A Walker in the Suburbs

Yesterday I took a long walk in the big city. I started in the theater district, made my way south and west to pick up the High Line, which is now available at 34th Street!  From there (where I snapped this picture and then very quickly ran out of charge), I strolled to Gansevoort Street, then down Jane to the West Side Highway and over to the long, skinny park that runs along the Hudson.

The sun was flirting with us, in and out from the clouds. At times it seemed as if it would pour. But it didn’t (until today), so I had five blissful hours of ambling.

It’s really the whole package that does it to me here in the city. It’s the energy of the people and the place. It’s all the hundreds of details — from the grumpy Penn Station employee yelling at a woman who could hardly lug her suitcase (“Why did you pack so much?”) to the crazy wedding parade I found myself swept up in at the end of the day (complete with a kazoo band).

It’s good to be here. Life enhancing, as a matter of fact.

The meeting ended a few hours before the Northeast Regional left 30th Street Station so I had enough time to stroll from my West Philly hotel, down Chestnut to 34th, then Spruce, then across the Schuylkill to the walk that runs beside it.

It was Friday afternoon, sun had broken through the clouds, and the temperature was about 70. I joined the baby-stroller-joggers, cyclists, skateboarders and others heading north along the river.

I almost went to the Barnes Museum — one of the Philadelphia’s new premier attractions — but I like to think that in walking we get a glimpse of the true city, the one that exists beneath the attractions.

There were glimpses of skyline with tall grasses in the foreground, there was the sun striking the water; there were all the people and conversations. There was, above all, the joy of moving through space, a space new to me, thrilling in its unknowns.

One of my favorite city routes is walking around the Capitol. So at lunchtime yesterday I did what I often do: strolled down New Jersey Avenue with its high-arching trees, skirted the Carillon (named for President Taft’s son, Robert, who served in the Senate from 1938 to 1953), and crossed Constitution Avenue onto the Capitol grounds.

From there it’s a clockwise sweep of the 58-acre park — dodging tourists, watching workers clamber on the scaffolding around the dome, keeping eyes and ears open to the kaleidoscopic scene.

There’s the slow pedaling of the bicycle cops patrolling their beat; the brisk stride of the office worker hurrying to lunch; the lingering saunter of tourists, guidebooks in hand.

At the southwest corner I stop to smell the last roses of summer, still blooming in the Botanical Gardens. The trees there are already orange.

Heading north, I cross the Mall, weave through parked cars, then take a paved path back to Constitution. Only 40 minutes out of the office. An eternity.

 
(The Capitol from the east, before the scaffolding went up.)

A quick walk yesterday at lunch time. Just long enough to feel the pulse of the city and to muse about what often occurs to me on walks in crowded places: That we are all here together on this earth. Right now. That we are all sharing a moment in time: young and old, weak and strong, those who’ve just begun and those who are almost done.

Some of us are in love; some of us are in despair. And some of us (those would be the teenagers on family vacations) are bored out of our minds. But for this one moment, the distinctions are irrelevant. We all feel the warm sun on our faces. We are all equally alive.

I don’t want to get all mystical now, but lifetimes, after all, are composed of moments. Which is why dipping my toes into the waters of humanity almost never fails to comfort and inspire me. It certainly did yesterday.