A late walk yesterday, after I finished a class assignment. I drove to a favorite Reston trail itching to move through space after a computer-centric day. 

The path did not disappoint. There were the familiar markers of fern and stream and swamp. There were the dog walkers and stroller pushers and trail talkers, those who first appear at to be muttering to themselves but are revealed upon passing to be wearing those distinctive white ear pods.

The second leg of this walk is a segment of  the Cross County Trail, with its dips and valleys, already crunchy with brown leaves and blowsy with stilt grass gone to seed — but beautiful in its roughness. Laser-pointers of light struck the thin trunks of the understory.

Scampering through the lambent air in the almost-equinoctial evening was an excellent way to end the day.