A Walker in the Suburbs

One more backward glance before I move forward. This was one of the last sights I saw in London, a view of Picadilly Circus just as the lights were coming on.

It doesn’t get dark till almost 10 there, and we were trying to make our way back to the Victoria Station neighborhood before dark. It was not to be. Too many twists and turns. We jumped in a cab instead. I’m finally solvent enough that I can do that. For most of my traveling life, I’ve had to walk or take public transport (impractical in this case) no matter what the situation.

I love the energy in this photo: the people strolling, the puddles evaporating, the marquee twinkling. The evening was just coming alive. I hated to leave. I always do.

We flew back in time yesterday, shedding the hours we took three weeks earlier and landing back where we started — in the New World.

We left the Roman walls and the castle keep built by William the Conqueror. We left the narrow alleys of York and its magnificent minster. We left the locks on the River Wey — and thank God we left them intact.

We left the trains and the Tube and the half-timbered wall, the tea and the Thames and the Marks and Spencer Food Halls. If someone offered me a ticket back tonight, I would take it. But I don’t want to be greedy. I live in the New World with all its space and energy and eye-popping green. (Virginia must have had as much rain as Britain has these last few weeks.)

We’re back in the New World, yes, but today I’m wishing I was back in the old one.

There’s never a perfect time to leave England, but the day after a trip to the Greenwich Observatory may be as good a time as any.

Visiting this place taught me about the struggle to calculate longitude, made me think about time and time-keeping, about journeys great and small.

At one point yesterday, I had one foot in the eastern hemisphere and one foot in the western. Traveling allows for such straddling, for slipping out of one life and inhabiting another.

Today we’ll be in one hemisphere only. And today, all being well, we will be home.

Such a beautiful word, evensong. Beautiful as it is, though, it doesn’t capture the experience of a York Minster late afternoon service. Last night was our seventh and final night in York and our third and most spectacular choral evensong.

It was Pentecost Sunday, and the clergy processed in on a cloud of incense. The choir boys and adults wore red cassocks, and the adults wore white surplices over them. But as with previous services, we heard the voices before we saw the singers.

After they took their place in the quire, they began with the introit, then moved on to the responses and the psalm. Their voices rose in harmony and counterpoint as they sang anthems by Stainer, Palestrina and Rooney. The organ thundered behind them.

Because it was Sunday the service included a sermon and a hymn, which the congregation joined. This was not like the singing back home; it was robust and full.

As we prepared to leave, a shaft of sunlight pierced the west window and lit up the gothic pillars in the quire. It was a fitting farewell to this beautiful city.

York is a walled city. Almost two miles of wall separate this ancient metropolis from its (in some cases) less ancient surroundings. Though the walls were built for defensive purposes, they are now one of its primary tourist attractions.

A quick climb up and you’re on top of the world, or at least the walls.

Today I strolled two stretches of wall: one south from Lendal Bridge and the other north from Bootham Bar to Monk Bar, two of the Roman gates into the city.

As a walker in the suburbs, I don’t spend much time on top of walls. In fact, I generally stay away from walls entirely. So it was delightful to amble along the old stones today — and see what I could see.

Because my most profound experience of York Minster Cathedral could not be photographed — the evensong service, which we’ve attended twice — and because the grandeur of York Minster can’t be captured by my puny camera anyway … I’m sharing a detail of the chapter house ceiling.

The chapter house, used for church meetings, sits to the side of the grand nave. Completed in 1290, its ceiling is an engineering marvel. Somehow, the ancient timbers stay upright despite a central column.

To be in this room, or next door in the quire, where evensong takes place, is to be uplifted, inspired, taken to another place altogether. When the last notes faded from the organ recessional tonight, I could barely make myself leave.