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Category: suburbs

Good Fortune

Good Fortune

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Though I call this blog A Walker in the Suburbs, my feelings about suburbs are decidedly mixed. I appreciate the greenswards, the sound of spring peepers in the night air, downy woodpeckers at the bird feeder. I chafe at the driving culture, the isolation, the lack of community.

Alice Outwater’s Wild at Heart (mentioned last week, too) is reminding me why the suburbs once seemed like Shangri-La. In the late 19th-century, human waste was stored in cesspits and removed by horse-drawn wagons. The horses that pulled those wagons produced millions of pounds of manure, which collected in the streets.

“In 1900 there were well over 3 million urban horses in the U.S., and those city horses deposited enough manure to breed billions of flies, each one a potential vector for disease,” Outwater writes.

No wonder people moved out of the cities into what must have seemed like heaven. Grass, trees, manure that was manageable. Walking Copper this morning, I reflected on my good fortune.

Foxy Morning

Foxy Morning

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As I begin this post, Copper is barking his head off. And for once, I don’t blame him. He did the same thing yesterday, also for good cause.

The culprit is a plump and prissy red fox, who trots through the neighborhood this time of day as if he owns the place. Today he entered the yard from the west and Copper spied him as he was about to slip through the back fence.

Yesterday was even worse. Before leaving our yard, the fox paused and looked back, as if he was taking the measure of the 30-pound hound yapping on the deck — and found him lacking. Copper may have sensed the scorn. I could swear there was some righteous indignation in his response.

For those who don’t parse his barks as I do, it was just that crazy Copper, waking them up again.  But I know the truth. It was really just … a foxy morning.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Opportunities for Awe

Opportunities for Awe

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Yesterday’s walk took me along a Reston trail. It was late afternoon, balmy and blooming, with crows cawing in the swamp.

I thought about the name of this blog, “A Walker in the Suburbs.” I thought about how if you didn’t know my suburb, you might envision streets of sameness, void of nature and texture.

You might not imagine this immersion in a natural world: stream gurgling, peepers peeping, smell of loam in the air. You might discount the opportunities for awe.

Neigh!

Neigh!

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Though I live in the suburbs, there are rural aspects to my neighborhood. Septic systems rather than sewers. A stubborn attachment to winding two-lane roads. And then there are the farms behind the houses across the street.

These are not big operations with silos and combines. These are not even the “gentleman farms” I got to know in New England. (Now those are my kind of spreads — picturesque orchards run by retired heads of English Departments.)

These are four-acre parcels with houses of varying value. Some still have the original ranches and split-foyers, but most have large multi-gabled mansions that were built after the originals were torn down.

Sometimes I walk on the trails that wind through this neighborhood. I imagine the kind of place I’d like to have — herbs, flowers, chickens, a writing cabin in the back — nothing profitable, of course. I while away time moseying and fantasizing.

But usually, before I get home, something has brought me up short. Maybe it’s a prickle-bush barring entry to a favorite cut-through. Or a pile of manure I notice too late. Some bit of rural reality that intrudes on my fantasies. “Neigh,” say the horses in the pasture.

Nay, indeed.

Skunked!

Skunked!

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I had to stifle a laugh last week when on a hike through the Rocky Mountains I came across a fellow hiker in awe over a deer. In northern Virginia deer are pests — I have to spray my day lilies with deer repellant every night to be sure the buds aren’t eaten — and there are fox, racoons, owls and much more wildlife. A neighbor swears she saw a coyote in her backyard.

Over the weekend I got the most unwelcome of wildlife visits. Saturday night a skunk sprayed Copper, and before I realized what had happened, the dog had come inside and rubbed his back all over the living room carpet.

This was followed by me chasing Copper around the house, finally corralling him in the garage and bathing him in a hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and dish detergent solution. At which point I set off to deskunk the house.

I dowsed the carpet with baking soda and there are now bowls of vinegar in every room. The good news is the house smells less like skunk. The bad news is it smells more like vinegar.

I guess this is the price I pay to live in a suburban wilderness.

(Photo: Wikipedia; nope, I didn’t take this picture!)

Reston Walk

Reston Walk

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On Saturday I walked a Reston trail, leaving from the park-and-ride lot, traipsing along Lawyers Road for a few hundred feet and then entering the sort of alternative walker’s universe that exists off-road in many places — if we only know where to look for it.

It was muggy and still with sunlight moving across the paved path like swells on the sea. Cardinals and robins darted in and out of the bushes or soared from one tree perch to another while a crow cawed plaintively in the distance.

A well-trod dirt footpath angled off the main trail. It looked so inviting — like the road to an enchanted castle in the forest — that I just had to take it. I strolled alongside yards and houses, past tennis courts and pools. I crossed two streets and interrupted more than one spiderweb before I reversed course and walked back the way I came.

It was just as special going the opposite way, with fetching twists and turns, a tiny bridge over a mossy-rocked brook, and newborn plants in secret gardens. It was proof to me of nature’s variety, and proof too that if we look for a place to walk one we can usually find one.

Suburban Still Life

Suburban Still Life

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It could have been an easier office re-entry day. Twenty-seven degrees, snow falling. Schools closed and the parking lot half empty. I realized too late that I left my Metro card at home, and after buying a paper card to get me through the day, I rushed down the escalator only to find a train just closing its doors.

No matter. The world is white and still, a study in snow and steel. I pretend to be a tourist, take photos of Tysons Corner out the window.

It looks almost picturesque. The cars aligned and tracked, the sky mottled and gray. Remove the blue Honda sign — or keep it, if you like, it adds a spot of color. A suburban still life.

It’s almost like I’m on vacation.

Almost. Not quite.

Suburban Density

Suburban Density

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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?
Commuting on Foot

Commuting on Foot

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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.

Most Walkable

Most Walkable

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The facts are in — and they’re surprising: Washington, D.C., is the nation’s most walkable city!

Yes, that’s right. I thought the same thing: What about New York (just for starters)? Turns out, it’s Number Two.

 I heard a fleeting mention of this yesterday on the radio and looked it up today thinking I had misheard. But according to a report prepared by George Washington University’s School of Business, Washington has more Walkable Urban Places (WalkUPs) than New York City, Boston, San Francisco or Chicago.

Having lived and walked in three of these top five (and not owned a car in two of them),
I’ll admit I was scratching my head. But then I started reading
the report. WalkUPs are based on the amount of office and retail space and a Walk Score, which looks at how easy it is to run errands without a car. New York comes in second because although Manhattan earns an 89-percent WalkUP score, the other boroughs aren’t quite so walkable.

The most amazing nugget: The D.C. area has the most balanced walkability ratio between city (51 percent) and suburbs (49 percent). Really? The George Washington University researchers must be strolling in Arlington or Bethesda, not Oak Hill. Still, there are more paths here than there used to be, and Metro’s Silver Line (4 and a half miles from my house) opens a week from today.

So I’m optimistic about walking in the suburbs. It’s nice to know I’m not alone.