A Walker in the Suburbs

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.

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)

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.

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!)

Walking in the dog days is not unlike taking a bath. The air is full of moisture and weight.

I run down West Ox Road, past houses that have privacy now that trees have leafed out, filled in. As usual I strolled around the containment pond, hoping to see some red-winged blackbirds. But there were none. I realized how much I’d come to count on seeing them there. How each stage of my walk is populated with images and expectations.

Instead, I saw crowded cattails and reeds that might have been elegant had there been some wind blowing through them. We are at the tail end of a season. The scenery is looking tired. Or maybe it’s just the walker who is tired. That’s more like it!

Yesterday my sister and I walked on the Capital Crescent Trail in Bethesda, Maryland — and I realized this morning that I have no pictures to show for it. No shots of the tree tunnels, of the bikers and skaters and Sunday-afternoon amblers. This is because we were talking as fast as we were walking.

I am for the most part a solitary stroller, walking alone by choice. It’s when I sift through the day’s events, when I jostle myself free of the routine and to-do list long enough for thoughts to surface. Walking has become an essential writing tool. It’s the great “un-sticker.”

But when presented with a willing companion — someone who will walk and talk with me — ah, there’s almost no better way to make the words fly than moving forward together in space.