Browsed by
Category: walking

Last Walk of Summer

Last Walk of Summer

Comments 0 Comment

It felt much the same as other summer walks, this last one before tomorrow’s equinox. I left too late, not unusual for me, and got caught in what passes for rush hour traffic in my neighborhood, parents and buses rushing to school. 

I wore a sweatshirt that I tied around my waist at the halfway point. The birds were a little less chirpy, the cicadas nonexistent, so it lacked midsummer’s buzz and shimmer. 

But as I write this post on the deck a desultory cricket chirps and pools of light and shade dapple the backyard. 

It will be close to 90 today, and the grass needs mowing. It’s still summer. 

People of the Path

People of the Path

Comments 0 Comment

In my neighborhood, I might know their names. There’s Peter, whose long arms swing like windmills, and his wife, Nancy, who has been walking regularly for decades now. I’ve seen  Arturo not only in this area but also on the Reston trails. I could name Eileen, Wendy, Maureen, Dave, Doug and many others.

But for every person I know there are hundreds more anonymous fellow travelers. Dog walkers and young mothers with jogging strollers. Long-distance striders who carry water bottles on their belt, like gunslingers. They are short or tall, plump or lean, fast or slow. 

Some folks don’t look up or acknowledge contact; they’re lost in thought. Others catch my eye from far away, wave and smile. 

But in one way we are all the same. We are people of the path. 

Not So Fast

Not So Fast

Comments 0 Comment

I took Thursday’s late-day stroll at a faster pace than usual, so yesterday I paid the price. Nothing serious, just some soreness and tightness, a reminder that I let the cooler air and that fall feeling push me into moving more quickly than I should have.

In my defense, it was glorious weather. I wasn’t slogging through humid air for a change, and there was an autumnal industriousness afoot, the kind of energy that sends squirrels scampering for acorns to store.

Like the squirrel, I was driven — only it was an experience that I was after, one more walk in a summer made rich by them. 

Almost Equinoctical Evening

Almost Equinoctical Evening

Comments 0 Comment

A late walk yesterday, after I finished a class assignment. I drove to a favorite Reston trail itching to move through space after a computer-centric day. 

The path did not disappoint. There were the familiar markers of fern and stream and swamp. There were the dog walkers and stroller pushers and trail talkers, those who first appear at to be muttering to themselves but are revealed upon passing to be wearing those distinctive white ear pods.

The second leg of this walk is a segment of  the Cross County Trail, with its dips and valleys, already crunchy with brown leaves and blowsy with stilt grass gone to seed — but beautiful in its roughness. Laser-pointers of light struck the thin trunks of the understory.

Scampering through the lambent air in the almost-equinoctial evening was an excellent way to end the day. 

Lulled into Fall

Lulled into Fall

Comments 0 Comment

Mornings are cool enough that I’ve worn a long-sleeve tee-shirt on my walks the last few days. Even if I roll up my sleeves halfway through, I start out warmed against the chill — chill being a relative term these days, anything below 65. 

Still, the handwriting is on the wall. The handwriting of seasonal change, that is. Oh, there will be more humidity. It will crank up today and last for a while. Birds will still perch on the rose bush and flutter in the azalea. 

But days are shorter (I came in before 8 last night) and leaves are turning yellow. It’s the mellow month of September, lulling us into fall. 

Novel Vistas

Novel Vistas

Comments 0 Comment

It’s easy to vary my walks if I drive to trailheads scattered throughout the area like the loose-strung beads of a pearl necklace. But if I rely only on shank’s mare, I’m more limited. 

Still, there are several ways to leave this “landlocked” neighborhood (pinned in by a busy street on either side), especially if I hike through the woods. 

That’s just what I did the other day, following a trail I’ve known for years, one that leads to the mossy hill  and, if you angle it a differently, across a small valley to our sister neighborhood, Westwood Hills. That’s the path I took yesterday. 

I hadn’t walked there since winter, and I was glad to be back beneath its vaulting trees and novel vistas: a path of stones, a bridge that’s seen better days.  But finding it just as humid there as it is here, I quickly made my way back.

Still, for a little while, I had broken free.

Extraordinary

Extraordinary

Comments 0 Comment

In the continual quest to match music to landscape, today’s choice might seem a bit odd. Who tramps through the suburbs listening to Brahms’ German Requiem?

Someone who loves the piece and believes it ennobles whatever they see while listening to it, I suppose.

And so the stilt grass, that long-legged invasive, looked more like slender bamboo fronds waving. And the Joe Pye weed was more elegant, more proudly purple, than its usual shaggy self. 

The shaded trails embraced me, the meadow views broadened my vision, and the pond gleamed golden in the morning light. 

It was an ordinary walk made extraordinary by the music in my ears. 

A Scorcher Begins

A Scorcher Begins

Comments 0 Comment

I’m just back from a walk through the rapidly warming morning. It isn’t a scorcher yet, but it has every intention of becoming one. Checking the forecast now: ah yes, a high of 96. That’s why I met so many dog-walkers and early runners. 

There’s a feel to the air in a morning that’s moving toward high temps but has not achieved them. It’s the last vestiges of cool lingering in the shadows and the dips in the road. It’s the cicadas gearing up for a raucous recital. 

It’s the summer, full bore, and those of us who don’t mind the heat, who thrive on the long light, are reveling in it. 

Chariots of Fire

Chariots of Fire

Comments 0 Comment

It’s pretty corny, but I did it anyway, played “Chariots of Fire” on my i-pod as I made my way down the beach yesterday. I was looking for an inspiring piece, one that would pump up the pace a bit, and that one did the trick. 

There was the familiar opening salvo, the electronic pulses, the melody itself. In my mind’s eye I saw the 1924 Olympic athletes splashing through the surf, recalled their stories, their motivations for running, each of them different, each of them their own. 

While I can’t claim any speed records I did feel the thrill of that music. And since I was running — well, mostly walking — on a beach then, too, well … you get the idea. It was fun, it was exhilarating, it was a movie-lovers beach walk.

(A still from the beach-running scene in the film “Chariots of Fire,” courtesy Wikipedia.) 

The Deer Did It

The Deer Did It

Comments 0 Comment

Sometimes the deer do us a favor, although not often and not directly. Because the rapacious critters ate my impatiens while I was away, I wanted to put something in the large flower pots that flank the front door. Begonias have a reputation as deer-resistant, so I found a good deal on four plants.

The favor part of this is that the errand landed me in a part of town I don’t usually visit. And that meant a walk on a sunny and unfamiliar path. I cruised along a road for part of the route, then circled a pond that was luminous with bird and insect life.

Dragonflies buzzed, frogs croaked, birds chirped as they landed on lily pads. A gazebo let me view the scene from a shady perch. Afterwards I took a series of tree trunk steppingstones through the wetland bordering the pond, then strolled through a cool glade. 

It was lovely midsummer moment, brought to me (sort of) by the deer.