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Category: walking

Possibilities of Place

Possibilities of Place

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Since Sunday’s hike I’ve been doing a little research on the Cross-County Trail, Difficult Run and the watershed. I’ve learned about ongoing projects to manage the streams, to keep them healthy with drainage and tree buffers.

I’ve learned about the flooding that often occurs in the section I hiked a few days ago. Most of all, I’ve learned about the communities of runners, walkers and bikers who have traveled these trails before me.

I’ve read stories of single-day marathons, of Nordic pole-walkers, of runners wading waist-high across streams when the water tops the fair-weather crossings.

What these tales have in common is a sense of adventure and discovery. There is awe of the natural beauty, of the possibilities of this place.

Walking to the Potomac

Walking to the Potomac

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Yesterday a hike from Colvin’s Run Mill to the Potomac River, eight miles round trip on the Cross-County Trail. The river is the trail’s northern terminus and you have to work a little to get there. Floods have taken out part of the gravel walk along the stream and there’s a stretch where you must clamber over rocks or turn back. Combine that with two fair-weather creek crossings and I used up my courage quotient for the day.

The destination was worth it, though, walking along the roiling waters of Difficult Run as it makes its way to the river, plunging and skipping over rocks, through channels narrow and deep. (Hard to believe it’s related to the rivulet that meanders through my neighborhood.)

And then coming finally to the Potomac, the orange and yellow kayaks glimpsed through the trees, Maryland on the other side. The stateliness and otherness of a river. And a walk that made the destination matter.

Usefulness

Usefulness

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“I produce nothing but words; I consume nothing but food, a little propane, a little firewood. By being virtually useless in the calculations of the culture at large I become useful, at last, to myself.”

Philip Connors, Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout

I’ve just started reading this book, which is a meditation on solitude, a history of wildfires and fire control in the American West, and (at least in part) a paean to Aldo Leopold, the great conservationist I discovered a few years ago. It’s written by a guy who sits in a tower looking for wildfires in the Gila National Forest in New Mexico.

Talk about dreams of escape — this is certainly one for me. Purposeful, sporadic work, enforced alone time, the splendor of creation. But for now, my secondary landscape will have to be the one I create every time I lace up my running shoes and step out the door.

Walking is for me a way to be “useless in the calculations of the culture” so I can become “useful, at last, to myself.” Walking is also low-tech. It produces nothing, consumes little. But it is rich in what matters most: the time and space in which to observe, think, slow the wheels of time.

I’m Stumped

I’m Stumped

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On one of my favorite, most well-trod routes, I start on the street and end up in the woods. The last part of my walk winds through the “Folkstone Forest,” a straggly stretch of trees that lines the road and leads to the common land meadow.

It’s not a forest in the classic, fairy tale sense, but a neighbor has gone to the trouble of printing up a green sign that says “Folkstone Forest” and hung it from a branch, so who am I to contradict?

The little trail I take is lined with fallen logs and dignified by a small plank bridge. But by this point in my walk I’m ready to be home. The playlist is winding down, the work is waiting. So of course it’s then, when I’m not paying attention, that I run across the tiniest little nub of a tree stump.

Can I tell you how many times this stump has tripped me up? Too many to count. So now I look for it. I check out the smooth dirt path for the aberration, the knob. It’s become a game for me, to find the stump before it stumps me. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. The stump keeps me humble.

Tale of A Trespassing

Tale of A Trespassing

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Yesterday I had my comuppance. I clambered over a fence, tiptoed through a beautifully manicured lawn and was just preparing to scale the second fence into a horse pasture when I heard a voice. It sounded angry. I pulled out my earphones.

“What do you think you’re doing? This is private property,” said the irate homeowner.

“I’m so sorry. I was just cutting through your yard to get to Parker’s Mill Road,” I answered, by way of apology and with just a trace of a question mark at the end of my sentence, hoping he would see the utter harmlessness of my actions.

“This is not a cut-through,” he snapped.

“Don’t worry,” I said, my voice rising now. “I don’t even live here. I’m just visiting my mother.”

“Make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he said, rage bubbling up through his words.

“Got it,” I said, all attempts at politeness vanishing. The only way out at that point was to climb another fence, which I did as quickly as possible.

This was at the beginning of my walk, and after that I started trotting, hoping I could bounce the bad feelings away. It was what I deserved, I know. But the punishment did not fit the crime. It made me think about how many times it doesn’t. Not a bad thing to ponder from time to time.

Leaving “Black Care” Behind

Leaving “Black Care” Behind

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“Black care seldom sits behind the rider whose pace is fast
enough.”

                                                      — Theodore Roosevelt   
So the man I met last night in Ken Burns’ new film “The Roosevelts” is in many ways the man I knew:
the man of action, man of privilege, man of tragedy and loss. His
father died when he was in college; his mother and wife died a few years later on the same
day.  In an agony of grief Roosevelt headed west, to the Badlands, where the limitless
sky and active life helped him heal. 

Hearing all this last night — especially the quotation — makes me think about walking. How many suburban amblers stroll just fast enough to make their worries go away. I know I do. Sometimes I can outrun my troubles, sometimes I can’t. But I usually return in better spirits than I left. “Black care” is almost always left behind.
“It is Solved by Walking”

“It is Solved by Walking”

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I just finished reading Alice McDermott’s novel Someone, in which twice appears a favorite quotation (motto? adage?) of mine: “It is solved by walking.”

When I wrote about this in an earlier blog post, I used the Latin “Solvitur Ambulando,” a term beloved by pilgrims and poets, and mentioned that I might have given this name to my blog had it not already been taken. Still, the spirit of “Solvitur Ambulando” fills this space. I can’t count the number of times my mood, my priorities, even my energy level, have been “solved,” have been set right, by walking.

According to some sources, the phrase originated with Diogenes, who disputed the unreality of motion by walking away. In that sense, solvitur ambulando not only means walking but any practical proof of an argument.

In The Tao of Travel, Paul Theroux attributes the adage to St. Augustine. “Walking to ease the mind is also the objective of the pilgrim,” Theroux writes. “There is a spiritual dimension, too: the walk itself is part of a process of purification. Walking is the age-old form of travel, the most fundamental, perhaps the most revealing.”

For me, it’s the most essential. Not for locomotion — but for sanity. 

Rush Hour

Rush Hour

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My walk yesterday nudged right up against the morning rush hour. Not the D.C., Reston or Vienna rush hour — but the Folkstone rush hour.

Because my subdivision’s “main drag” leads to the local elementary school we have a half hour in the morning and a half hour in the afternoon when active pedestrians risk being run over by a convoy of mini-vans.

Not so for me today; I squeaked in before the brigade. But I wasn’t too early for the bus stop coffee klatsch. Whether by choice or requirement, every child now waiting at the bus stop waits with at least one parent. Gone is the small kid society my children enjoyed during those years — with its own hierarchy and pecking order, sixth-grade patrols at the top, morning kindergartners at the bottom.

Now it’s a time for parents to chit-chat and kids to revolve around them. It’s another way that childhood is changing, another thing I miss about the way things used to be.

Invisible Community

Invisible Community

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It was the hour before dusk on a day that felt more like summer than fall — prime walking time.  I drove past fast-walkers, slow-joggers, stray commuters like me, just heading home. I thought about the community of walkers, one that’s often invisible to the amblers themselves but, ironically, quite obvious to the drivers.

The car-bound cover more ground. Their range lets them see the patterns in the strolls, the commonality of purpose. In one block is a lone faithful runner. In another, an old couple strolling slowly. They may not run into each other, but they are all there.

Since almost anyone who walks in the suburbs drives in the suburbs, we have many chances to see beyond our routes, to know that even if we feel alone, we are not. There are others hitting the pavement too. And in some strange sort of way, we are one.

Segments

Segments

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Walking home from the Silver Line yesterday and driving to the Orange Line this morning, I noticed the journeys have something in common.

Like any trip, they are not just one long sweep of motion; they are segments cobbled together by time and movement.

I hadn’t driven to the Vienna Metro (Orange Line’s last stop) for almost four weeks, so I saw it with fresh eyes: the Fox Mill Road segment, up one hill and down another; the Vale portion, before the big turn and after it; the straightaway that is Hunter Mill Road; the short stretch of Chain Bridge; the newly repaved and bicycle-laned Old Courthouse, then the turn onto Sutton, Country Creek and right then left into the parking garage.

Walking gave me these eyes, let me see the drive in segments as I would a stroll. I’m grateful for that.