Browsed by
Category: walking

Walkers Awake

Walkers Awake

Comments 0 Comment

Yesterday I walked to Metro in an almost rain that required almost an umbrella — but you could get away without one. It was  refreshing.

A misty gloaming, the end of a deluge, meant that those who were fed up with the pelting had given up on any barrier between them and the sky.

And then you had people like me, people cooped up in an office all day and glad for the feel of the elements, any elements.

So I walked quickly, thinking I could dodge the occasional fat drop or two. In my ears the Bach cantata “Sleepers Awake.” Trumpet soaring; organ chords giving me a rhythm for footfall, a walking bass line. I let the contrapuntal melody move me forward.

It took three and a half plays of “Sleepers Awake” to reach Metro Center. I was a little damp but no worse for the wear.

Schuylkill River Walk

Schuylkill River Walk

Comments 0 Comment

The meeting ended a few hours before the Northeast Regional left 30th Street Station so I had enough time to stroll from my West Philly hotel, down Chestnut to 34th, then Spruce, then across the Schuylkill to the walk that runs beside it.

It was Friday afternoon, sun had broken through the clouds, and the temperature was about 70. I joined the baby-stroller-joggers, cyclists, skateboarders and others heading north along the river.

I almost went to the Barnes Museum — one of the Philadelphia’s new premier attractions — but I like to think that in walking we get a glimpse of the true city, the one that exists beneath the attractions.

There were glimpses of skyline with tall grasses in the foreground, there was the sun striking the water; there were all the people and conversations. There was, above all, the joy of moving through space, a space new to me, thrilling in its unknowns.

Walking Key Bridge

Walking Key Bridge

Comments 0 Comment

On Friday I had reason to visit Georgetown’s main campus — or, rather, an office building 20 minutes away from it. Though I work at Georgetown’s law school, I seldom visit the rest of the campus, what’s fondly called the Hilltop.

It’s a beautiful spot, perched above the Potomac and set apart from the rest of the city. But it’s not easy to reach by Metro.  My favorite way to go, though most would say the most arduous, is to get off in Virgina at the Roslyn Station, wend my way through downtown Arlington and then stroll across the Key Bridge.

Friday’s weather was brisk. I wore a jacket and scarf. I considered gloves. But none of this mattered once I started across the span. There are the spires of Healy Hall ahead, and beside the campus the narrow, treed lanes of a much older city. Below is the Potomac, and, if you’re lucky, a crew team skimming across it. The bridge is clogged with trucks and cars and bikes. All is movement and brightness and wind.

And once in the District, there is an impossibly steep hill to climb. They don’t call it the Hilltop for nothing. Motion, sunshine, new vistas — my heart was lighter than it had been in days. And all because I walked Key Bridge.

When Walking Won’t Do

When Walking Won’t Do

Comments 0 Comment

Walking is usually a tonic. It lifts me up and out of myself. But there are limits to its powers, which I discovered yesterday.

I had debated whether to come into the office at all, knowing it would be difficult whether I was home or downtown. Deciding it was better to be distracted, I made the trip in and was, as I had hoped, pulled into the demands of the day.

About 1 p.m. I received a nasty email. Nothing horrible, just an alumnus complaining that his book was omitted from our authors page, the kind of thing that happens occasionally when you deal with large volumes of information. The sort of thing that would usually roll off my back. But yesterday his unkind response put me over the edge.

I tried walking but my Kleenex got a bigger workout than I did. I cut the stroll short, made my way back to office and completed the work day as quickly as I could.

There are walks that inspire and walks that comfort and walks that sometimes must just be endured. There are days like that too. I think I’m in for a few of them.

(Photo: Claire Capehart)

Finding Time

Finding Time

Comments 0 Comment

Walking is often a way for me to handle hard times by absorbing myself in activity, observation and rumination. Everything from real trials to an ordinary bad day can be smoothed and put in perspective by stretching the legs — and the imagination.

But what if time constraints take that walking time away? That’s what’s been happening recently. And, as is so often the case, the walking time is waning at the very time I need it most.

There’s only one thing to do, and that’s to pound the pavement as if my life depends upon it. Because, in a very real way, it does.

R.I.P., Robert E. Simon

R.I.P., Robert E. Simon

Comments 0 Comment

Robert E. Simon, the founder of Reston, Virginia, died yesterday at the age of 101. Simon was a big thinker — and the big plan he had for the parcel of hunt-country land in western Fairfax County was that people should be able to live, work, shop and play all in the same place.

What held his vision together were the Reston Trails, lovely paved paths that wind their way from village cluster to village cluster, passing lakes and wetlands, woods and meadows.

The Reston Trails are my stomping ground. I’ve walked them for more than a quarter century now, walked them in all weathers and moods. I’ve pushed my babies in strollers on them and, later, watched my kids bicycle ahead of me on them, still wobbly but proud to be training-wheel-free. Now I walk them in this new phase of life, my children living their own lives away from home.

While I’ve used the paths to muse and find some quiet time, the point of Reston was actually just the opposite. “Community,” Simon is quoted as saying in an obituary in today’s Washington Post. “That word is the whole discussion. … I think having facilities
readily available for people of all kinds, from little kids to the
elderly — that’s the most important thing of all.”

(Lake Anne Plaza, Reston’s original village and the home of Robert E. Simon.) 

Urban Obstacle Course

Urban Obstacle Course

Comments 0 Comment

My one-mile walk to Metro in the afternoon is a study in pedestrian behavior. I became interested in this when I lived in New York, where a rush-hour stroll down Fifth Avenue can be an exercise in start-and-stop frustration.

There are fewer people on D.C. streets but sidewalks can be narrower and walkers slower. So at 5:30 p.m. I must still employ some of the skills I learned in New York: looking for openings in a crowd, gauging the approach of the walker ahead of me, looking down at crucial moments so as not to engage in one of those awkward dances where no one knows whether to go left or right.

If everything works according to plan, I can make it from my office to Metro Center in the same time it would take on the subway.  This produces a lot of satisfaction, some welcome weariness and a renewed appreciation of pedestrian flow.

It’s an urban obstacle course, completed for the day.

Cicadas in the City

Cicadas in the City

Comments 0 Comment

Out the door and down New Jersey Avenue. The familiar arching trees shade the hotel and taxi stand. The Capitol lies ahead; its scaffolding gleams in the noonday sun.

I run for every light, avoid the waits, move as much as possible. It’s the pace that does it, I think — a steady cadence does much to loosen the joints and free up the mind. But scenery helps also, and yesterday’s was perfect. Blue skies, cicadas still singing, all the bustle of early September.

For many years I mourned New York City. Washington, D.C., could never measure up in quirkiness or energy or street life. But in the last several years I’ve mellowed to D.C. I appreciate the cicadas, for instance, and the tall trees that shelter them. Their crescendo is the sound of hot southern cities, a sound that says slow down. No one heeds it, of course, but at least it’s there, mixed in with car horns and sirens.

High Season

High Season

Comments 0 Comment

This is the high season for trail walking. Chilly mornings give way to warm, dry afternoons. The air has a freshness to it, which energizes and motivates. It pushes us up and out, makes us move even when we don’t much feel like it.

I feel like trail-walking this morning but new responsibilities have me in the office today. If I’m lucky I’ll pound some pavement at lunchtime, and that will energize and motivate in a different way.

But for now I’ll dream of a clearing in the forest, a hard-packed path winding out from it, oaks and maples and hickories arching over browning ferns and reddening blackgum. The trail won’t yet be covered but there will be enough leaves to provide a crunch when I walk. A soundtrack for the stroll.

Step It Up

Step It Up

Comments 0 Comment

I heard the surgeon general about midway through a punishing nine-hour drive spent completely on my posterior. A day of little walking for me, in other words. Just the opposite of what the nation’s highest health official was asking us to do.

Half of all Americans don’t get enough exercise, he said. And there’s a cure for that, a simple cure: take a walk. Walking 20 minutes a day can reduce our chances of getting such chronic diseases as diabetes and hypertension. It improves emotional well-being and keeps us sharp as we age.

But even with all these benefits and more, enough people aren’t walking. So the surgeon general is on a mission. Twenty minutes a day is all it takes, he says. Surely we have that much time. As for other excuses — there’s no safe place to walk in one’s community, for instance — part of the Step It Up campaign is to re-think the way Americans live and work, to call for more public transportation and walkable communities.

These are laudable ideas, and I’m with him … well … every step of the way.

(A highly walkable community in the Czech Republic!)