Browsed by
Category: place

Suburban Density

Suburban Density

Comments 0 Comment

Each time I’ve visited Lake Accotink Dam (which is only twice but feels like more), I’ve spotted people exercising here, running up the stairs
beside the spillway, and, most recently, a man rolling back and forth on the
asphalt stretching his quads and hamstrings, totally oblivious to the others
walking here. I practically had to step over him on the trail. 
I think about
how, even though I’m not in a city but in the suburbs, there
is still the trademark of city life: an obliviousness to the lives of those
around us. A resolute self-centeredness (or is it self-preservation?) that is perhaps bred in the general irritation engendered by close proximity
to neighbors. 
Which is why I’m not sure this urban density thing will work in the
suburbs. Clump people together, save space for hiking and boating and picnicking.  A lovely concept,
until you have to step over a grown man stretching.
To what extent do we need our suburban space? Haven’t many of us moved here to have it?
Friday in the District

Friday in the District

Comments 0 Comment

I usually work at home on Fridays, but today I’m in the office. It’s a beautiful day here in the nation’s capital, a transitional day. Not only does it feel a little bit like summer and a little bit like fall, but it also feels a little bit like a weekday and a little bit like a weekend.

And I wonder: Is this how workday Fridays are now? Maybe they are and I just haven’t noticed. On the sidewalks: a greater mix than usual of suits and workout attire. On the Mall: a higher proportion of joggers and bikers.  On the streets: more double-parking!

On the whole: A deliciously casual, buoyant air. Not enough to make me come downtown every Friday, but nice for a change.

Capitol Walk

Capitol Walk

Comments 0 Comment

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.)

Hidden Pond

Hidden Pond

Comments 0 Comment

Today I walked down an old section of Hunter’s Valley Road to twin stone pillars flanking a trail. A few hundred feet down a muddy path I came to a grove of bamboo so thick that light barely penetrated the thicket. It rained hard last night and everything was drenched. Moisture beaded up at the ends of the bamboo fronds and dripped on me as I shoved my way through the foliage.

Once into the enclosure I marveled at the space. A pond, completely hidden from view, surrounded on three sides by bamboo and on the other by banked rows of rhododendrons and azaleas. Fallen leaves and lily pads dotted the surface, and the great shaggy bamboo, weighted by water, hung its head in the pool.

What is it about a hidden garden we find so appealing? Is it the incongruity of something outside and in the open but still out of sight? Or is it the feeling that it gives us, one of enclosure and safety. Whatever the explanation, the place had a magical effect on me; it calmed me, slowed me, made me want to stay.

Learning the Rules

Learning the Rules

Comments 0 Comment

I’ve been thinking about suburbia and suburbanites this morning — about those of us who make our homes in neither the city nor the country but in that place in between — and how we are the product of zoning laws, cheap mortgages and office parks.

I work for a law school but seldom think about how laws and policies have shaped the place I live. Even the open space I praise in this blog is mandated by regulations on density and the percability of soil. The same rules that give us a meadow isolate us from each other.

So what’s a walker to do? Keep walking, I suppose. Because walking knits together the here and now with the then and gone. It also makes me care. And if we are ever to change the way we live we must first care enough to understand how it came to be.

Possibilities of Place

Possibilities of Place

Comments 0 Comment

Since Sunday’s hike I’ve been doing a little research on the Cross-County Trail, Difficult Run and the watershed. I’ve learned about ongoing projects to manage the streams, to keep them healthy with drainage and tree buffers.

I’ve learned about the flooding that often occurs in the section I hiked a few days ago. Most of all, I’ve learned about the communities of runners, walkers and bikers who have traveled these trails before me.

I’ve read stories of single-day marathons, of Nordic pole-walkers, of runners wading waist-high across streams when the water tops the fair-weather crossings.

What these tales have in common is a sense of adventure and discovery. There is awe of the natural beauty, of the possibilities of this place.

Equinox

Equinox

Comments 0 Comment

It was a day of balancing — darkness and light, summer and fall. And for me, a day of driving eight and a half hours from Kentucky to Virginia.

Fall comes early in the higher elevations, and the hills were brushed with yellow. Yellow from the thinning trees, from the just-turning leaves, from the goldenrod. Yellow set off by the shaggy gray limestone cliffs that line the road.

A drive is a balancing act, too, a passage from one place to another, holding each in mind as you pass between the two.

Mockingbird’s Place

Mockingbird’s Place

Comments 0 Comment

On vacation I finished reading Marja Mills’ The Mockingbird Next Door: My Life with Harper Lee, a memoir about living next door to the reclusive writer in Monroeville, Alabama.

Nelle Harper Lee and her sister, Alice, were already up in years when Mills met them while reporting an article for the Chicago Tribune. From those first contacts a relationship formed, and in this book Mills tells the story of the sisters’ old-fashioned life: visiting friends, feeding ducks, and living with the books and memories of decades in their hometown.

Although Lee quickly denied having authorized the book (a controversy that has probably boosted sales), I read the memoir enthusiastically anyway. Not just for a glimpse of the author but also for a portrait of the place that she enshrined as Maycomb in her novel.

“It’s the old Monroeville — the old Maycomb — that lives on in the imaginations of so many readers,” Mills wrote. “It’s the people and the places the Lees saw out the windows of the Buick all those years later.” Mills refers here to the drives she took with the Lees and their friends, expeditions that helped her appreciate a vanishing way of life.

“Nelle’s portrait of that community was so richly detailed, so specific and true to the small-town South during the Depression, that something universal emerged and, with it, the remarkably enduring popularity of the novel.”

I like thinking that what makes To Kill a Mockingbird great us is not just the characters — but also the place they inhabited.

Commuting on Foot

Commuting on Foot

Comments 0 Comment

Yesterday I walked once again from the Wiehle Metro station to my car in a parking lot four miles away. Why is this worth mentioning? Only for this — that I am, finally, commuting on foot in the suburbs.

This is not an accomplishment to be shrugged off. And I don’t mean it’s my own personal accomplishment but an evolution in the way we live. That I can step off the train and travel on my own steam to the next destination is a marvel, given the way I started living here 25 years ago.

Then I couldn’t leave the neighborhood on foot because of cars barreling down narrow, un-shouldered roads. Now sidewalks and bike lanes take me to the grocery store and pharmacy; let me tap into Reston’s trail system, which used to be a tantalizing but unreachable distance away.

So to all forms of walking I celebrate here  — ambling meditatively through the woods, running pell-mell through the meadow, strolling briskly through the city — let me add the walk which is not a destination in itself but which has a larger purpose. It not only takes me out of myself; it takes me home.

Back to the Beach

Back to the Beach

Comments 0 Comment

You know the ocean is there before you see it. And you would know it it even if you didn’t know it. The sky is lighter, and there is a vacancy to it. The surf is calling.

The roads that lead to the beach are in a hurry. The cars that ply them are laden with suitcases, floats, bicycles and kayaks. The cars are in a hurry, too.

But not the people. Those already here have traded hurry for calm. They saunter down the boulevard, amble idly down the strand.

But not this person. The beach rhythms are not yet mine.  I want to check in, lug my bags up the stairs, throw them in a corner, pull on my suit and run to the beach.

So that’s just what I did. And now I’m becoming one of those calm beach people, too.