A Walker in the Suburbs

The walks we took in Ireland: along Grafton Street in Dublin, through the arch in Galway City, to the ends of the earth at the Cliffs of Moher.

The walk I remember most: An ordinary one in Donegal, fuchsia hanging along the hedgerows. The fuchsia surprised me. I thought of it as a hothouse plant, something to be coddled. But in Ireland it thrived on neglect — along with rain, mist and the soft Irish air.

This walk I remember with the fuchsia was down a small lane. The sun seemed never to set, and our summer would never end. This was a long time ago.

Last night we had a full house, and before dinner we talked about the Occoquan Reservoir and the roads and bridges and houses around it. Claire’s boyfriend, Stevie, grew up a stone’s throw from the water. He fishes it all summer and knows ever cove and inlet. My brother Drew, who is moving back to Northern Virginia after almost two years in St. Louis, wouldn’t mind living in a house near the reservoir.

So commenced one of those delightful (modern) conversations that is part talk and part Google maps. We found the house, looked at the terrain around it, figured out how wide the creek would be that flows beside it. Then we looked at Facebook photos of fish Claire and Stevie have caught and released back into the lake, largemouth bass and catfish.

There are things we couldn’t have done a few years ago; so, in a way, we plumbed the place more. But, I also wonder, did I see just enough to make me less likely to see it — for real — for myself?

Photo: Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries

An element of modern life that we tend to discount is the amount of travel we undertake. I often think of this after one of my quick trips to Kentucky, a quick trip that takes eight hours each way.

But even the distance conquered by each suburban commuter, moving daily from one realm to another, can be 50 miles or more round trip.

Once, when Mom and I were traveling together in Ireland, we asked a shop woman for directions to a manor house that we knew was less than 10 miles away. She pointed us down a stretch of highway. “It’s lovely that way, I’ve heard,” she said.

It took us a minute to realize that the woman had never been there. What was for us a short jaunt, just one tiny leg of a many-legged adventure, was for her terra incognita.

And so it goes with traveling. We learn not just from the distances we traverse but from the people we meet along the way. People who show us another way to live, the way of staying put.
Staying put is our terra incognita.

On Saturday we toured Holmes County, Ohio, home to the world’s largest Amish population. We passed buggy after buggy, and after a while I noticed there were different models. Some were like sedans; others resembled little trucks. All were pulled by beautifully sleek black horses.

In the village of New Hope, Amish men with long white beards rode their bikes up to the hardware store. A few miles outside the village, past the small school, a woman named Lavina met us in her home and showed us the quilts she and her sister, Mary, had made. The quilts were piled on a double bed and she flipped each one over to reveal the varying patterns and colors of the one beneath.

A few miles away we bought stainless steel cookware at the Yoder Bargain store. A young girl with head scarf and long dress browsed the sewing notions. An Amish family looked over the baby clothes. We found an entire small room devoted to rubber stamps. The store was dark and quiet, and when we left to get in our car I glimpsed a fall tableaux: red-leaved trees, corn crib, white-hatted Amish grandmother tending the mums, a buggy in the distance. No electric wires or telephone lines in sight.

This is a quiet world, one without radio music, car horns or text message beeps. I couldn’t live in it, I certainly couldn’t blog in it, but I could enter as a visitor and savor the stillness.

Yesterday’s New York Times ran an article about a couple who stepped out of the rat race and now live a simple, happier life in a 400-square-foot apartment with 100 possessions (each, I think!). The article mentions the research of Thomas DeLeire at the University of Wisconsin. He recently discovered that of nine categories of consumption, the only one positively related to happiness was leisure spending on vacations, fishing poles and the like. I don’t know about fishing poles, but you wouldn’t have to sit too long on our living room couch to know where we stand in this debate. We take great vacations — and our rumpled, well-loved house tells the tale.

We’re in Greensboro, North Carolina, this weekend, and are about to explore it. One thing I’ve noticed so far is the preponderance of friend chicken and biscuit chains. I’ll admit: My salad-weary mouth is watering. My southern roots are calling. There are times when only fried chicken will do.