Last evening I slipped out at dusk, wearing tennis shoes, office clothes and a rain jacket the color of twilight. It was too late to change into sweatshirt and tights. There was time only for the leaving.
And so I forgot the trappings, the music on a string. I bolted before the moment and the impulse left me. Open on my screen was an article, mind food. Beside me a book of poetry.
They would wait. The walk would be something else, I knew, nourishment of a different kind.
A pre-dawn walk today in a light rain, Cyclops-eye blazing, cap and a hood to keep the drops at bay. These early outings merge into dreamscape. Did I really don shoes and socks and walk to Fox Mill Road and back? Or was that another walk, another day?
By the time I left the house this morning the day had lightened and the rain was steadier. The pink dogwood lifted its arms gracefully on one side of the yard, and the white dogwood took my breath away. In between were ferns, azaleas and forget-me-nots. The familiarity of the spring garden.
It seemed a different day than one hour earlier. A second beginning.
I left the house before six today, walked into a misty morning with piled clouds and a chorus of birdsong. The air had a pastel fullness to it and the light was worthy of Bierstadt.
On mornings like these I leave the music at home so I can better observe the day as it wakes, stretches, waves his arms and opens its eyes.
Today, though, the morning clouded up as I strolled, and fat drops fell. But before they could gain too much traction, the day reversed course once again. Now it’s gloriously sunny and green.
It’s what I’ve wanted to do every day this week as I sat five stories up in a shell of glass and steel — watch the morning unfold, and be inside it as it wakes.
It must be spring cleaning time, because Folkstone Drive has become a bazaar. Within the last few weeks, you could have scored a kitchen cabinet, bathroom vanity and a grill — all sitting on the street, absolutely free!
It’s hard to drive by this stuff without picking it up. It’s that hunting-gathering impulse honed when I lived in New York in my 20s and practically furnished an apartment with pieces drug in off the sidewalk.
But with much internal dialogue (“do you really need a broken grill? don’t you already have one sitting on the deck?”) and a modicum of self-shaming, I’ve managed to ignore this free stuff and act like I’m above it all.
I concentrate instead on the backdrops into which these items are placed and what lies just beyond them — the woods, the flowers, the dogwood, the redbud! What’s always free is the stride and the vista and what I see along the way. Everything else is just gravy.
Yesterday’s walk took me along a Reston trail. It was late afternoon, balmy and blooming, with crows cawing in the swamp.
I thought about the name of this blog, “A Walker in the Suburbs.” I thought about how if you didn’t know my suburb, you might envision streets of sameness, void of nature and texture.
You might not imagine this immersion in a natural world: stream gurgling, peepers peeping, smell of loam in the air. You might discount the opportunities for awe.
A Georgetown walk can be full of stops and starts. Crowds bustle and churn. Sidewalks narrow and buckle. Cars jockey for spaces.
This is one of the oldest parts of D.C., and it does not always hum to a modern pace. You can’t drive fast here; the four-way stops see to that. And you can’t walk fast here, either — at least not on a crowded Sunday afternoon.
But if you hit a lull, and the gods are with you, you can at least stroll. And if you do, this is what you see:
These days I take walks whenever and wherever I can find them. On busy days, around the block is all I have time and space for. Yesterday was one of those days.
I pushed open the heavy glass door, slipped on my sunglasses and turned right at the Cosi Restaurant to reach the service road.
Usually it’s quiet back there but yesterday there was enough traffic to keep me on my toes, skirting puddles while steering clear of delivery trucks.
At the end of the block there’s a fitness park, which is where I snapped this photo. Many of flowering trees took a hit in last week’s frigid weather. About half of Washington’s famed cherry blossoms were nipped, the first time this has happened in the trees’ century-old history.
But this little guy survived. And seeing him there with a background of blue made me feel like it was truly spring, not just March 20.
It was a short walk. But it was enough.
A recent walk through the Folkstone woods led me past a shady glade and creek curve where the girls used to play. They called it Brace Yourself. Maybe there was some feat of derring do they had to perform there, walking across the creek on a log or picking up a crawdad. I’m unclear why they gave it that name, but the point is that they did.
Brace Yourself got me thinking about the joy of naming places. I remember doing that when I was a kid. There was the Valley of Eternal Snows — a sheltered cove in the Ware Farm field behind our house, a place where I had once found some dirty snow late in the season.
And then there were the Block-up Boys — not exactly a place, I know. They were the bullies on the street who wouldn’t let me ride my tricycle to the top of the hill. (So there was a place involved, sort of.)
When we name a place we make it our own. We look at it with fresh eyes; we see it whole. Why do we stop doing this as we get older? Do mortgages and responsibilities drive it away, this penchant for staking imaginative claim to the places we love?
I made a tiny vow right there at Brace Yourself. I decided to start naming the bridges and paths, the springs and glades. Even if no one else ever hears or knows these names — I will.
Yesterday, a return to a favorite hike, the Cross County Trail between Colvin Run Mill and Georgetown Pike. The path was busy with mountain bikers, runners, families with grandparents and kids — including one grandpa who stepped off the fair-weather crossing into this stream.
He righted himself quickly and kept on walking. That’s the spirit: staying on track!
I hope I do that when I’m a grandparent (which, with a married daughter and son-in-law, may not be too far in my future). The key with the hiking and the crossing is the keeping-on part.
Yesterday made it easy: a springlike day that made an unexpected step in the creek not the worst thing in the world.
Ellen and I met for brunch in Bethesda yesterday — our favorite meeting place between Annapolis and Reston — and afterward I slipped on my tennis shoes, took off my scarf and jacket and walked four miles on the Capital Crescent Trail, one of my favorite urban walks.
It was 70 degrees, and the path was clogged with joggers and strollers and bikers and dogs. A carnival atmosphere — and everyone in amazement that we could wear shorts and t-shirts instead of parkas and gloves.
What to say about such an amble and such an afternoon? Only that it was filled with the life force, was virtually overflowing with it. And everyone I saw — whether zooming by on a bicycle or being pushed in a wheelchair — seemed to feel the same way.