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Hybrid Walks

Hybrid Walks

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Here in the suburbs we have few bears, and no lions or tigers.  But we do have automobiles.

This morning, lured on by the buoyancy of the air and the radiance of the light, I turned right on a narrow road and (staying off it for the most part) made a dash on foot to the safety of a path. I was happy when I tucked into my usual route, because the road is hilly and cars travel fast along it.

On the way home, I thought about the walkability quotient of my neighborhood and how greatly it has improved since I’ve come to know the shortcuts and the cut-throughs, many of them woodland trails. 

The best routes around here are the hybrid walks, part paved, part pounded. They are the safest ways, and in some cases the only ways, to get where you’re going. 

 

Suburban Passage

Suburban Passage

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Once again, I’m on a mission, this time to find a passage through the Crabtree Park woods to a street called Foxclove. From there it’s a short walk to a Reston trail. 

Having struck out on finding it from my end, yesterday I drove to Foxclove and tried it from the other direction. I reached at least one point I recognized from earlier hikes, enough so that I think I can find my way back there another time. 

Once I have this figured out I’ll be able to walk from my house to the trail system I usually must drive to reach. It’s not exactly the Northwest Passage, but it’s something. 

Megalopolis!

Megalopolis!

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Over the weekend, a family birthday party took me to Towson, Maryland. It dawned on me as I was driving that my niece, her husband and their now one-year-old daughter live in the same metropolitan area that I do. I can get in my little gray car and drive for an hour and a half and never leave home.

It sure feels like leaving home, though. Four expressways are involved: the Dulles Toll Road, the Capital Beltway, I-95 and I-695 (the Baltimore Beltway). And the two places have quite a different look and feel. 

The megalopolis is a strange creature, a many-bellied beast of a term. Coined in the middle of the last century, it means two or more adjacent metropolitan areas that share enough transport, economy, resources and ecologies to blur their boundaries and complete a continuous urban area. I see that megalopolis is an outdated term. It’s now megaregion, according to the America 2050 Initiative. 

Given that most humans identify with a house, a block, a town at most, I think we’re in dangerous territory here. Let the geographers have their fun, but as far as I’m concerned I definitely left home on Saturday.

(The Northeast Megaregion at night. Courtesy Wikipedia, which also served as source for some of the information in this post.)

Hybrid Walk

Hybrid Walk

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It begins in the neighborhood common land, field and forest, and continues in the stream valley park that meanders through these parts. I cross a couple of bridges there that have seen better days, and once I’m over them, I make my way to another neighborhood street.

This one is hillier than ours. It reminds me of the great sledding hills of my youth, including one I heard about but never experienced, Banana Hollow. The slope begins on one side of the street and continues on to the other. You have to imagine the hill without the houses and lawns, see it the way it once was, part of the roll and sweep of western Fairfax County hunt country.

After 20 minutes on pavement, I’m ready to be in the woods again, and follow a well-marked trail most of the way home. 

The hybrid walk: it’s good for what ails you. 

The Sandwich Trail

The Sandwich Trail

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You might call it the Sandwich Trail: a route that begins in forest, exits on the other side of the neighborhood for a mile of striding down a prettier-than-average suburban lane, then dips back into parkland again before returning. 

In the language of sandwiches, the woods is the “bread” and the long stretch of pavement in the middle is its filling. 

In the woods section I notice dry stream beds, new plank bridges, a path I thought I’d lost. In the pavement part I see houses with new siding, a massive and magical rubber tree, boulders in a garden.

Two parts trees and beaten-dirt trail, one part easy striding along a less-traveled road. A sumptuous repast. 

Novel Vistas

Novel Vistas

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It’s easy to vary my walks if I drive to trailheads scattered throughout the area like the loose-strung beads of a pearl necklace. But if I rely only on shank’s mare, I’m more limited. 

Still, there are several ways to leave this “landlocked” neighborhood (pinned in by a busy street on either side), especially if I hike through the woods. 

That’s just what I did the other day, following a trail I’ve known for years, one that leads to the mossy hill  and, if you angle it a differently, across a small valley to our sister neighborhood, Westwood Hills. That’s the path I took yesterday. 

I hadn’t walked there since winter, and I was glad to be back beneath its vaulting trees and novel vistas: a path of stones, a bridge that’s seen better days.  But finding it just as humid there as it is here, I quickly made my way back.

Still, for a little while, I had broken free.

Random Paddle

Random Paddle

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Since we live less than a mile from the border of Camp Reston (my name for this suburb during the summer) and kayaks are available to rent on Lake Anne, a few miles beyond that, taking a random paddle some weekend has been on my list of summer things to do since May. 

Yesterday we were finally able to make good on it, with temps not yet 90 and rain not yet falling. 

What a revelation to kayak among vistas that I usually stroll through. There were the rose mallow, from the other side of the shoreline, the watery one. And there were the backyards and porches of houses I usually only see from the front. 

It was an exercise in perspective-shifting. And it was exercise, period. Both are necessary. Both are good.

Transformations

Transformations

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Last night my neighbors celebrated a special birthday with a dinner dance, complete with D.J., dance floor and tent. The latter turned out to be necessary since we had torrential rain and flood warnings just hours ahead of the event. But by the time the guests were gathering, the rain had stopped and the hosts had laid out a white carpet over the grass that led up to the tent entrance … and I felt like I was entering an alternative universe. 

It wasn’t just how the tent transformed the yard with soft greens and fairy lights. It was that the event transformed neighbors from people who chat about how deer are eating their hostas into people with careers and travels and families out of state, in short, into fully rounded human beings. 

I have a theory about my neighborhood, where houses are tucked away on wooded lots and there’s a scale and beauty lacking in many suburban enclaves. People don’t move here for showy homes. They move here because they like the woods and fields. It’s a value that translates into many other admirable qualities.  Last night reminded me of those. 

(The tent that transformed our backyard for Suzanne and Appolinaire’s wedding.)

Camp Reston

Camp Reston

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On a walk my first day back I marveled at the transformation. When I left for vacation, school was still in session and early heat was still battling spring chill. But now it is full-on summer. 

On the lake, fishermen wait patiently for a nibble. Children cavort on canoes and paddle boards. Sunbathers turn their towels toward the sun. Shade is deep and wide; the walker seeks it when she can. 

The place I live no longer feels like a suburb. It feels like a camp. 

Connections

Connections

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In my continuing quest to  explore the untrod paths of my immediate environs I found myself  the other day not exactly lost “in a dark wood,” but flummoxed on a bright, leafless hillside. 

In short, I was stymied by a creek that seemed much deeper and fast-flowing than I remembered it being the last time I was there. Since the last time I was there was several years ago, this was understandable. But it didn’t help me across. 

For that I had to circle back to the shoulder-less two-lane road I’d crossed to get there. I trotted quickly along the side of the road facing the traffic, stepped over the guard rail, and made it to the other side of the creek before the next car sped by. 

I enjoyed the rest of the stroll alongside the creek, sauntering, thinking, except, I’ll admit, for a vague unease about getting back. I needn’t have bothered because I discovered on the way home a more direct passage to the trail by staying in my neighborhood’s common land until it reaches the stream valley park. There was even a little homemade bridge to guide me. 

I’m not sure, but I think there’s a lesson in here somewhere …