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Homework

Homework

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Behind my back, the girls say, “Someone should tell Mom she doesn’t have to do all the reading.” But no one does. And it wouldn’t work anyway. I do all the reading gladly. And I take my time writing papers. I have fallen back into the old routine.

The last two times I was a student, I earned professional masters degrees. For 10 years, the classes I’ve been in have been ones I’m teaching.

So the class I’m taking now is just for fun. For intellectual re-engagement with the world. There is no need for excuses. The process is the point.

I had forgotten the ease of letting someone else do the work. Of sitting and listening, and not leading, the discussion. Of being all lit up by the ideas bouncing around my head. It’s good for a walker to have something to chew on while she treads the suburban paths. And I have more than my share these days.

Transported

Transported

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Yesterday after work I had one of those stray patches of time that appear in a day. Luckily, I had my walking shoes on, so I took to the hills. Sort of.

The hills I took to are part of a gas pipeline easement that runs through our part of the county. Because this land must be kept clear it offers an untrammeled view through the heart of suburbia. With a little imagination it could be a lower slope in the Scottish highlands. It has that sort of lilt and roll to it. For about a quarter mile I pretended, then I ran into a fence.

I finished my walk on a street that seemed wet behind the ears when we first moved here but seems now to have settled into itself. Houses have moss on their roofs and stories to tell. Trees lean into each other, as if to share secrets.

The sun was low in the sky, the air was soft and light. I wasn’t in Scotland, but I was transported.

Tropical Storm

Tropical Storm

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Out early for a walk before Irene, I push myself through puddles of air. There is little rain, only sporadic mist. But the sky is gray and heavy, as if tired of its burden, ready to shift it down to earth, to rest its shoulders for a while. And my steps are leaden, too, earthbound.

In the meadow there is barely any movement, just the faintest stirring of the goldenrod and grass. It is a welcome stillness; I pass only one cyclist and two dog-walkers. People are inside, sleeping or waiting for the storm. The quiet suburban paths are free for the taking.

It is a quiet late-summer morning. The “tropical” has reached us before the “storm.”

Stream Valley

Stream Valley

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A few days ago I walked a small section of the Cross County Trail, from Miller Heights to a rock bridge across Difficult Run. I was pretty close to Vale, I think, and I paused to read a sign about stream valleys and their value to indigenous people: rich soil, nuts and berries to forage, animals there for the same purpose and ripe for the hunting. Obviously water there, too. These green secluded places were early hunting and fishing grounds. They were home.

Now these same places are helping save the area as it once was; it is through the stream valleys that the Cross County Trail (which runs from one end of the county to the other) is threaded.

We walk the paths our ancestors walked. But we walk for different reasons. We walk our dogs; we walk for health. Our livings are made elsewhere. We work for money. We work for prestige. We come to the trail to work out.

But the shaded packed dirt of the Cross County Trail may yet give us back our lives. Or at least it may give me back mine — by helping me learn to love the place I’ve landed.

Mossy Hill

Mossy Hill

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You would think that out here in the congested Northern Virginia suburbs it would be next to impossible to lose a hill. But that is exactly what happened. At least for a while.

My children found the rise, named it the mossy hill, and took me there for the first time nine or ten years ago. I was impressed. It was high enough to give a good view of the stream valley below. It made me feel like I was somewhere else entirely, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge or Ozarks, somewhere with more sudden elevations, those squiggly lined places on the topographical maps. But instead I was only half a mile from our house, roaming through a suburban woods.

And then the kids got older, left for track or band or music lessons; the mossy hill was forgotten. I tried to find it many times but the path there had disappeared, vanished under the ferns and sticky vines. But last winter, Tom and used a topo map to find the place again. We looked for those squiggly lines. We approached the matter scientifically. And now I can find the place by heart.

Yesterday Copper and I walked there. We sat on top of the rise and looked into the woods below. The sun struck the ferned forest floor in patches of golden light. Cicadas provided the soundtrack. It was a humid, still, late summer afternoon. The mossy hill was mine again.

First Things

First Things

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A welcome blast of cool air has revived our mornings, and I wake up ready to run. It’s interesting how habit dictates one’s timing and route. I always used to walk in the morning, but that was before I started writing in the morning. Now my mornings are like the lead paragraph in a complicated article. There is so much I want to put in them that they sometimes collapse from their own weight.

And my walks, I might postpone them till noon or later. But of course, you only get so many newborn hours in a day. I miss the silken start of a day that begins on foot. But not today. Today I’m out the door and on my way.

City Steps

City Steps

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I became a runner when I lived in Chicago, but I became a walker when I lived in New York. I ran here, too, looped the reservoir a couple of times in the morning when I lived off Central Park and, when I lived downtown, made the World Trade Center my turnaround point.

But when I think of locomotion in New York City, I think of walking most of all. Because it is so crowded here, walking can feel like navigating, looking down at the feet coming toward you, figuring out how to sidestep them. It’s a choreography, a dance. But when you hit an open stretch of pavement you can rev into high gear.

Then the short blocks fly by and the bridges, too. And all the faces coming toward you seem full of good will, though you know it’s the endorphins making you feel that way. But you don’t care because you’re walking, no flying, down the streets of New York, and you feel like you’re home again.

400 … But Who’s Counting?

400 … But Who’s Counting?

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My blog post counter is a little off, but sometime in the last few days I wrote my 400th post. To celebrate, here’s a photo of a favorite woodland path. It’s not one I’ve walked often lately because it’s part of my “short loop,” but looking at it here, the late day sun slanting through the trees, I think I’ll find a way to include it more often.

What you don’t see in this photo is the dog pulling on his leash, my attempts to hold him and the camera, or the thicket you must plow through to reach this canopied clearing.

What you do see, I hope, is a landscape that asks for understanding and that offers, at least on clear May afternoons, a brief measure of peace.

What Else We Found

What Else We Found

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Yesterday I wrote about searching for morels. Today the story continues. When we looked for morels we found other treasures, too: shag bark hickory, sassafras root, wild oregano, a luna moth just emerging from its cocoon, a hog-nose viper that could curl itself in a circle and play dead, three box turtles and a huge wild turkey.

Part of it was that we put ourselves in a large wild woods where these plants and creatures grow and play; another part was that we were training ourselves to see.

When I walk I’m often lost in thought. I’m not looking for food; I’m certainly not looking for hog-nose vipers or box turtles. I wonder what is coiled in the leaves and slithering through the ferns in our own suburban woods. Maybe nothing as exotic as what we found in Brown County Indiana, but surprises, still.

(No box turtles were harmed in the taking of this picture. This little guy was admired and then sent on his way.)

Stewardship

Stewardship

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Passing through the woods last evening on a quick walk before dinner, I crossed a bridge that Tom built. It’s a very humble plank bridge (not the one above) that took him no time to throw together.

He did it to help us (and other ramblers) over a slippery crossing near Little Difficult Run. Other neighbors have mapped the paths, cleaned the creek and taken chain saws to downed trees, leaving the logs neatly stacked along the trail.

I think of a line from Frost: “Whose woods these are I think I know.” The forest paths we traipse are either neighborhood common land or Fairfax County stream valley park. They belong to all of us. But they belong more when we care for them. The bridge wasn’t about craftsmanship; it was about stewardship.