A Walker in the Suburbs

The rain was coming but hadn’t yet arrived. The clouds were low and there was a bustle in the air. I walked quickly to beat the weather.

Down at the Mall, it was time for packing up. A cleanup crew was taking down the tents and partitions, the props of celebration, and loading them into idling trucks. Tourists in t-shirts were snapping shots of the scaffolded Capitol. All around me was movement and energy.

But the best tableau came later, as I was leaving the office. I glanced down at the expressway, and there, amidst the dust and turmoil, a hard-hatted worker pivoted and jumped on the folded arm of a construction crane.

I stopped and stared, thinking at first that I was seeing things. But no, it was real — and, at 15 or 20 feet above the ground, seemed quite dangerous, too. But danger seemed the last thing on this guy’s mind. To him, the crane was a balance beam, a stage. I felt his joy travel up my spine.

Some walks have a higher bar than others, more is asked of them. This is not because of anything they’ve done wrong. They just have the bad luck to come after a restless night or a crazy morning.

Such was yesterday’s stroll around the Capitol. I left the office a little shell shocked, wanting just to escape, that’s all, the pavement beneath my feet, locomotion.

And that, at first, is what revived me. The rhythm, the pace of the walk. Step begets step, movement triggers movement. Soon you are blocks away from where you started, which is the whole idea, of course. You are strolling by the hotel with its sweeping driveway and its busy taxis pulling in and out, and then by a green park with a bell tower.

The people I passed — and there were many, this is high tourist season in the District — had faces to read and scrutinize, had snippets of conversation to offer, words in the wind. The humidity bore down on us, slowed us and held us up.

I saw a bomb-sniffing dog and a troop of high school students on a field trip. I saw a bounty of day lilies in front of the grotto. A Chinese lady motioned for my help, pointed to the Capitol and asked if it was the Library of Congress. That was one question I could answer. “Look for the fountain,” I said, pointing behind the scaffolded dome.

Wending my way back to the office, I passed a sandwich shop, tried to remember what I’d brought for lunch. Nothing special. But it didn’t matter. I was already full.

Walking to Metro this morning I noticed a rubble-strewn lot where a block of low-slung buildings used to be. They were ugly little buildings but still … they existed — and now they do not.

Change is our reality, our destiny, what must be embraced.

I wonder if walking helps us better withstand the inevitable comings and goings of life? Not that there’s anything especially marvelous about walkers, of course, but because we are bopping around all the time we are also looking around all the time. We notice the old cars and the new shutters. We see the world in all its transitory glory.

The empty lot I passed today will one day be an apartment or office building, part of the new development taking place near the Reston Wiehle Metro station.

Or take this scene. Every day construction workers dismantle more of the barrier wall for I-395 near my office. Eventually they will install steel beams and girders and a new neighborhood will rise over the top of a busy highway.

Now you see it and now you don’t. And walkers see it (or don’t see it) first.

It was one of the crazy-quilt walks that make you glad to be living and breathing on this earth. It is Police Week here in our Nation’s Capital, and E Street was clogged with the men in blue honoring their fallen comrades. I strolled past police of every stripe and family members wearing t-shirts with slogans like “In Search of Heroes.” I stepped over wires and past big banks of lights; noticed a box of white candles and another of red roses.

By Seventh Street I’d moved on to the hustle bustle of Chinatown and Penn Quarter. Feeling flush, I pulled two dollars from my purse to buy a copy of Street Sense, a newspaper written and sold by the homeless. My salesman was hawking another publication, too. “I used to be a cowboy,” he said, “and I’ve written this book. You can buy it on Amazon.”

Turning the corner I found myself in the middle of a line of wheelchairs; maybe these folks were heading to the Police Memorial, or maybe they were bound for the corner, where they would buy a book by a homeless cowboy poet.

As for me, the work day was draining away. In its place was a parade of humanity— and the precious walking time to take it in.

(View from another D.C. walk.)

Sometimes a body gets so tired sitting in one place for most of the day that when the body gets up to make its weary way to Metro, well, the body just wonders how this will actually happen.

Funny thing, though. As soon as the body gets moving, the body revives. Across the bridge, down E Street, past the courts, past the museum. There are streets to cross, “don’t walk” lights flashing. And there are corners to pause on, waiting for traffic to subside.

Doesn’t matter. The momentum is there. Even with the starting and the stopping the forward motion is still in the toes and the balls of the feet, and it banishes the weariness.

Into the Penn Quarter now. Folks in red jerseys are going to a Capitals game. Office-workers slowing down in front of a watering hole; maybe they’ll watch the game on screen. Tourists milling around the Spy Museum.  But most of us are going home. The tide of movement is more out than in.

And the tide carries me from E to F Streets, past the bakery and the wax museum and the boutiques, past the shoppers and the bus-waiters, right to the dim, inviting Metro entrance, the escalators (if I’m lucky) working, and the hustle bustle of life underground making it impossible to do anything but move quickly along the platform until I reach the spot where I always stand, first entrance, second car, one of the less crowded spots.

Soon the train zooms up and I’m aboard. Not really sure how this all happened … but it did!

Yesterday’s walk was cold and damp. Tourists were unprepared, wearing thin windbreakers and cotton sweaters with no buttons. Anyone who had a hood was wearing a hood. It was that kind of day.

Had to mail a package yesterday at lunchtime, and though I didn’t have long I thought I would stroll for a few minutes before returning to my desk.

I walked east toward the Capitol, all swathed in scaffolding (look closely; you can see a worker in a day-glo yellow jacket).

Then behind it past the Supreme Court and Library of Congress, then in front of it where I snapped this shot before heading back down First Street to my office.

Not bad for a walk around the block!