Browsed by
Category: walking

Lighting the Way

Lighting the Way

Comments 0 Comment

Walking in the dark has always appealed to me, not so much for what I gain cardiovascular-wise, but what I see when I stroll. The shimmer of TV screens, the toys abandoned in the driveway, waiting to be picked up by children in the morning.

One house I passed last night has been empty for months, and the new inhabitants are just settling in. All I spotted in the dining room was a large potted plant. Seeing the emptiness of that brightly lit room, comparing it with the full-to-bursting condition of my own house, reminded me of when we first arrived here with a six-month-old baby.

The house felt like a mistake, a far-too-roomy abode that we’d never grow into. Four bedrooms? A living room, dining room and kitchen? And a full (though unfinished) basement? We would always be bouncing around in here like three tennis balls, I thought.

Obviously, we have filled the place up, no problem, and used every nook and cranny. But that wasn’t what affected me so much last night. It was a visceral memory of that younger self, and a sudden rush of realizing how long ago that has been. It was the biggest story, and sometimes I think the only story. It was time passing … that’s all.

Ready for Rest?

Ready for Rest?

Comments 0 Comment

Within this morning’s walk, rushing to work in a work-out before the heat begins to build, there was a sudden awareness of pause amidst the hurry. The feeling you get at the top of roller coaster, infinite and infinitesimal at the same time.

It was the feeling of summer at its peak, full of birdsong and cicada crescendo. Of crows, discussing the world and its problems as they often do, hopping along the gravel berm with their wise eyes and sleek black coats.

And for some reason this summer, what has become a signature sound, the felling of trees, the grinding up of deadwood. Are lawn services offering specials or something? Or are the trees, like so many of us, ready for a rest?

Out of State

Out of State

Comments 0 Comment

Over the weekend, I took a brief trip to the state of Maryland. It was only a quick visit, I was home in less than five hours. Yet so homebound have I become that it felt like I was taking off for a cross-country expedition.

While the go-go-ness of my life up till March has meant no time to process the people and places I was visiting, recent stay-at-home mandates haven’t given me much time to digest things, either. Because there’s never a shortage of work and chores, and low-level anxiety has a way of gumming up the gray matter.

Still, even a short sojourn helped. There was a new path, familiar beneath the feet — but it had been more than a year since I strolled it. There was fresh air from the river and bay, and, most of all, there were the dear faces of people I love but hadn’t seen since wintertime. 
It was a short trip but a good trip, proof that even a little break makes a difference. On the way home I sang in the car.  
Drippy Walk

Drippy Walk

Comments 0 Comment

A drippy walk last week had me dodging raindrops. When I left my parked car I thought the sun would burn the clouds away, but the farther I walked the less certain I was of that. 

Still, it was a grand way to spend an early summer afternoon, making my way along moss-slicked paths, inhaling the rain-spun air, exploring an unfamiliar corner of the neighborhood.
My shoes and shirt were growing soggier by the minute but I couldn’t bear to turn around. The canopy was catching the worst of the weather, and the moisture seemed to accentuate everything — the leaves were greener, the air was fresher — and I was walking through it, gladly.
One-Day Getaway

One-Day Getaway

Comments 0 Comment

A drive west today, out to the Blue Ridge Mountains, the great ridge that runs down the eastern spine of this country, out to where the sky meets the land.

It’s been a while since I’ve been more than 20 miles away from home. Half a year, I think. And while it is true that one can travel widely without ever leaving home, at least for this wanderer, an occasional glimpse of the world beyond helps maintain sanity.

So a drive west it will be, out to the ridge I took pains to see yesterday on my walk. The Shenandoah — the shaggy old hills that mark the beginning of the rest of the country.

Treading Lightly

Treading Lightly

Comments 0 Comment

To be a walker in the suburbs means, at times, to be a trespasser. There simply is no other way to get around out here than to (occasionally, and with great care) tiptoe through someone else’s yard. It’s the British right-of-way, the right to pass and repass, that I invoke here, if only to myself.

I’ll admit, I don’t have the best track record in this area. But on the whole I’m a respectful interloper, staying to the edge of property lines when the woodland trail I’m on suddenly leads me right into an alien backyard.

One of my solutions is to determine if a house looks currently habited. If owners are out of town, they won’t mind if I walk up their long driveway instead of staying longer on the busy thoroughfare.  Now, of course, no one is out of town.

On yesterday’s walk I suddenly found myself in a ferned forest with muddy paths and the only way out (rather than back) being along the side yard of a yellow split-foyer.  I just squeaked by on that one, seeing the owner out with a mower only 10 minutes after I’d skirted his lawn.

It was a close call for this trespasser.

Mapping My Walk

Mapping My Walk

Comments 0 Comment

Inspired by The Writer’s Map, which I mentioned here a couple weeks ago, I embarked on a map-making project of my own. The result is “May 16th Long Walk,” an amateurish work if ever there was one, but the first in a series, I hope, as I record the walks I take not only in words but also in cartography.

It was an interesting experience, chiefly because I haven’t done anything like this since, oh, about seventh grade (I can’t recall drawing any maps since high school other than ones scrawled on the back of envelopes in the old pre-GPS days) and also because, as is quite evident, I can’t draw.

Creating this map called on that other side of my brain, the one that involves spatial relations (a perennial worst score on the SATs) and whimsy (which, though not tested, is far too often neglected).

But once I began creating this little map, I realized I could put anything on it —even silly things like the chain-link fence I had to climb and the large drainage pipes I call Snake Eyes. I realized I could be creative in a way I hadn’t been in a long time. Mapping, like writing, is a way to make a place your own.

Brilliant Air

Brilliant Air

Comments 0 Comment

Up early for a walk in a luminous fog that seemed to be glowing from the inside out. It was as if the pinpointed radiance of a rising sun was smashed and diffused throughout the air.

Air we now see differently than we did a few months ago. A miasma, virus drops in an aerosol of danger.

But this morning the air was an invisibility cloak, a brilliant one that hid me (or at least I pretended it did) in a mantle of unknowing, so I could stride beneath the dripping oaks and into another day.

Blue and Green

Blue and Green

Comments 0 Comment

When walking on clear days I lift up my eyes and am startled by the contrast, the deep beauty of the line where where sky meets foliage. It is a combination only nature could pull off — shades of azure and emerald so brilliant that they would be considered tacky in any other setting.

As I admire the colors I wonder what this place is called. It’s not the horizon because it’s not where earth and sky meet. It’s more of a tree-rizon, where treetop meets firmament.

Whatever it is, it’s looking gorgeous these days.

Still There

Still There

Comments 0 Comment

Yesterday, I escaped again. This time to walk with another daughter, in an inner rather than an outer suburb —an old neighborhood with houses tucked into hillsides. The iris had popped there, and the dogwood and azaleas have bloomed longer than usual this year, thanks to cooler weather, so they were still in fine array. The flowering trees gave each house and yard the enchantment they deserved.

I’ve said this often (here and elsewhere), but the Washington, D.C., area is at its most beautiful in spring — and this year spring has lasted months.

This particular walk took us to the bluffs above the Potomac River, where we clambered on rocks and rain-slicked trails, through tunnels of foliage colored an eye-popping green. How lovely to be in that place in that moment. How good to have gotten out not once but twice (both for valid reasons, I feel I must add — for exercise and food drop-offs), to see a little more of the world that’s out there. It’s a good reminder, six weeks into quarantine, that it will all still be there when we emerge.