A Walker in the Suburbs

Inside it was about 65; outside a good 20 degrees warmer. The air was filled with a collective exhale as office-workers enjoyed their lunch hours on the first warm day of the season. People wore shorts and running shoes. They were biking and strolling and just hanging around.

The outdoor seats at Cosi — the cafe where I sat and had a raspberry iced tea before my first interview here — were filled with al fresco patrons.

I walked past them though. No more sitting for me. I was in search of a block to walk around, but there aren’t too many of those here.

The one I found consists mostly of a service road behind my multi-block office complex. It’s not the grit and glamor of my old walks on Capitol Hill, but it was quiet and warm. I could stretch my legs and let my mind wander.

It was interesting, too, exploring the unseen underbelly of this glitzy space. The bleeping of backing trucks. The aroma of smokers on the periphery. It was around the block, Crystal City style.

For a walk break yesterday I turned left, strolled south down Crystal Drive. The lunchtime bustle buoyed me; I was ready to explore.

It’s a neighborhood of hotels, restaurants and fancy office buildings connected by glossy indoor passageways — not my style, but handy in the rain.

Beyond all of this, I’m convinced, lie real streets with real people picking up dry cleaning, dragging reluctant toddlers, walking the dog. But to find them I first need to discover the connector routes, the roads that will take me under the busy highways that honeycomb the area.

There aren’t many of them. Crystal City is almost an island. But all I need is one escape route. The maps are open. The shoes are new.

A quick lunchtime walk the other day found me on the Mount Vernon trail. The little connector path took me past banks of honeysuckle and edgings of little geranium-looking flowers.

I kept shifting my gaze from the close to the faraway. In the background, the Washington Monument rose behind National Airport’s runways. In the foreground, all the bluster and bother of modern transportation: trains, buses, cars and jets.

Movement all around but striving for stillness within.

A walk early this morning, a walk from night into day.  The road inky black beneath my feet to start, I rely on memory for the dips and bumps to step around along the way.

No music this morning. I wanted to hear the birds wake up — and I did.

But what I hadn’t reckoned on was catching the first crickets of the season. A chorus of them at Harvest Glen Court. They were chirping their little hearts out, glad to be alive on this muggy morning.

I listened to them, thrilled to them, took note.

Yesterday I found myself in a new-to-me part of town. It took a while to orient myself, but once I did I was striding toward the river and the Mount Vernon Trail, hard by National Airport.

My shoes were pinching and my bag was heavy, but I needed to be thinking — which meant I needed to be walking.

It was a cloudy, early-spring afternoon. Warm and almost humid. Bikers rule the trail in that part of town so I stayed diligently to the right.

But the foot fall worked its magic. I could think! I could start to see the world from a different perspective.

And, as if to underline that point, I looked up to see a Metro train glide by, so much more futuristic and Monorail-like when seen from afar. It caught the rays of the setting sun and glittered in the light.

I snapped a shot so I could remember: It’s all about perspective.

A quick stroll at the end of day. Copper and I walk against the traffic, as we always do.

A cold wind blows, not as hard as it did a few hours earlier, when it almost knocked me over on a downtown street corner. But hard enough.

Now the wind is more of a companion, a negative force, something that keeps you company by keeping you on your toes. It blows my hair off my face, ruffles Copper’s fir ever so lightly. He’s unfazed by its presence.

Soon we reach the turn-around point. Now the wind is behind us, blowing my hair into my face. Now the wind is behind us, pushing us home.