A Walker in the Suburbs

Though I love a path that curves and winds its way through the woods, I’m also fond of a good straightaway.

Which is what I found myself on yesterday. A trail that branches off another, well-traveled one, a connector route, you might say. And I was struck with its clean lines and lack of mystery, with its uncomplicated beauty.

A straightaway is not a “straight and narrow,” with its whiff of boring respectability. A straightaway is redolent of race tracks and final surges to victory. It’s about power and clarity.

Sometimes that’s all you want in a trail, to see it clear from beginning to end, to know what you have in front of you.

Choosing a walking path for the day is a little like choosing an outfit, which means that a weather report may be involved. When showers are forecast, as they have been recently, it’s good to pick a circular trail, because there will be less distance to sprint if caught in a downpour. 

I had just such a trail in mind the other day. It’s one of my earliest strolling finds, a peach of a path that makes not just one circle but two. I take the larger loop if I have more time, the shorter one if I don’t. When I’m dodging raindrops, I take as many loops as I can before the wind starts to whistle. 

It struck me the other day that it was almost like walking on a track, with its precise quarter-mile distance, so you know automatically, with your revolutions, how far you’ve gone. 

This “track” was not quite as round or as predictable — and I’m not entirely sure about the mileage. But I could find out. 

I’ve never quite gotten used to the suburban irony of driving to walk. Sometimes I fight it; I once spent weeks figuring out how to traipse through the woods  to reach my favorite Reston trail.

This was fun but impractical. Yes, I could hike to the trail, but it took more than an hour to reach it and quickly became a three- to four-hour foray. Good exercise, but who has that many hours in the day?

Most of the time then, I resign myself to the practice. I jump in the car and burn precious fossil fuels just to amble on trails rather than streets. It’s a strange way to live when viewed in the arc of human history, but to us modern folk, it makes perfect sense.

A new year, a new direction. Yesterday I walked a familiar trail, but instead of heading straight at an intersection, I turned left and kept going around in a big circle along a route known as the Turquoise Trail.

I’m not sure why the path is named after this particular shade of blue, but I like the alliteration — and I liked the trail, too. It was 30 minutes around, a perfect length for a blustery January afternoon. 

There were a few dog walkers and some hearty hikers decked out in hats and scarves and gloves. Winter is here, whether we like it or not. Walking through it (almost always) makes it easier to take. 

Plants are parched. Streams are struggling. Some might say it’s time to water. I say … it’s time to cross a creek on stepping stones.

I was thinking of a stretch of the Cross County Trail close to my house (though not close enough to walk to, of course), which has thwarted me before because of an almost submerged stone crossing. 

Yesterday the water level was low enough to make the crossing easy. And that single detail opened up a world of forest and creek and pasture. Plus one of my favorite sections of the trail, which skirts a bamboo-fringed pond.

Just as low tide reveals a wealth of sea life, shells and sand dollars, low water offers up paths for trekking, vistas for gazing. In other words, possibilities.