A Walker in the Suburbs

A return, a sigh, a backward glance. I’m home now, absorbing the trip to NYC. It lasted a work week, but my only job was to walk, tour and savor the city.

On one of many excursions, I briefly relived one of my all-time favorite running routes. I would roll out of bed a little before 7 a.m., lace up my shoes, and make my way, half-asleep, to the Central Park Reservoir trail.

Back then you could run around whichever way you liked. Now, it’s counterclockwise only. No problem: counterclockwise gave us this splendid view of the San Remo Towers, lording it over their wedge of Central Park West.

Did I really live and walk here? Yes, I did. And for five perfect days, I did again.

Ah, there is so much to say about visiting Manhattan. So much that when I first sat down to write today I didn’t know where to begin!

But I did/ do know this. Such richness, such crazy, jarring richness, is made possible by something we don’t have in the suburbs: urban density.

Here into less than 22.6 square miles flow three to four million people every day. Here are museums, concert halls, restaurants, libraries, universities, even cherry trees (take that, D.C.!). Here are all sorts of people rubbing shoulders (and sometimes bumping into) all sorts of other people.

I sample the city as if it were an exotic yet comforting stew, spoonful by delicious spoonful.

(It’s easier to photograph cherry trees than urban density. All that jostling, you know)

From the time I was a little girl I’ve heard on the radio, “Live from the Metropolitan Opera in New York City” — and last night we were there, in the very place.

Truth to tell, for most of my life that announcement prompted an immediate change of station. But lately that has not been the case. Living with an opera lover is starting to rub off on me.

Last year for Christmas, I gave that opera lover two tickets to Verdi’s “La Traviata.” I hoped he would take me along. And he did!

So we took the train to New York City and last evening walked six blocks downtown, entered Lincoln Center and were swept up into the crowd. It was a chilly Tuesday and the place was packed. Some women wore long gowns and some men wore tuxedos, though most were dressed more casually. In other words, it was an audience writ as large as New York City. And it was as enthusiastic as the city, too. Arias and choruses were greeted with applause and shouts of “bravo” and “brava.”

The beauty and pathos of the music would touch even the stoniest of hearts. Here was the human condition in voice and song — performed in a city that appreciates it.

For some people, attending a Met opera is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I hope it isn’t for us.

I titled last year’s post Hike and Sip and illustrated it with a view of the Atlantic Ocean framed by an orange tree (the view you see above, as a matter of fact).

I wrote the post on the Portuguese island of Madeira, where I was this time last year. Hard not to think of that sunny spot as I look out my office window at a foggy, wintry world. Hard not to think of the little teahouse on a hill, of the hiking trail that took us there.

Not that I’m complaining. I was lucky to be where I was last year and am lucky this year. too. Lucky to have warmth on the way (it’s supposed to be 70 on the weekend), lucky to have breath in my lungs and a skip in my step. Lucky most of all to have so many dear ones in my life.

Still, I’m going to indulge myself for just a moment. As I sip my tea this morning I’ll pretend that I’m staring not at a snippet of Virginia piedmont but at the vast shining ocean, at bougainvillea and rhododendron and calla lilies, at red tile roofs that stretch to the sea.

We’ve entered the double digit dates of February. The snow is melting, but not fast enough. It’s time for a virtual vacation.

I”m thinking of friends vacationing in Madeira. No trip there for us this winter, but many memories. Last year we hiked across the island, beginning on the Mimosa Trail, then traversing Madeira’s vertiginous spine along Boca do Risco. I’m a scaredy cat, and there were spots along this trail where I refused to look down, across or anywhere but the path directly in front of me. When I did raise my eyes, I saw the view you see above.

A few hours later, we were climbing down to the village of Machico. It had clouded up by then, but the rain held off and we sat outside at a cafe planning how we would get home. Bus schedules were consulted, poncha was consumed. A few hours later, we arrived back at the hotel, muddy, tired and filled to the brim with the beauty and charm of this special island.

No secret that I love to travel. But I also love to talk about travel. Yesterday a friend and long-ago roommate called to share tales of our recent adventures. She had just explored South Africa and Namibia. I had seen France, Belgium and the Netherlands since we last talked.

She had warned me about the bicycles in Amsterdam. I told her that now I understand. She tried to explain the grandeur of game drives. I tried to describe the charm of an Alsatian village.

At some point in our conversation I realized that it’s not the travel itself, it’s the way it makes us feel — or at least the way it makes me feel, which is alive and free.

Once, my friend and I trudged down snow-packed Chicago streets to buy groceries as we started our careers in a cold and busy city. Now we have different destinations.

It’s not that trip talk satisfies as much as travel itself, but it certainly brightens up a cold winter evening.

It happens often after a get-away: I may have physically returned to hearth and home (and the endless to-do lists that accompany them) but I’m still half-anchored to the places I just visited. In this case, to 47 and 48. That would be New Mexico and Arizona, the 47th and 48th states to enter the union.

I hail from the 14th state, Kentucky (1792), so to contemplate the 47th and 48th, the last of the continental additions, is to be in awe of how recently they were admitted — only a month apart, in 1912. My parents honeymooned in the American West only four decades later.

Do these states feel new? Not really. They feel old, even timeless. The parts of them we visited were beautifully remote. The closest gas station was 25 miles away, the nearest grocery store double that.

Lack of services means neighbors rely on each other. That, plus the wide-openness of their spaces and the darkness of their skies is a magnet for birders and researchers and people who chafe at boundaries. I admire the hardy souls who make 47 and 48 their home. I don’t think I could.

Though the view out my window is of the Virginia Piedmont, I’m remembering the sweeping plains and pointed peaks of the Basin and Ridge. At a windswept clearing on Historic Route 80 is a monument to Geronimo’s 1886 surrender, which effectively ended the Indian wars. It did not end the hostilities, however. The massacre at Wounded Knee, for example, took place in December, 1890.

After numerous chases and escapes Geronimo and his band of Apaches formally surrendered to General Nelson Miles on a bluff near this lonely spot. Geronimo ended his days imprisoned at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, after appealing unsuccessfully to President Theodore Roosevelt to “cut the ropes and make me free.”

Geronimo died of pneumonia, the old man’s friend, in 1909. On his deathbed, he confessed to his nephew: “I should never have surrendered. I should have fought until I was the last man alive.”