The graves roll with the landscape. They rise and fall with the hills that wind to the river.
I’ve seen the cemetery darkened by the low clouds of late October, seen it filled with the crisp precision of a military honor guard, seen it empty of living souls.
But yesterday I saw it bustling with loved ones, each grave decked out with a small American flag and many with flowers.
It was Decoration Day, and I was in Kentucky. I could place two pots of mums, one for Mom, one for Dad. Afterward, I snapped this shot.
Fairfax County — and the country — lost a champion on Wednesday with the passing of Representative Gerry Connolly. Connolly served 16 years in Congress, but I remember him best for the 14 he served on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. That’s when I first heard his name, and despite his national profile, Connolly spoke out for federal workers and the D.C. area until the end.
What I’ll best remember him for isn’t a bill or a speech, though — it’s a trail. The Gerry Connolly Cross-County Trail runs from one end of Fairfax County to another, from the Potomac River to the Occoquan. Connolly was key to making it happen, to pulling together the snippets of walks and paths, to seeking the permits and the permissions that carved a continuous passage through these heavily developed suburbs. If anyone had asked me if it could be done I would have laughed at the question. A trail? Through all of this congestion?
But Connolly and a dedicated group of volunteers found the through line. They saw the possibilities. They gave a congested, car-oriented place the beating green heart it deserves.
I’ve written about the Cross-County Trail often in this blog and elsewhere, have hiked the whole thing — twice — since I did every segment as a down-and-back. And some sections, the ones closest to my house, I’ve walked more times than I can count.
When I read the obituaries in yesterday’s paper I noticed that they didn’t mention the trail. It took a columnist to point it out. (Thank you, Marc Fisher!) Connolly will never know the spirits that have been soothed or the ideas that have emerged on the trail, what it’s made possible. But tens of thousands of Fairfax County residents do. And that would have made Connolly happy.
I’ve been reading about Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife, Fanny, widely credited with keeping the writer alive to the age of 44. The author battled illness all his short life, spent months at a time in bed. Perhaps that was the inspiration for one of his delightful poems from A Child’s Garden of Verses, “The Land of Counterpane,” about playing with toy soldiers on his bedcovers.
Fanny made it her life’s work to find an environment that would allow her husband to live a full and creative life — even it meant long and ardulous sea voyages. She was as sickened by sea air as RLS was invigorated by it.
Prone to queasiness myself, I thought about the sacrifices she made, the discomfort all travelers used to endure. We think a delayed and crammed-full flight is bad; try weeks at sea in steerage! Adventurers of yore either dealt with the pitch and roll … or they stayed put. I wonder, how many of us would have toughed it out?
(The schooner Casco carried the Stevensons from San Francisco to Hawaii in 1888. Photo courtesy the RLS website.)
Today they’re cracked. Two days ago they were wide open, less so as the clouds moved in. I’m talking about the windows, barometers of weather and humidity, of light and darkness.
This morning they usher in cool breezes and the sound of rain. It splashes in the garden, pings in the birdbath, makes music of an ordinary Wednesday morning.
I’ve lived in places where windows were dingy and recalcitrant, barely budging in their sashes. I’ve worked in places where windows were sealed in place, never to be opened.
Once the windows in this house balked and squeaked. But for many years they’ve been compliant creatures, and I’m so glad they are. Because today, I can open them just enough to hear the rain.
Yesterday I made my seasonal pilgrimage to the nursery to buy annuals for spring planting. Every year I seem more reluctant to spend money on plants that only bloom once. Is it creeping stinginess or am I finally coming to my senses?
I think the latter. After all, the plants that look so glorious on a brilliant, blue-sky May morning can shrivel and droop as early as late June. Better to make do with what I have, to plant the zinnia seeds (soon!) and be patient for color in the garden.
And then there are the deer that skulk around looking for their next meal. They’d like nothing more than to tuck into some succulent new plants.
Gardening in the suburbs: It’s not for the faint-of-heart.
I had to watch the replay on Sunday to see Journalism win the Preakness. The horse was well behind for most of the race. At the top of the stretch a clump of horses hemmed him in.
When he began to accelerate, a colt named Goal Oriented blocked him. There was a tussle, a bump, and then Journalism was free, streaking toward the frontrunner, Gosger. There seemed no way that Journalism could make up the difference before the finish line after the jostling he’d just endured. But somehow, he did.
He moved like the great ones did, with seemingly supernatural power, as if distances were meant to be gobbled up, as if he was born to run on this track, at Pimlico, in the last race before it closes for more than a year of renovation.
“Journalism has won the Preakness Stakes in a performance like you read about,” the announcer shouted, hoarse from calling the race. Later, he said, “A remarkable recovery by Journalism” and “Journalism has its day.”
An old friend has returned. I can feel his weight in the air, his hand on my shoulder. He frizzes my hair and thickens my step. His name is humidity, and he often shows up this time of year.
I thrive in his presence … up to a point. At the very least, I don’t disparage him as much as some folks do. To me, he’s the price we pay for the climate we have, which is, at least for me, a fine one. Plenty of sunshine, even in the winter. Long springs and falls. And summers, well, they’re not everyone’s cup of tea, but I don’t mind them much.
Today we’ll have temperatures in the mid-80s. The air is full of moisture, which matches the sodden soil. Thunderstorms may pop up in the afternoon. It’s my old friend humidity, doing his thing. Time to get to know him again.
I woke up this morning in a house I’ve been waking up in for half of my life. This would have been big news to the 20-and-30-something me, who moved from Chicago to Kentucky to New York City to Arkansas to Massachusetts to Virginia. Seventeen moves in seventeen years, as I once admitted in an essay.
But it’s been Virginia for decades. I settled down, as did many of my compatriots. About one of every five Americans moved in the 1960s. Today it’s only one of every 13, thanks to a combination of zoning laws, historic preservation campaigns and rampant NIMBYism, according to a recent Atlantic magazine article by Yoni Appelbaum (adapted from his book Stuck: How the Privileged and Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity). Mobility is freedom, mobility is opportunity — and these have been in short supply lately, says Appelbaum.
For years I might have agreed with him, or at least with aspects of his argument (which I realize is about socioeconomic conditions, not what I’m exploring in this post). I felt trapped here from the beginning: plopped down in the suburbs with young kids. As a full-time freelance writer, I had plenty of contact with interviewees and editors, but I seldom saw them. For years I raged against the ‘burbs.
But I’ve come to appreciate the benefits of staying put. “We marry ourselves to creation by knowing and cherishing a particular place,” writes Scott Russell Sanders. If I were offered any place in this country to send down roots, I might not have chosen this particular place — but I could do worse, far worse. Most importantly, the babies grew up and started families of their own, and two of them have settled nearby.
Now when I wake up in this house, I know I’m home.
Peonies have been in beautiful bloom the last week or two. I’ve admired them in neighbor’s yards and on my table, a gift from my daughter’s new garden.
My peony harvest is much smaller: it’s an “on” year for the single peony plant in my backyard. A plant that has never thrived but also never died. Some years it produces one flower, some years none. It’s long since been surrounded by day lilies and iris, so there’s no room for it to roam, not that peonies spread much anyway.
This year it seems like a tease … or an invitation. Plant more of me, it says. Find a deer-safe patch of soil and create some more of my kind. It’s lonely out here.
Yesterday, while writing in my “summer place,” a corner of the glass-topped table on the desk, I spied a lizard skittering along the boards. Our corner of Fairfax County is full of wildlife. I routinely see fox and deer, the cries of hawks and pileated woodpeckers fill the skies, and a few weeks ago I saw a wild turkey slowly crossing the main street of our neighborhood, on his way from one patch of woods to another.
But lizards have been in short supply. In fact, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen one here before.
This little guy brought to mind the subtropical world of southern Florida, where lizards are king. I’ve spent many hours watching their tiny movements, their habit of bowing up and down, as if they’re doing tiny pushups. I bet there’s a scientific term and explanation for this, but I’m too lazy to look it up now.
What I can say is that I will be on the lookout for this fellow. Maybe he will become hawk food … but I hope not. I’d like to see him again. He brings with him a whiff of the faraway.
