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Hidden Pond

Hidden Pond

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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

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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

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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.

Walking to the Potomac

Walking to the Potomac

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Yesterday a hike from Colvin’s Run Mill to the Potomac River, eight miles round trip on the Cross-County Trail. The river is the trail’s northern terminus and you have to work a little to get there. Floods have taken out part of the gravel walk along the stream and there’s a stretch where you must clamber over rocks or turn back. Combine that with two fair-weather creek crossings and I used up my courage quotient for the day.

The destination was worth it, though, walking along the roiling waters of Difficult Run as it makes its way to the river, plunging and skipping over rocks, through channels narrow and deep. (Hard to believe it’s related to the rivulet that meanders through my neighborhood.)

And then coming finally to the Potomac, the orange and yellow kayaks glimpsed through the trees, Maryland on the other side. The stateliness and otherness of a river. And a walk that made the destination matter.

The Beaten Path

The Beaten Path

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Sometimes I’m on it, sometimes I’m off it. But I always have a responsibility to it. For who will keep the path beaten if not the walker? Who else will clear it of weeds and stones? Who else will smooth it out, will wear it down to dirt?

On woods walks it’s easy to spot which paths are well trod and which have banished from neglect. Animals do their part; there are deer runs in the woods, too. But humans blaze the widest trails.

I find this thought comforting: That the forest needs me just as I need the forest. That in passing through I create the possibility of further passage. That each amble makes the next one easier. That each foot fall is creative.

This is more than just “use it or lose it.” It’s organic, symbiotic. It’s proof, once again, that we’re all in this together.

Fair Weather Crossing

Fair Weather Crossing

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There are several of these along the length of the Cross County Trail, raised concrete cylinders across the width of a stream. The bold strider takes them easily, one foot to a step. The timid one (that would be me) navigates the creek with a mincing two-step.

I think of these pillars as fabricated steppingstones. No hollow log or moss-slicked surface to send one sliding. The suburban safety net is in place here. Nothing really difficult or bold will be asked of us. We will be killed with — if not kindness (because “kind” is not an adjective that comes to mind when describing this part of the world) — then with inordinate padding.

The irony is that I successfully crossed the creek only to stumble half a mile later. It was nothing but a root that tripped the tip of my toe as I fast-walked the packed-dirt trail. But it was enough to send me careening in what I can only imagine was a cartoon-like near-fall. Somehow, I caught myself, my arms flapping beside me like the wings of an errant glider.

Fair weather crossings are a good start; what we need next are cushioned paths.