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Category: walking

Frosted Fields

Frosted Fields

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An early walk on a Reston trail, one of my favorites. This is a paved path that winds between backyards and parkland before connecting with the Cross-County Trail. It’s cool and enticing in the summer because of the tall oaks that shade it — and no less lovely in the winter.

It was a quiet amble —  not a soul about — and the stillness rang in my ears. Birds fluttered in the hedges, and the stream, normally gurgling, was quiet in the cold. It was chilly, so I walked fast from the get-go, flipping up the hood on my parka and balling up my fists inside old gloves.

But three quarters of the way down on the left, I had to stop. The wetland landscape there was transformed by frost. Matted grasses gleamed with white and broken tree trunks loomed above them. There was thin ice where the creek water ponds and a monochromatic beauty throughout.

Beauty is always welcome, but never more than when it is unexpected.

Blog, in a Nutshell

Blog, in a Nutshell

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Sometimes it all comes back like the rekindling of an old passion — the reason I started this blog, which is the walking and what it leads to, the new ideas, a fresh way of looking at something. Though I post about books and music and writing and more, it was walking that started it and walking that energizes it still.

No surprise this came to me yesterday, when the air felt more like spring than fall and a pair of doves rose up and fluttered off as I strode too close to them. I heard geese, too, a flock that has decided to winter here, I guess.

The light was soft and the scenery, to quote Hemingway, a movable feast, and I gobbled it up as I ambled past. Thoughts floated by, some of them even worth keeping. So I rushed home and wrote them down. And there you have it — the blog, in a nutshell.

Walking to Georgia

Walking to Georgia

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On my getaway last month I briefly hiked the Appalachian Trail. I passed it quickly on the way up to an advertised 360-degree view, which was more like 345, since to reach the ultimate pinnacle required a little more rock scrambling than I wanted to do. But on the way back to the car, the AT was there and I was game.

But first, I had to decide: would I head to Maine … or Georgia? A silly way to put it, of course, since I wouldn’t be walking to either one, wouldn’t even be on the trail itself for more than a few minutes.

Making the choice made me think, though. Despite all we hear about it being the journey not the destination that matters, endpoints make a difference. They shift the way we think about a trip. They color the journey.

In the end, the sun was slanting more fetchingly to the south, so that’s what I chose. This is what I saw. Not Georgia … but not bad.

Headlamp Stroll

Headlamp Stroll

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Wearing a headlamp on this morning’s early walk with Copper, I felt like a Cyclops treading my suburban lane. It’s a strange sensation to emit light from your forehead — both convenient and powerful, even vaguely godlike.

But mostly, it’s freeing, which means I can better juggle leash and doggie bag and still have one hand tucked in my pocket because, well, it’s freezing cold out there.


In this season of light, when homes are decked out in garlands of white and colored bulbs, when my eyes search the darkness for the faintest trace of dawn, it feels good to emit light, as if within my own frail human self I carry what hope and heart I need. This is not true, of course. I know how much I need others. But for a moment, in the dark, it felt otherwise. 
Walking and Looking

Walking and Looking

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It was a skill I perfected when I lived and walked in New York City: When faced with a pedestrian barreling right at me, I learned to quickly glance down. To keep eye contact meant we’d likely find ourselves in one of those awkward dances where one heads right thinking the other will head left, only he heads right too. Looking down breaks the cycle and avoids collisions.

This behavior would not surprise Alexandra Horowitz. In her book On Looking, which I mentioned a few weeks ago, she describes pedestrian behavior as quick, fluid and fish-like. It depends on three basic rules (alignment, avoidance and following the person in front of you) plus a series of quick calculations made because we pay attention to each other.

Most of the time, people look where they are going. So the gaze is the giveaway. You can even follow someone’s head, because people actually incline in the direction they want to go.

The one type of pedestrian that breaks this rule: the phone talker. “Their conversational habits change the dynamic of the flowing shoal,” Horowitz writes. “No longer is each fish aware, in a deep, old-brain way, of where everyone is around him.”

And this means that my looking-away skill doesn’t work as well anymore.  Which is something I already knew, in my deep, old-brain way.

Drip Drip

Drip Drip

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I was already writing another blog post for today … and then I stepped outside.

It was the very definition of a “misty moisty morning,” warmer since yesterday’s cold rain, but still delightfully soggy with cloud swaths and drip-drips and absolutely no reason to be outdoors. Unless, of course, you have a dog who needs a walk.

And because I do, I was thrust out into this watery world, there to admire the droplets of water that grace the tips of each weeping cherry bough. They glittered, these droplets; they looked like the tiniest of flashlights, or maybe the ends of lighted scopes.

Undoubtedly there is physics at work here, surface tension perhaps, or maybe even something that involves an equation. All I know is that each droplet seemed so fabulously close to bursting that the sheer improbability of that made me smile.

Photo by John Thomas on Unsplash

Moonset

Moonset

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I woke early yesterday, as I do these days. Woke to a bright world, a full moon, and a persistent one. Even though the sky was lightening in the east, the moon was hanging on, slightly mottled with a haze of clouds, but still there.

It was strong enough to throw shadows on cars and houses — but soft enough to preserve the pre-dawn hush. It shined on a sleeping suburban world, utterly still, with frosted leaves that glittered in the grass.

In much of the world, moonlight matters. It’s the difference between seeing and stumbling. I thought about that as I walked west, into the moonset.

Listening In

Listening In

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While I consider myself a law-abiding citizen, I do enjoy eavesdropping. The act of listening in on a conversation is usually not criminal, of course, but it can be. I like to think I keep the habit in check.

Nevertheless, if I’m out to dinner I sometimes listen harder to the conversation at the next table than I do to my own.  This is not an admirable trait, but I can’t help myself. Maybe it’s the writer in me, the observer. But maybe that’s just an excuse.

This morning I realized how much I eavesdrop while walking (walks dropping?), having harvested two juicy bits of dialogue just on today’s stroll from train to office:

“It was real Louisiana gumbo,” said one camo-clad soldier to another as a group of them breezed past me as I emerged from Metro.

The other was uttered by a top-coated, loafer-wearing man who was striding beside me down a Crystal City street.  “Yes,” he said into his phone. “Northern Macedonia.”

Ah, the tales one could spin from these tidbits. But alas, I have other work to do, so for now, these snippets will remain … just snippets.

White Stripes

White Stripes

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Crosswalks in my neighborhood are getting a facelift. A set of them on a road I drive every weekend have new paint, flashing lights and big signs in neon yellow to remind motorists to stop.

In my work neighborhood I’ve started taking a new route to the office, one that involves a crosswalk and the forbearance of drivers.

It’s interesting to be on either end of crosswalk etiquette — as a pedestrian on weekdays and a driver on weekends. It helps me see how important it is to share the road, to look out for the errant ambler or the distracted driver.

More than anything else, a crosswalk encourages engagement. Those white stripes on the road can be a walker’s — and a driver’s — best friend.

Knowledge Workers

Knowledge Workers

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Like most “knowledge workers,” I spend a lot of time sitting. This is made painfully clear at the end of work days when I move stiff muscles up and out of the building, onto the streets and sidewalks of Crystal City.

A standing desk and an office to stand in has improved this a little. But I still get into my rut, which is too much time on my behind and too little time on my feet.

Of course, those of us who wax rhapsodic about standing desks might sing a new song if we were street cleaners, baristas, or letter-carriers. Too much sitting is a problem of affluence, and that’s something we knowledge workers shouldn’t forget.

Still, I regularly remind myself of the power of movement. Even a quick stroll down the hall for a glass of water can rejigger brain cells. This is also a good time to be thankful for … a job that lets me sit down.