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As the Light Allows

As the Light Allows

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As the days lengthen I notice new landmarks on my evening walks through Arlington. Yesterday’s “find” was discovering the Virginia Square Metro Station. I looked to the left, and there it was. Not that I was ready to ride the rails. I pushed on to the Ballston Station. But it was nice to know it was there.

My first walk on this route was late last year. I barely made it to Court House before the street lights came on. And by Clarendon it was completely dark, so I hopped on a Metro there.

I got lost on my next two forays to the neighborhood. First I swung too far to the north, the next time too far to the south. I was looking for the middle way.

It took the brighter afternoons of early spring to reveal it. Fairfax Drive, the street I was looking for, looks like a parking lot when you enter from the east. It’s only when you stroll a few yards beyond the entry way that you see it blossom into a road. This is not something I could discern in darkness or even in dusk; full daylight was required.

I like discovering this neighborhood little by little, as the light allows.

For Sale

For Sale

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In my block of Folkstone, houses seldom change owners. The neighbors across the street and on each side of us have been here for decades, and many others for years. It’s the exact opposite of the transient neighborhood I thought I’d find outside D.C.  The government may change every four or eight years, but the suburbs where I live are pretty darn stable.

In the beginning, we were even more close-knit, with a pool party on the last day of school, caroling at Christmas, and birthday dinners throughout the year. That dwindled as the children grew up, but there are still occasional get-togethers and plenty of impromptu conversations at the corner or wherever dogs (and their owners) congregate. 
All of which is to say that when neighbors move away — the owners of this house are embarking today on their long-planned escape to Hawaii — a little bit of Folkstone leaves with them. 
The Light, Again

The Light, Again

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I stopped walking this morning long enough to take this shot.

“I almost did the same thing,” said a neighbor, running past me in the opposite direction. The light would have slanted in a bit lower through the tress when he passed this tunnel of green.

Not that I’m complaining about the angle I got to see. Seeing light pour through the trees first thing in the morning reminds me that there is more on heaven and earth than we can ever comprehend. We’re lucky if we have eyes to see and a lens to capture. But the light is there for us even if we don’t.

Ripening

Ripening

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Vines have twined, leaves have greened, flowers have bloomed — but they are only the prelude, the tuning orchestra, the tapped microphone. They are the dress rehearsal for the big show.

It’s a play being enacted in countless gardens and across endless sunny meadows. It’s the ripening of berries, the slow evolution of flower to fruit.
Ripening tests our patience, but nature will not be hurried. I’ve had my eye on these blackberries for weeks — from their waxy white infancy to their lush red adolescence — waiting for them to plump up and ripen into the shiny purplish black that means they’re ready to eat. 
I see this berry patch often on my walks; it’s hiding in plain sight, tucked between two evergreens up against a guardrail. I’ve tried to take each stage as it comes, to enjoy the ripening process. But I’m bedeviled by two questions: When can I eat the little guys? And will the birds get them first? 
Porch Light

Porch Light

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An early walk this crisp morning as the day took hold and porch lights still were burning. What a cozy beacon is a porch light, what ease and relief it promises. A welcome to the late arrival. A comfort to the sleeping suburbanite.

Yet it also says, this is our place, this cone of brightness our bulwark. Come closer if you dare, but only if you know us. And if you know us, show your face.

Otherwise, slap your newspaper on our driveway, stuff mail into the box. We do not reveal ourselves to everyone. Only to the those for whom the light burns.

Enough

Enough

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These days I take walks whenever and wherever  I can find them. On busy days, around the block is all I have time and space for.  Yesterday was one of those days.

I pushed open the heavy glass door, slipped on my sunglasses and turned right at the Cosi Restaurant to reach the service road.

Usually it’s quiet back there but yesterday there was enough traffic to keep me on my toes, skirting puddles while steering clear of delivery trucks.

At the end of the block there’s a fitness park, which is where I snapped this photo. Many of flowering trees took a hit in last week’s frigid weather. About half of Washington’s famed cherry blossoms were nipped, the first time this has happened in the trees’ century-old history.

But this little guy survived. And seeing him there with a background of blue made me feel like it was truly spring, not just March 20.

It was a short walk. But it was enough.

Pentagon Mornings

Pentagon Mornings

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Some wear fatigues, others dress uniforms, and I could say good morning to many of them by name, since they wear their names on their sleeves — or close to them.

If I keep at my new walking route long enough I’ll know some of these Pentagon workers by heart.  The hordes who pour out of my standing-room-only bus, the others who stroll in from satellite parking lots and from the apartments off Army-Navy Drive.

Almost all of them are walking to the Pentagon — while I’m walking away from it.

The reason, of course, is simple. I work a mile or more away from the place. I just jump off the bus early to stretch my legs.

But I have to confess that it gives me a thrill to walk against this particular traffic.

My mornings at the Pentagon … are brief.

The Regular

The Regular

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It was the wave that did it. A simple, familiar wave from a man I’ve watched for years, an “older man” (older than me!), who mows his lawn in a circle around a central clump of bushes.

I’ve noticed this man and his wife for years, shoveling snow, planting annuals, vacuuming up leaves (this weekend’s project). He is, for lack of a better term, a regular. One of the folks I see on my walks through Folkstone, one of the ones who (because I’ve never gotten to know him) is known more by the color of his shutters (green) and the method of his leaf removal (tractor) than anything else.

But it was the way he waved to me — familiar, off-handed — that made me realize that, just as I see him as a regular, so he sees me.

I’m the woman in the worn white running jacket, a little worse for the wear, slowing down as the years pass — still at it, though. I’m “the woman who walks” (sometimes runs). A fixture of sorts.

In other words, I’m a regular, too.

One-Eyed Walker

One-Eyed Walker

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I walked before sunrise this morning, wearing a headlamp to get in practice. (At least one of the places I’m going has no electricity.)

There I was, the Cyclops of Folkstone Drive, one wild eye bobbing with every dip and divot of the road.

I felt powerful, in a dark and crazy kind of way. Could I blind the drivers coming toward me? Didn’t matter. There were only three of them. And anyway, I lost my nerve, averted my eye at the last minute.

Better to muse than amuse. I thought about how the wide cone of light allowed me to see only a fraction of what lay in front of me. Just enough to tread carefully. Sometimes that’s all you need.

Layered

Layered

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An early walk this morning before the true heat sets in. I think about how well I know this place, my regular route, my neighborhood.

I remember when four sycamores were planted in the yard of the yellow house. It seemed such an extravagance at the time, trees already past the spindly stage.

The homeowner has since moved out, but I can see him there at the edge of the yard, surveying the work, his lanky frame not unlike the tall sycamores.

It is what one hopes for in a neighborhood, that it be layered with memories and associations, so much more than a suburban streetscape. A living, breathing record of life.