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It was late enough in the day that dinner was no longer a vague thought. There wasn’t time for a long hike. Luckily, it’s a five-minute drive to half a dozen paths.
Yesterday it was Beckman’s Trail, an easy two-mile loop that wound up and around itself. There were boulders and grass and a strange yellow fungus foaming around the base of a tree.
The climb was mellow and the air was bracing. It was over far too quickly.
I imagine the walk when I’m falling asleep. It’s not just the lake that makes this place so magical. It’s the landscape around it. And I plunged into it this morning.
Down the lane, across a field still wet from dew, right at the road and up to the intersection, then back onto the peninsula. There are dips and curves, green fields, and glimpses of lake water through trees.
It’s highly walkable, this spit of land where the family has gathered, and I’ll be walking as much of it as I can.
It’s automatic: I always hold my breath when I walk through a tunnel. Too many years living in cities, where most subterranean sites reek of urine.
But the tunnels of Reston smell only earthy or musty — and sometimes not even that, depending upon length and time of year.
Which leaves me free to contemplate the road I’m scooting beneath, the traffic above and the crushed leaves below. The overpass and underpass. Two modes of travel, two ways of life.
Reston believes in foot traffic, so it only makes sense that Reston believes in tunnels.
(One of Reston’s 25 underpasses.)
It’s been a while since I’ve seen running water, besides what I run through our taps. The streams in my neighborhood, the smallest tributaries of Little Difficult Run, have been dry for weeks.
Yesterday I walked a section of the Cross County Trail that has a notoriously (to me!) difficult stone crossing. It should be dry enough to skip over, I thought, and decided to try it.
Turns out, that shady section of the trail is one of the few places where I’ve seen running water lately, where I’ve heard the music of liquid sluicing over stones.
I paused for a moment and took in the scene, the glare of sunlight on stream water, the tracery of shadows. I realized what I’ve been missing these last hot, dusty weeks.
A library becomes a sanctuary, its shelves and kiosks like the rooms and closets of home, familiar and well-worn.
Sometimes, worn enough to need a facelift, which is what’s happening at my library now.
The Reston Regional branch of the Fairfax County Library system shut down on Saturday. But I couldn’t let it close without a final look.
I was there on Friday, wandering through the stacks, checking out a book, glimpsing the old place one more time before it’s transformed.
There is no clear trail around Lake Audubon. There are twists and turns, hidden paths and a bridge it took me years to find.
But yesterday the pieces all fell together, the landscapes and the streetscapes. There were wooded straightaways and sunny patches. There was neighborhood walking — perfect for ogling lakeside houses I’d love to live in — and forest glades with dappled shade.
I saw anglers, paddle-boarders and dog-walkers. Everyone was up to something, and I was covering ground. The weekend torpor had vanished with the breeze.
(Banana trees along the lake. Yes, bananas grow in Fairfax County.)
I was stopped on my morning walk by a friendly neighbor. He rolled down his car window and asked, “Are you missing a Christmas tree ornament?” It’s almost July. Tree trimmings are not on my mind. I uttered something noncommittal.
“Because we found one in front of your house, near where you might have left the tree for pickup. It was sticking out of the dirt there. A rocking horse?”
Well yes, there was a rocking horse ornament, metal with a looped string to attach it. Could it have escaped my multiple searches through the fir branches in early January?
It could — and it did. The ornament has, uh, weathered, shall we say. It looks like something from the 18th century, not the late 20th. But now it’s home again, thanks to a kind neighbor.
As I’m drawn further into the life of a town where I don’t officially live, I think about what I owe Reston. Though I can’t swim in its pools or kayak on its lakes, I do walk its trails and enjoy its ambiance without paying its fees.
As I figure out how to do this, I think about what people owe place, the responsibilities that come with residency. It’s a topic I ponder often, this idea of stewardship, of protecting what is priceless. What can be more precious than hearth, home and habitat? And what can be more natural than wanting to protect them?
Because of its strict property boundaries, I don’t live in Reston, but I walk on its trails, buy strawberries at its farmers market, and take yoga at its community center.
For many years, I haven’t known where I live: My mailing address says Herndon, my kids attended high school in Oakton, and I commuted from Vienna. You could say I live in the suburbs of northern Virginia, but for a person who cares about place, that’s always rankled.
Since the pandemic, though, I’ve been gravitating to the place that suits me best, and that is Reston, a community founded and developed by Robert E. Simon (hence Reston) 60 years ago. Last night I watched a film made to celebrate the town’s 50th anniversary: “Another Way of Living: The Story of Reston, VA.”
To say it makes me proud is an understatement. It roots me, inspires me, makes me want to move a mile away just to live in Reston officially. I probably won’t do that. But I’ll walk its trails with more awe than usual.
(The Van Gogh Bridge in Reston’s Lake Anne. More on the film in future posts.)
For so long this has been a loaded phrase for me — “blooming where planted.” It carries with it more than a hint of compromise. Or maybe it’s wistfulness, that I didn’t stay where I was planted but moved several times as a young adult before settling where I did.
And then there’s the fact that I’ve ended up in the suburbs. Heaven knows I carp enough about that.
But today, the angle of the light striking the grass on the lawns I passed, the scent of the air, rich with loam and honeysuckle, made me think that there could not be a much better place to be planted. And that whatever the mixed emotions with which I’ve traditionally viewed the saying, there is a nobility in trying to flourish wherever you are, in contenting yourself with the situation at hand.
(Pebble people frolic along one of my favorite routes.)
