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Anniversary of a Masterpiece

Anniversary of a Masterpiece

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Now I know why I was hearing snippets of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony on the radio Tuesday. It was the two-hundredth anniversary of its premiere. For two centuries now we humans have had this masterwork at our disposal. 

Yesterday I read an account of its creation on the Marginalian. I’d heard some of this before, but I didn’t know about Beethoven’s devotion to Schiller, whose “Ode to Joy” the symphony’s last movement celebrates, or the piece’s long gestation period. I like to think of the notes rattling around in the composer’s head as he took one of his long walks through Vienna. 

Beethoven insisted on conducting, though he was totally deaf by that point.  He was allowed to do so with the proviso that another conductor be present as a “backup.” This conductor instructed the musicians to look only at him. 

When the last notes sounded the audience at first fell silent, perhaps aware even then that they had witnessed not just a concert but a moment in history. And then, in the words of the Marginalian’s Maria Popova, “the gasping silence broke into a scream of applause. People leapt to their feet, waving their handkerchiefs and chanting his name. Beethoven, still facing the orchestra and still waving his arms to the delayed internal time of music only he could hear, noticed none of it, until Karoline Unger [the contralto soloist] stood up, took his arm, and gently turned him around.”

(Beethoven by Julian Schmid)

Still Life

Still Life

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Walks lately have been wedged between errands and hospital visits, brief escapes into light and motion. Still, they have worked their magic, have loosened muscles and mind.

A photo I snapped on Tuesday’s stroll captures a truth. A sky that seemed mostly cloudy, I see now, was bluer than I remembered. 

Isn’t that the way of life, the way of survival? We leave the hospital or nursing home, and we want to shout hallelujah. Yes, we are sad, but we are still here, still walking upright, and the ones we love, they don’t blame us for rejoicing. 

Perfect Sense

Perfect Sense

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I’ve never quite gotten used to the suburban irony of driving to walk. Sometimes I fight it; I once spent weeks figuring out how to traipse through the woods  to reach my favorite Reston trail.

This was fun but impractical. Yes, I could hike to the trail, but it took more than an hour to reach it and quickly became a three- to four-hour foray. Good exercise, but who has that many hours in the day?

Most of the time then, I resign myself to the practice. I jump in the car and burn precious fossil fuels just to amble on trails rather than streets. It’s a strange way to live when viewed in the arc of human history, but to us modern folk, it makes perfect sense.

Purple Pathway

Purple Pathway

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A walk yesterday when I didn’t feel like walking. A walk that healed and restored. It began at a trailhead I haven’t frequented in months, meandered down a dirt trail, over a bridge, then passed a field of lavender flowers. 

I thought I knew all the patches of fetching spring blooms, but these had escaped my notice. They may have been weeds (wild grape hyacinth?), but who cares? They were shining in the late day sun, a purple pathway.

The flowers and the movement invigorated. The world looked brighter when I returned home.

Witnessing

Witnessing

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Walking is witnessing, a way to be present in movement and in time. 

Yesterday’s stroll took me from the oldest part of Reston to the newest, from a community center to a commercial plaza, from a small cafe to a bustling bakery.

And all along I’m thinking spring. The dogwood, the azalea, the first green of the oaks and poplars. How lovely it is to see it unfold along familiar paths, how grateful I was to witness its unfolding.

The Bluebell Trail

The Bluebell Trail

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The Kwanzan cherries are spreading their heavy arms, wowing us, as they always do, with their big-fisted blossoms. Dogwood are playing it closer to the vest, but they’re almost peak bloom, too. 

I worried I’d missed the Virginia bluebells, but yesterday I scooted out for a late-morning hike on the Bluebell Trail that runs along the Potomac River. The flowers were primo, scattered fetchingly among the phlox and ferns with the river roaring in the distance. 

Moving through springtime beauty is one of the best ways to ingest it, to make it stick. Which is what I want to do now, to inhale the loveliness, to claim it as my own. But that, as we know, is not possible. Walking through and past the flowers reminds me that they, like all of us, are present only a short while. We make time to see them when they’re here — and then let them go.

ISO Stairways

ISO Stairways

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Walking in the suburbs is one thing. Taking the stairs is something else entirely — mostly because of how difficult they are to find.

They may lurk around several nondescript corners in a nondescript office building. They may be hidden behind an unlabeled door. They may be dark when you enter them, though hopefully lights will come on as you ascend. 

I once worked on the third floor of a 100-plus-year-old university building. It had a staircase to die for, broad, shallow, perfectly calibrated to the human footstep, with a curved wooden banister. I felt noble just ascending those stairs. They were the main show. There may have been an elevator somewhere, but it took a back seat. 

I know it’s not practical, but what if every two- or three- or four-story building was retrofitted with such a grand staircase? What if elevators were harder to find. Wouldn’t we all be better off? 

Wet and Dry

Wet and Dry

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We’re climbing out of what has been an unusually wet spring so far. Three days of rain ended late yesterday, with cloudy/ showery weather the week before.

Which means I’m glad to see cloud breaks this morning because they promise a long, outdoor walk this afternoon, instead of sodden strolls or indoor exercise. Come to think of it, I dreamed of hiking last night, proof positive of how much I’ve missed it.

As for the route, though, this is a day to stay on paved paths rather than dirt and gravel. It’s good we have plenty of both around here.

(If paths were this dry, I’d go for a woods walk.)
Anywhere People

Anywhere People

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I’m making my way through Neil King Jr.’s American Ramble at a walking pace. I’m enjoying it so much that I don’t want to rip through it, much as I would prolong a stroll on a perfect spring morning. 

King walked from Washington, D.C., to New York City in the spring of 2021 and wrote a book about what he found along the way. I’m more than two-thirds of the way through King’s report — he’s about to cross the Delaware — but I’m still musing over thoughts he had in Lancaster County. 

“There are today at heart two American stories: the story of those who stay, and the story of those who go. … Some of us still wander from place to place, and many others of us don’t. We have the Somewhere people, who are very much of a place and rooted there, and we have the Anywhere people, who have a faint sense of belonging wherever they are and if they ever had a place, they left it behind long ago.”

What happens, I wonder, when the scales are tipped, and a society has too many Anywheres and not enough Somewheres? And can walkers turn Anywheres … into Somewheres? 

Point A to Point B

Point A to Point B

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On Sunday, I walked to a friend’s house. This would seem unremarkable unless you knew the narrow hilly road that connects our neighborhoods. There’s no shoulder, no margin of error. The road was built long before all the development that’s clogged our county. 

Luckily, I had a secret weapon: a path through the woods that goes from my house to my friends’. It takes about 30 minutes, compared with a five-minute drive. But since I’m just back from a world where walking with purpose is far more common than it is here, I was more than willing to do it. 

While I was strolling I was thinking about how natural it seems when you’re doing it: walking not just for exercise but because you need to get from Point A to Point B.

I wish I could do more of it.

(Pedestrians in Funchal, Madeira)