foundation.
From the Royal Geographical Society: Imagine a worldwide celebration where art meets science in a frenzy of creativity and exploration. GeoARTBlitz is not just any event, it’s a dynamic fusion of geography and art, inspired by the exhilarating concept of bioblitzes.
So: take a walk, somewhere in “the field” — outdoors, nature, someplace green. Look around. Look closely. Be a “nature journalist” and create some art reflecting what you see. And then share it via iNaturalist.
And if you can’t ID what you’re looking at — as I sometimes could not, which was part of the appeal — there’s a whole network of folks eager to help.
Citizen science, with an artistic twist!
Street Wisdom teaches us the streets have messages and lessons for us. So, too, do trails. It wasn’t just that I learned the names of living things around me (always a good thing) but that I considered them more intimately, really looked a them. Wondered about their lives. Wondered about their intersection with my own.
And, true to form, on the final day I set out with one plan in mind but was stopped short by what I happened upon and the insights it offered. Dad says “weeds are just plants in the wrong place” to affirm the plants, I think. But perhaps it’s more than that: from the plant’s perspective, it might be in exactly the right place. We often ignore weeds, so on my final day of the Blitz I did not.
#GlobalGeoARTBlitz
2025.07.22 Ask Us How to Get Free Donuts 4 Life: So said the sign, and so I did.
“Buy one of our T-shirts and then come back the next day wearing it,” was the answer at The Fractured Prune.
Not a very heavy lift, and maybe a worthwhile ROI. I do love those freshly-made donuts.
Regardless, the point, of course, was to ask.
2025.07.17 Mid-Week Reminder: It was near 90′ before 9am, and I sought the shade on this morning’s walk. The last steep hill up to home can be approached via a side route that is especially tree-lined, so there I went.
I was steaming from the heat — and the gutting, galling recent actions of my government. The sweat and rage were nearly blinding.
A Honda’s bumper was a good reminder: Keep your eye on the ball.
#GoodTroubleLivesOn
2025.07.13 Things Change: So close, it barely counts as a walk to the pool. I headed there first thing this morning, before the sun rose too high and the crowds descended.
They’ve been landscaping the area and I noticed yesterday a really-most-sincerely-dead little evergreen along the pool’s fence line. This morning it was gone. I didn’t notice the absence first, just the disrupted rocks and wondered why they were all dug up. Only then did I realize what has different.
That got me thinking about what else had changed on my very short walk. The new construction townhouses’ brick facades had been painted white (an improvement but, honestly, still unattractive). The game room door was open this morning, not the day before. More stray goggles in the pile by the gate.
I returned home and had to admit: my flowers were past their prime. Things change.
2025.07.06 And In Related News: Years ago an executive coach asked me to describe my perfect morning. The only surprise was that it mattered a great deal to me that I exchanged pleasantries with random strangers as I walked to work.
Lost in my own thoughts, I’d come upon someone, light into a big smile and “Good Morning!”, then go on my way. And I’d be in a better mood all day as result.
Having once flagged this pattern, I realized it was at work, daily. So strong was the effect, that I once turned down a passing colleague’s offer of a ride so that I could walk in the stifling heat and get that stranger-smile-fix rather than risk a downer day.
So when I spotted this pile of guests’ shoes in my entryway and had the same endorphin rush and instinctive smile, I knew I’d stumbled on another insight in the every day.
Sometimes you don’t have to wander far to see a lot.
2025.07.02 Mid-Week Way Making: The sidewalk was blocked for construction. The skies threatened rain. Did I cross over and take the shorter path home, or go the long way, around the block and down the hidden steps?
Well: duh.
Builders can extract all sorts of zoning concession in exchange for a little public art in my community. This isn’t a bad thing, per se, but a lot of that art goes unseen by most people. It’s a little off the beaten path…or appears to be on private property…or who would think to look there for anything of interest? Weirdly and rather inexcusably, it often doesn’t make the public art walking tour maps.
So I make it a point to go those ways. What’s a little out-of-the-way when it comes to wonder-finding?
All these times going past the lovely rusted wall and I guess I hadn’t paid attention to the dateline. But there is was, letting me know how to way-find, cosmically, week to week.
I can’t wait for the night sky!
2025.06.29 And So It Went. I partook in not one but two World Wide Wander walkshops this weekend. One virtual, from London, in the rain and a rose garden. One IRL, in DC, in the city heat. Both were wonderful.
For the uninitiated: it starts with a little warm-up: focus on what you notice, and what you don’t; slowwww riiiightttt dowwnnnnn; find the beauty in everything. And then off you go, with a question in mind, letting the world speak.
Both days I wondered “what’s next for Lynn?”
Wander One: I hadn’t really thought about it, but being in a formal rose garden meant I was surrounded by inspiring names, beauty — and thorns. Life at all stages of blooming and decay. Although in a garden, the first notable smell came from a man walking past: reminder, what we’re looking for can come from an unexpected source. The way markings were playful and a bit ambiguous: that’s okay, too. Just as we were wrapping up, I looked over to see a hawk just feet from me, on the edge of the stream. It flew off, but not far…
Wander Two: Things were looking pretty bleak as I wandered down a street of moldering buildings slated for demolition. Cracked foundations, litter, blight and a development plan of dubious promise: Am I in a period of decline? Is it time for renewal? What exactly do I want to be building toward? I turned a corner marked “evacuation route” and encountered signs that were all backwards: careful what you’re reading into what you see, maybe it’s all…backwards. Suddenly, it was all leprechauns and rainbows, literally. Trying to listening in on a lunch-time conversation among construction workers, I looked intently at the ground…and found a Tiffany silver bracelet.
Maybe chance really does favor the prepared mind.
2025.06.24 Mid-Week Meaning Making. Part of the wit and delight of StreetWisdom is in being open to sights and sounds and passersby offering some meaning for us. Rather than ignore all that annoying incoming, we regard it as an opportunity.
Another part of the wit and delight of StreetWisdom is in being open to such things on more than World Wide Wander days.
And so it was today. As I dressed, I reflected on what lay ahead and my eyes fell on the little bell-like earrings my son brought home from India. They were not a gift from him, but from a young man he befriended who insisted I — as mother of a new-found friend — must have a token of his esteem and affection.
That day’s interview was to be with a man born in India, whose work I admire and for whom, in all my preparation, I had developed a certain inevitable affection.
I slipped the earrings on and felt some cosmic circle had been completed.
Did it mean anything? To me it did, and that’s all that mattered.
2025.06.21 The World Wide Wander is just a week away and I guess I was feeling inspired.
Before I go any further: here’s where to register. Just do. You’ll thank me.
It’s the first full day of summer, it’s gong to be hot and I’m in Rehoboth. An early-ish walk on the beach! Put my toes in the water in honor of the day!
And here’s where the street wisdom kicked in. I walked past a ghost crab’s sand hole and thought of the last time I’d been inspired by those little nocturnal scavengers. A serendipity challenge, I called it.
Which unleashed a cascade of observations and questions, very much in the spirit of the wonderfulness of StreetWisdom, finding wonder in the everyday, every day.
Some thoughts linked to those before, some sprang afresh, from whatever it was that my senses took in.
Do I want to stick my toes in a few more things? Might be time for a more loving skincare regimen. When does readiness cross in to rigidity? I really want to get back in a boat. What about morning makes people more likely to greet one another – and how can we encourage more of that? Growth comes in surprising places. What’s the difference between leaving tracks and leaving a legacy? Magnolias smell amazing. How might I define “recloser” to suit my needs? We’re all works in progress. Don’t be afraid to play with a theme!
This, I thought, this is what Street Wisdom is all about, and what I’m so looking forward to next week.
To be open, inquisitive, reflective.
Tickled, in all the best ways.
And: this, I thought, is something I want more of, all summer…
