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Category: suburbs

Trespassing

Trespassing

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Sooner or later you have to do it, to skulk down a private driveway because it leads to a path in the woods, to slip between trees in a stranger’s yard.

To walk in the suburbs and stay only on the paved path is to miss the crumbling fences, the fern-banked creeks, the land as it was before.

I’ve been trespassing a lot lately. Looking for my own “northwest passage,” a quick route to the bus stop in anticipation of Metro’s new Silver Line (more on that in upcoming posts). On my Thursday walk home, looking for the thread of a trail I knew would take me behind the houses across the street from my own, I spied the owner of the brick colonial whose land I was perilously close to.

I looked at him, he looked at me. He was just far enough away that I could pretend he hadn’t seen me, to continue picking my way gingerly through the fallen trees and prickly bushes in my work clothes,  a big bag stuffed with papers on my shoulder. I felt like an errant deer. And strangely enough, I ran into one of those just a few steps later. I stared at him, he stared at me.

Two stare-downs within five minutes. What else is a trespasser to do?

Quarter Century

Quarter Century

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I had a reference point, so I looked it up. Mother’s Day, 1989, was May 14. That’s the day we moved to northern Virginia. Suzanne was six months old. We planned to stay “a couple of years.”

But two years passed, then four, eight, twelve; they passed in a whirl of babies and toddlers and deadlines and milestones. And when I realized what was happening, that I was settling in a place I never intended to stay, I chafed at that fact.

It wasn’t the house itself or the immediate neighborhood that rankled, but the suburban experience. The tidy lawns and mulched trees, the lawnmowers and snow blowers that seemed always to be whirring. The traffic, the homogeneity, the “placelessness.” The influx of affluence that led our children to ask us why they couldn’t live in a house with a two-story foyer.

But a few years ago (yikes, almost ten!) I began to work downtown. I explored the neighborhoods of D.C. — Brookland, Capitol Hill, Penn Quarter. There was an energy and a discombobulation that felt new and familiar at the same time. There were long city blocks where I could stretch my legs. Without intending to, I began to soften toward the place.

This is good, because what’s happened in the last quarter century — what’s happened when I haven’t been looking — is that northern Virginia has become our home. I still may thrash at its limitations, but it’s where two of my children were born and where all of them grew up. This is their place, where they’ve come alive to the world.

A lot can happen in a quarter century. A lot has.

The Sound of Engines

The Sound of Engines

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My suburb is quiet, given its proximity to a major international airport. But when a wild wind barrels in from the west, planes are routed over the house and the sound of jet engines fills the sky. The harder the wind blows, the more planes there seem to be. Just the opposite of what one would like, of course.

Last night the airliners seemed to be using Folkstone Drive as a runway and skimming the tops of the tall oaks. The fact that I was dodging limbs and crunching over downed tree branches on the drive home only heightened this impression. I was glad to pull into the garage.

But this morning the wind still roars and the planes still circle. Winter is back, and it wants us to know it.

Edging

Edging

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A walker notices boundaries. Often in the suburbs these boundaries are sidewalks, and often in the suburbs these sidewalks are edged.

And so … a brief meditation on edging, on the dividing line between concrete and soil, on the tendrils that can spread themselves across the border and on the neat way some homeowners have of highlighting this divide. 

The tool (perhaps it’s called an edger?!) that wedges itself between lawn and walkway or the whirring blade that separates weeds from lawn. Surely these are born of a need to cultivate, to order and refresh.

Though it’s easy to trip on edges, to twist the ankle or wedge the shoe, one has to admire the diligence with which some homeowners keep the wild world at bay.

I used to think edging was silly. Now I’m not so sure.

EZ Pass?

EZ Pass?

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Our newspaper today was wrapped in a advertisement for Virginia’s new 495 Express Lanes. The construction of these lanes has tied up traffic for years, and now it’s time to enjoy the benefits. But first we have to figure out how to use them.

So into our already harried suburban lives come new complications. To use the lanes you need an EZ Pass transponder. You can use your old transponder if you don’t plan to use the lanes with three or more people in the car. If you do, then you need a new EZ Pass Flex transponder.

To use the lanes you must be able to read, drive and count at the same time. If your truck has two axles, you’re in. If it has more, you’re out. If your car has three people, you’re free; if it has one or two, it’s, well, you’re not sure how much it is because the price depends upon the time of day and the traffic conditions. Prices are posted on a display board that you must read while driving.

Do I sound pessimistic? You betcha. I’m remembering one of my favorite New Yorker covers. It ran around Thanksgiving, a holiday which is becoming known less for giving thanks and carving turkey than for the sitting in traffic on the way to the feast. The cartoon, titled “To Grandmother’s House We Go,” showed a bunch of cars proceeding through the EZ Pass toll gates. Then it showed another group of cars flying above them. They were using the EZR Pass lanes.

Until those are installed, I think I’ll stick with my crowded old tried-and-true routes.

(This is the cover by Bruce McCall; it ran December 9, 2002.)

City or Suburb?

City or Suburb?

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An article in yesterday’s Washington Post headlined “Is a city still a city if it’s in the suburbs?” discusses Reston Town Center, the Village at Leesburg and other “downtowns” that mimic the real thing.

The idea is to export urban density and excitement to the outlying ‘burbs. “[People] want to be in an environment, in a context, where they can experience life as fully as possible. They like to be around people, and they like to be around interesting things, and they like to be around energy. And that’s what the suburbs have historically lacked,” said Robert Kettler, who planned and developed the Village at Leesburg based on the model of Reston Town Center.

I have a complicated relationship with Reston Town Center, our closest “downtown.” When it was first built, I disparaged it for its fakery. It was a movie set of a city. Walk through the set doors and you would be in a mall. But as the years have passed; as restaurants, stores and plazas have been added; as festivals, concerts and wine tastings have lured me to its center, I have developed a reluctant fondness for the place.

As the article points out, many city neighborhoods now admired for their hip urbanity —think Capitol Hill and Georgetown — were once planned. And besides, how can I fault developers for paying attention to how people live, to adding town squares and storefront windows, to isolating and replicating the ingredients of urban charm?

Kettler has heard all the criticisms of these faux downtowns, the Post article says. “But he sees a naturally evolving plot: Driving through the Village at Leesburg, he is happy to see that the young trees he planted a few years ago are a little taller, that there are more people hitting treadmills at L.A. Fitness, that there are more people on the street. ‘When you put the camera on and you put the actors on the stage, it looks like a real place.'”

The article doesn’t answer the question, “Is a city still a city if it’s in the suburbs,” but it does plead for more time. Cities are a work in progress. It may just be that we’re pioneering something new here a few miles from my house. That what began as an experiment of urban density in the suburbs is giving us something we all want and need.

It may be. But when we decide whether and when to leave our suburban home, one thing is for sure: Reston Town Center will not make us stay. 

The original Reston downtown: Lake Anne.

Night Swim, Again

Night Swim, Again

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It was almost nightfall. The air was balmy, and a crescent moon grew brighter with every stroke.  I’ve been swimming a lot this summer but never this late. Our dinners have been long, our evenings full. Last night was the first chance to paddle through the mysterious waters of the suburban pool after dark.

There was the same dignified man I remember from last year, doing his quiet breast stroke. He hasn’t changed, though the guards have grown younger. There too was the windmill slowly spinning and the faintest breeze ruffling the leaves in the high branches of the oaks. The thwunk-thwunk of the tennis balls in the adjacent court was the only sound I heard, other than an occasional splash.

I end the day tired and calm. An advantageous combination.

Castle in the Clouds

Castle in the Clouds

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I sit at a stoplight, one of several long ones I’ve already encountered on the way home. I’m running late and the light takes forever. I strum my fingers on the steering wheel, tap my feet, fiddle with the knobs of the radio and then fiddle with them some more. I look up, light’s still red. 

It’s then that I think that I have become Fairfax County. Its tempo is my tempo. Its impatience is my impatience.  I drive too close to the car in front of me as I listen too intently to public radio. I have come to believe that what I do every day is more important than it actually is.

What I need is a summer off. Humility Camp. In which people from the East Coast are sent to carefully chosen out-of-the-way burgs in the Heartland. Let us walk down empty sidewalks to the only store that sells the New York Times, only to find that there is no Times delivery today. The wireless in our rented two-bedroom will long since have fizzled. Our Kindle is out of charge.

There is nothing to do, then, but to lie back on the grass, look up at the sky and find a castle in the clouds.

The Toll

The Toll

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Last evening, a walk I’ve never taken: A path between two houses to a woodland trail, and along that to another neighborhood. From there to a busy road, left past the shopping center and left again down a street where we once looked at a house to buy. It was faux Tudor and smaller than it looked outside.

I was deep into nostalgia, what-ifs. The yards were edged and tidy with fresh-strewn mulch. I noticed  the brave annuals planted by the mailboxes. The flower boxes and hanging baskets. The lawns were a proud, chemical green; most were new-mown and they sparkled in the slanting light.

Beyond the house life and the car life lies the curb life, the walker’s view. This walker has become more sympathetic over the years. More aware of the toil — and the toll — of the suburbs.

Cross Walk

Cross Walk

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Yesterday I tried something new, something I hadn’t seen in the 23 years we’ve lived in this neighborhood — a crosswalk. It’s our corner’s first. A touch of the city in the suburbs. A time-out for the traffic. A vote of confidence in walkers everywhere.

I pushed the button, and I waited. And waited. And waited.

I started to run across the street against the light. After all, there were no cars coming. It’s what I usually do, wait for a pause in the stream of cars and then thread my way across.

But yesterday, since the cosmos (and the Virginia Department of Transportation) was giving me a break, I gave them one, too. I was a good citizen, a patient pedestrian. I waited my turn. But when the sign said “Walk” — I ran.