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Author: Anne Cassidy

City or Suburb?

City or Suburb?

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An article in yesterday’s Washington Post headlined “Is a city still a city if it’s in the suburbs?” discusses Reston Town Center, the Village at Leesburg and other “downtowns” that mimic the real thing.

The idea is to export urban density and excitement to the outlying ‘burbs. “[People] want to be in an environment, in a context, where they can experience life as fully as possible. They like to be around people, and they like to be around interesting things, and they like to be around energy. And that’s what the suburbs have historically lacked,” said Robert Kettler, who planned and developed the Village at Leesburg based on the model of Reston Town Center.

I have a complicated relationship with Reston Town Center, our closest “downtown.” When it was first built, I disparaged it for its fakery. It was a movie set of a city. Walk through the set doors and you would be in a mall. But as the years have passed; as restaurants, stores and plazas have been added; as festivals, concerts and wine tastings have lured me to its center, I have developed a reluctant fondness for the place.

As the article points out, many city neighborhoods now admired for their hip urbanity —think Capitol Hill and Georgetown — were once planned. And besides, how can I fault developers for paying attention to how people live, to adding town squares and storefront windows, to isolating and replicating the ingredients of urban charm?

Kettler has heard all the criticisms of these faux downtowns, the Post article says. “But he sees a naturally evolving plot: Driving through the Village at Leesburg, he is happy to see that the young trees he planted a few years ago are a little taller, that there are more people hitting treadmills at L.A. Fitness, that there are more people on the street. ‘When you put the camera on and you put the actors on the stage, it looks like a real place.'”

The article doesn’t answer the question, “Is a city still a city if it’s in the suburbs,” but it does plead for more time. Cities are a work in progress. It may just be that we’re pioneering something new here a few miles from my house. That what began as an experiment of urban density in the suburbs is giving us something we all want and need.

It may be. But when we decide whether and when to leave our suburban home, one thing is for sure: Reston Town Center will not make us stay. 

The original Reston downtown: Lake Anne.

The Kindness of Strangers

The Kindness of Strangers

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My new assignment (which I gave myself): Walk the Cross-County Trail in earnest. Cover the sections I haven’t covered (which are most of them). Chart the great green heart of this populous county.

The timing of the assignment: regrettable. I left later than I’d intended and was little more than halfway on my route when the low clouds and heavy air gave way to the severe storms that had been predicted (and which I had ignored). Forced from the trail at a detour, I picked my way through the wind and rain to a nearby street. I huddled for a while under trees that were short enough not to kill me if they fell but full enough to shelter me from the brunt of the storm.

Ten minutes into the deluge the wind picked up, the rain fell slantwise and I decided to make a run for it, to find an intersection where I could call for help. It was then, as I tried to make a phone call, that there emerged from the storm a kind soul with a large umbrella.

He motioned me over, I ran toward him, and together we dashed to the shelter of his garage. He disappeared for a minute and returned with two towels. For the next 20 minutes we talked about the storm, the fearsome way it blew up and (typical suburbanites) the siding we had on our houses. I never learned his name.  This morning I read in the paper that a tornado touched down less than two miles from where I hiked.

I went to the woods for wilderness and solitude; what I found instead was the kindness of strangers.

I wasn’t far from here when the storm struck.

Team Sport

Team Sport

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I was out earlier than usual this morning and stumbled upon some bustling pavement in the neighborhood next to ours. There were runners and bikers and dog-walkers. A couple of joggers looked familiar, like people I knew vaguely from church or the kids’ school. One man I recognized from the pool; he arrives after 8 p.m. and does an exquisitely slow breast stroke.

Seeing these walkers put some pep in my step. They reminded me that, while walking is for the most part an individual activity, it can also be a team sport. Not that we’re keeping score. But in some palpable way these fellow travelers cheered me on.

We’re all in this together, they seemed to say, as they looked up from the pavement with a wry grin or a raised hand or a good morning. Our strides may be slow, our breathing labored, but we know there’s something golden in these still mornings.

Fellow walkers in Lower Manhattan.

Weekend Walk, Weekday Afternoon

Weekend Walk, Weekday Afternoon

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A short sleep, a long day — these are good reasons to take a weekend walk on a weekday afternoon.

Such a stroll takes me out of the neighborhood, for one thing. So it automatically gives perspective. It’s long enough to break through the torpor and tightness. And it reminds me of sunny mornings and long evenings.

I walked through through a meadow and a woods, past a pond and a pool. I picked some miniature Queen Anne’s lace to press and send to Suzanne in Africa. I snipped some knockout roses from our bush out front, placed them in the tiny vase and set them on our kitchen table. They won’t last long, but that’s okay.

In the beginning of the walk, I was tense and tired. At the end, I was loose and awake.

A Walk in the Dark

A Walk in the Dark

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By the time I took my after-dinner walk it was almost 9 p.m. The light had faded from the sky, and clouds obscured the moon and stars. A head lamp turned me into a roving Cyclops; I was alone in a bright, clammy tunnel. No music, no sunshine, the air heavy with the moisture of an impending shower.

 Don’t look at the cars or you’ll blind the drivers, Tom said, instructing me on the headlamp as I walked out the garage door. So I turned my head demurely whenever a car passed. This had the additional benefit of obscuring my identity. I didn’t need my teenager to tell me how dorky I looked (though she was glad to point it out). I knew that a headlamp and a day-glow safety vest would not  win me any beauty prizes.

But the outfit — and the effort — were worth it. They made it possible to walk in the dark, to prolong the day, to pretend, just for a moment, that it was a sultry June evening — instead of a stifling September one.

Blank Slate

Blank Slate

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As I walked the strand last week I noticed how swiftly each wave receded to make way for the next, how quickly the foam blew away and the sand dried out in between breakers.

If you’re looking for a blank slate, there is no better place than the beach.

And today, the day after Labor Day, we also have a blank slate. A new year of school for Celia, a return to work for me.

Resolutions? I’m taking my long-distance beach vision to the office. It will help me see what’s important and what’s not. When a deadline looms or an email goes unanswered, I’ll remember the scene above. I’ll take a deep breath, lift my eyes up from the screen and stare out the window. This is what I’ll see.

Bittersweet

Bittersweet

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Labor Day is a bittersweet holiday. While other nations celebrate their workers on the first day of May, we do it on the first Monday of September.  So instead of welcoming the warm weather, we are saying goodbye to it (or good riddance, depending upon your point of view and tolerance level).

The fact is, if you love summer, as I do, you may not be a big fan of Labor Day. It always makes me think of the last jump in the pool when I was a kid, my parents saying, “OK. But this is absolutely the last one. We have to go home. You have school in the morning.”

School in the morning. A line guaranteed to chill the soul of any child, a phrase that still, decades later, makes my stomach do a little somersault.

As the years pass more quickly, though, and as each Labor Day (and Memorial Day, 4th of July and other holiday) leads more surely to the next fete in the lineup, I’ve come to see the first Monday in September as a bellwether in reverse. If summer is good, Labor Day is not so bad. If summer has been summer — hot, sticky, filled with enough swimming and biking and eating of ice cream bars — then I reluctantly, but without reservation, say farewell.

Wilson

Wilson

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In the movie “Castaway,” Tom Hanks is so lonesome that he befriends a Wilson basketball, invests it with thoughts and emotions, talks to it as he would a pal and is bereft when he loses it. This time last week I was worrying that in my five days at the shore I would start babbling away to my laptop or my bicycle or myself. That I would find a “Wilson” of my own.

As it turns out, I was quite happy alone. A calm feeling took over once I had driven through the worst of the rain on the way to the beach, and it stayed with me during the five precious days I had to myself. Were I to have weeks of solo time, I’m sure I would have gotten lonely, and I was certainly glad to see my family yesterday. But a week or two of solitude is not only manageable, it is essential. I vow to remember this truth in the future.

Meanwhile, I am enjoying the fruits of solitude. The well that was dry is starting to fill again. The muse is not exactly beside me, but she’s closer than she was before. And Wilson, well, he’s just a basketball.

Long Distance

Long Distance

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My vocation demands close work; I seldom have the
opportunity to look at the horizon. Here I’ve done little else. Whether it’s wondering
if it’s a ship I see on the last curve beyond the furthermost whitecap of the
Atlantic Ocean or looking for an egret across vast tracts of swamp, one way or the other I’m casting my eyes to the faintest, most faraway speck I can see.  
Surely this must be good for one’s eyes — to say nothing of one’s soul.
Long distance — what the eagle spots from his perch on the
highest dead tree in the refuge. 
Long distance — what the birder tries to obliterate
with his binoculars.  
Long-distance vision — what
the pilgrim hopes to bring back from the shore.
Beauty

Beauty

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From childhood on, we are taught to distrust appearances. “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” “Beauty is only skin deep.”

But in my few days at the shore I’ve thought a lot about the role beauty plays in our attraction to a place. Ruling out the way we feel about our hometowns (in which case, perhaps, the reverse is true — the beauty flows from the inside-out knowledge of the city, town or patch of land we call home) — don’t we often choose to be somewhere because of the view out a bay window or the way the light colors the sky at sunset.

Something in these physical details speaks to us, calls our name, and we will spend the rest of our lives trying to figure out why.