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The Walking Listener

The Walking Listener

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For the last year I’ve been ambling not always silently and not always with music in my ears but sometimes with words in there too.  Thanks to the gift of Audible, I’ve walked to novels and meditations and nonfiction explications of our current economic woes. 

One day a neighbor stopped me on the street. I took out my ear buds to hear what she was saying. “You must be listening to a book,” she said. 

I wondered how she could tell. Did I have a furrowed brow of concentration? 

She could tell because she does, too. There must be some sort of aura we walking listeners give off that only other walking listeners can see. 

We chatted for a moment before going on our separate ways, at which point I put my ear buds back in and discovered that since I’d forgotten to push pause, the narrator was now several “pages” ahead of where I’d stopped. Just a small problem for the walking listener. 

In and Out

In and Out

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The walk I took yesterday I’ve taken before in the rain, so it seemed right to embark upon it as mist turned to drizzle. And it was good to see the soggy world close-up, as drops clung to evergreens and puddles formed on the trail.

I remember the first time I walked this way, I got turned around and my return trip included a couple of blocks on the side of a road instead of in the woods. Now the twists and turns are well encoded, enough so that I could take a detour and still find my way back.

Yesterday felt like a day to stay inside — all the more reason to get out.

Walk Not Taken

Walk Not Taken

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A mild winter afternoon, a little more time than usual, a desire to walk somewhere new. Enter Oxon Road. I took it almost by accident, though, in an attempt to avoid the utility workers who were trimming trees on the other side of West Ox Road. So thorough are the strings that bind us to our routine that I would probably have just continued down to Bennett Road, as I usually do, had my usual way not been blocked, in which case Oxon Road would have continued to be a walk not taken. 

But I did cross the road and trot down Oxon — and my world was enlarged by it. First, West Ox is at its pinnacle there, so you can spot the faint gray line of the Blue Ridge from that vantage point. I wasn’t expecting that — and seeing the mountains was a thrill.

Then there is a most fetching ivy-covered fence on the north side of the road. To walk beside it is to feel you are on the wrong side of a secret garden, that if you but knew which panel to push you could part that curtain of green and enter an enchanted place where flowers bloom yearlong.

I did not enter that garden, but I did imagine it. The wall of ivy gave it to me. That, and the walk not taken.

Winter Sight

Winter Sight

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As seasons pass, dimensions change and distances shrink. The greenery that hemmed us in only last month has thinned and drooped. Leaves have shriveled and blown away. What was once a screen is now an open book.

We hear about winter light, the low-slanting sun, but not as much about winter sight.

My woods walks lately reveal shiny new objects: small metal discs hammered into tree bark. Some trees have been tagged recently because the metal gleams and the discs swing freely on their nails. The older discs have dimmed and dulled; some you can hardly see because they have been swallowed up by bark. The trees have grown around them. Eventually those markers will seem little more than a metal eye.

While these older markers have been there all along, I saw them as if for the first time over the weekend. It was the winter landscape that drew my eyes to them, the same bare expanse that lets us glimpse a hidden stream or the outline of a hill, once shrouded in green. It is winter sight.

Turning Back

Turning Back

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A hike yesterday on less familiar ground, light slanting low from the late-afternoon sun. Only a short way down the trail came a fast-moving stream and what was billed as a “rock crossing” on the map but which was in fact a few slick stepping stones spread far apart and barely peaking their razor-thin edges above the rushing water. 

The first few stones of the crossing looked treacherous but feasible. If they weren’t so moss-slicked I could see getting across them. But then I’d be in the middle of the creek, and, from what I could tell, stranded. I could see only the barest, thinnest edges to the mostly submerged rest of the stone crossing. 

Feeling distinctly wimpy, I turned back. I don’t like turning back; it goes against my nature. So I found a side path to explore. It followed the stream for a few minutes, close enough to glimpse an ancient roadbed (see above), which seemed part of an old watercourse. 

I felt better, realizing that waterworks would have remained hidden had we taken the original crossing. And this morning, reading a description of this section of the Cross-County Trail, I felt even better about turning back. 

It describes a “stone crossing that is only usable during the low to normal stages of the creek.” The gurgling of the stream, its breadth and raucous rippling, made it clear that the creek was at a high stage creek, not low to normal.  

Perhaps I wasn’t as cowardly as I originally thought. Only prudent, even a bit adventurous. Ah, that’s better. 

The Wake-Up Walk

The Wake-Up Walk

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I woke earlier than usual this morning, woke to a cotton-wool world all blurry around the edges. Perfect for a wake-up walk, one where you start off half asleep and the walk itself is what brings you fully to consciousness. I took sunglasses because there’s a brightness beyond the fog and I wanted to be ready for it.

I began with Dan Fogelberg’s “To the Morning” in my ears, because its quiet start and slow crescendo mimics a day opening its eyes and stretching its arms. At the halfway mark I switched to chants from Anonymous Four.

As it turns out, I didn’t need the sunglasses. The day has yet to brighten as I think it will. All the better for a wake-up walk, one where footfall is stilled and thoughts along with it, where the hours begin their slow unfurling with dignity and grace.

Going in Circles

Going in Circles

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Happy is the house that allows circumnavigation — by which I mean, happy is the house that allows you to walk in circles through the rooms, 

Our house has an open living room, a center hall that leads into an office (dining room in a former life), which opens onto the kitchen, which flows into the living room. Put these features together and you have a perfect venue for … going in circles. 

This might seem unimportant, and I didn’t think about it when we were buying, but once the girls were toddlers, they loved running loop-the-loops, chasing the cat or evading a parent. Copper uses this configuration for his victory laps. It also comes in handy when you need to pace.

In short, circumnavigation is a nice feature to have in a house. It provides an openness and flexibility that is sorely lacking in many aspects of life. And though I have only anecdotal research to back me up, it may even keep one limber. It’s not a feature I would have put at the top of my list when choosing a house, but now that I have it, I can’t imagine one without it. 

The Pipeline Path

The Pipeline Path

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I wouldn’t want to live next to it, but the oil pipeline a couple miles from here has at least one thing to recommend it, and that is its paved path. I walked it on Saturday, right after mailing my letters.  Starting on McLearen, sun-warmed in the brisk air, I dipped off onto a trail I’d tramped long ago, turning left instead of right, navigating a fair-weather crossing right after a dog and his owner had just decided not to attempt it (the man was game but the dog was having none of it). 

From there it was just a bend and a hill-trudge from a buckled, fir-shaded, needle-strewn path along the greensward. Though I enjoy the meditative woods walk, there is much to be said for a stroll that skims the backs of houses. There’s an intimacy there you don’t find otherwise. 

I had a front-row seat on screened-in porches, knock-out roses and garden gates. There were trampolines, bird baths, even campaign signs. And on the path, a complement of fellow walkers who seemed as happy as I was to be alive and walking on such a fine fall morning.

Being Here

Being Here

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Sometimes on my morning strolls with Copper I look around at the familiar houses and yards, and catch my breath at the loveliness. It’s the slight roll of the land, the trees turning yellow and gold, the shaggy white miniature daisies that border the common land garden. 

This is not to say I live in some magical place, some beauty spot. It’s a subdivision in a suburb of Washington, D.C., (are there enough “subs” there?), one of hundreds. We love it for the sense of community we found from the beginning, and love it more now because it’s where the girls grew up. 

But what I was responding to this morning (and do so often these days) is the natural world that is more present now than it used to be. We have lost much during this pandemic — but one thing I’ve gained is a greater appreciation of this small patch of land where I find myself. 

It’s where I am most of the time now. And it’s not a bad place to be.

Twin Branches Trail

Twin Branches Trail

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A weekend walk reminded me of just how wild the Reston trails can be, especially the stretch between Twin Branches and the W&OD Trail, which winds along the Snakeden Branch of the Glade.

It angles up, then steeply down, crosses a stream then follows it for three-quarters of a mile. Houses are a rare sight. Instead, it’s trees and paths and creek water singing.

How easy it is to forget it’s out there, the natural world, even as the suburbs have encapsulated it. But it’s still with us, in the small parcels we’ve allowed — still with us, to heal and inspire.