A walk last night after work, late enough that the sun slanted low in the sky, blinding me as I walked west.
Weeks of rain were forgotten, blue sky ruled. But it was the air that caught my attention.
It was weightless and fine-tuned, a caress.
An early walk this morning through a damp May morning. Peonies hang their heads, roses, too. Iris stand upright, beards glistening, and grasses gleam with moisture. I tip the heavy planter where the new impatiens are struggling to root; they’re almost floating in water, we’ve had so much rain.
It’s the time of year when everything seems most alive. Cardinals sing and swoop. Copper comes inside drenched from rainwater he’s picked up from scooting underneath the azalea bushes. Honeysuckle scent wafts from a tangle of greenery down at the corner. I inhale deep whiffs of it coming and going.
How nice it would be if I could follow this day through its moments. If I could walk, run, bounce and pedal through it. If I could be present for its drowsy afternoon.
Instead, I clean up and drive, walk, Metro and bus to the city. I write these words in a clean, calm office building made of steel and glass. The buzzing, blaring natural world seems far away.
I can’t wait to get back to it.
National Airport is only a mile from my office, less as the crow flies (though Google Maps doesn’t chart crow-fly mileage). But it took me half an hour to navigate yesterday because of the time I spent backtracking.
The problem was that I had walked from the office to the airport but never the other way around. I had the general idea but couldn’t figure out the specifics (like finding the bridge that crosses the parkway and the railroad tracks). Airport signage (in fact, most signage) does not favor walkers!
Eventually I found the road that led to the ramp that led to Crystal City. It all seemed so easy once it fell into place. I was on the downward slope, heading back to office and home.
(The first National Airport terminal in 1941, shortly after it opened. Courtesy Library of Congress.)
Arlington’s ART 43 bus is punctual enough to set your watch to — although I suppose no one sets a watch anymore. But through the months I’ve ridden the “Art 43” I’ve come to count on its regularity.
This morning was another story. I figured there was a good excuse, and there was. An accident on the route tied up traffic for miles. But I waited … and waited. A small crowd soon formed.
What’s more important, though, is how I waited. On a Metro platform you can pace but you can’t walk. When you’re waiting for this bus, at least in the morning, you can walk — because the bus makes a little jog around a short block, and if you walk clockwise around the stop, you’ll see the bus in time to run for it.
All of which is to say that today I walked while I waited.
The walking wait (waiting walk?) is not the most restful walk I take. But it’s better than just plain waiting.
(Rice paddies in the sun. I figure if the walk wasn’t restful, at least the picture can be.)
Yesterday Suzanne and I went for a walk after work. It was a lovely spring afternoon, just begging to be strolled through.
We started at my office in Crystal City, and quickly angled onto the Mount Vernon Trail, dodging the high-speed through bikes on the narrower connector path. We had to talk a little louder when we got to Gravelly Point, where jets roared overhead from take-off at National Airport.
But by Memorial Bridge the air was soft and quiet. The fresh green weeping willow branches shimmered in the lowering sun.
Mostly, we talked. But sometimes we marveled, too. Washington has its monster traffic jams, but it has marvelous foot paths, too. And yesterday I felt like we were on all of them.
We walked for hours. So this morning, curious, I looked up the distance.
Seven miles. You could have fooled me. It didn’t feel an inch more than five.
As the days lengthen I notice new landmarks on my evening walks through Arlington. Yesterday’s “find” was discovering the Virginia Square Metro Station. I looked to the left, and there it was. Not that I was ready to ride the rails. I pushed on to the Ballston Station. But it was nice to know it was there.
My first walk on this route was late last year. I barely made it to Court House before the street lights came on. And by Clarendon it was completely dark, so I hopped on a Metro there.
I got lost on my next two forays to the neighborhood. First I swung too far to the north, the next time too far to the south. I was looking for the middle way.
It took the brighter afternoons of early spring to reveal it. Fairfax Drive, the street I was looking for, looks like a parking lot when you enter from the east. It’s only when you stroll a few yards beyond the entry way that you see it blossom into a road. This is not something I could discern in darkness or even in dusk; full daylight was required.
I like discovering this neighborhood little by little, as the light allows.
Yesterday I read about a new trend that started in Sweden. It’s called plogging, which comes from “jogging” combined with “plocka-uppa” (Swedish for pick up). The idea is simple. You take a trash bag along on a run and collect the odd plastic bottles and cigarette butts you encounter. Disposable gloves are recommended.
Translate this to walking and you have “plalking” — or do you?
I care about the environment and have even been known to pick up a bit of errant trash. But I can’t see turning my fast walks into scavenger sessions. It’s about the rhythm, you see.
The cadence of the stroll is a large part of its magic. Take that away and you have … beach combing.
The other day I walked exactly as long as it took to listen to Brahms’ “Variations on a Theme by Haydn.” Then I turned around, walked back and listened to the same piece again. Eighteen minutes down and 18 minutes back. Adding a couple minutes on each end for the turn-around and the cool-down made it a 40-minute walk, three to four miles.
It was simple. It was pure. It was exquisite. At least the musical part.
Usually my walks are prescribed by geography — to the end of the neighborhood and back — or by time — 15 minutes out and 15 minutes back. Measuring the walk by music was deliciously different: organic and thematic.
I don’t always have the freedom for a musical measure, but it’s something to aspire to.
Yesterday’s damp chilly walk was full of birdsong and the smell of fresh earth. I’d already heard spring peepers, and then I spied a pair of mourning doves. More signs of spring. They sat on the road until a car was almost upon them, then flew away together into the gray sky.
Mourning doves are also called rain doves, which may be why there were out and about yesterday.
And it was a good day to be out and about. A light drizzle fell, but the earth was alive in a way it hasn’t been recently. No more cold, frozen ground.
As the body moves through space, thoughts move through the mind, and what was cluttered is suddenly cleared, as if a plump bird swept away the cobwebs with its swift wing.
The strolls through Arlington are becoming commonplace. Some days I walk two Metro stops up the line, others four. Last night it was two, and when I descended into the tunnel I could see a train coming. I was “lucky.” There had been a switch problem earlier and trains had been single-tracking most of the evening. The next train was due in 16 minutes (a lengthy interval at rush hour even for this dysfunctional system).
Can I do justice to the inward groan that greets a packed-full subway car at the end of a long day? Inward howl is more like it. A clown car’s worth of people piled out at Clarendon, but still it was shoulder to shoulder. But what’s this? I spied a tiny space, enough for me to step in and find a pole to hang onto. At least I had only six stops left. Many riders had been sardined in there for double, triple that.
It was one of those days, major cuts proposed to the State Department and Department of Agriculture, cuts that will no doubt never be enacted but which underline the difficulties of living here. Remind me again … oh, yeah, I work here, we work here. And now the girls work here, too.
Only one thing to do: Get home as quickly as possible and change into comfy clothes … then do something to make the world go away:
make dinner
hang out in the kitchen
bounce on the trampoline
write in my journal
watch the Olympics
talk on the phone
read a good book
hug Copper
… And hope tomorrow (today) is a little bit better!