Lake Newport

Lake Newport

I arrived as a light rain began to fall, jacket looped around my waist. It would be there to ward off the bigger drops, to keep serious downpours at bay.

I started on the straightaway, across the top of the dam, moved quickly past the playground and ball fields, crossed the street and strolled by the lakeside homes, then into the woods.

The path doesn’t go directly around the lake, but it’s variable and interesting with exposed and shady stretches, those now covered with crispy brown leaves.

The longer I walked, the dryer it became. I reached the end of the circular trail, which was also the beginning. It seemed dry enough to do it again. Which I did. Then one more time for good measure.

Three loops, three miles, and a jacket I never needed.

(Lake Newport on a sunny day)

Bridge to Somewhere

Bridge to Somewhere

Yesterday I slipped out between the raindrops for a walk around Lake Anne. This is one of my favorite Reston walks, one I often take with a good friend, though sometimes I do it solo after my yoga class.

This bridge is on that route, a bridge to nowhere, you might think, though that wouldn’t be exactly right. It’s only a short pedestrian bridge, doesn’t span a great river or even a shallow canal, but it brings me full-circle from the community center, where my yoga class is held, back to my car. A bridge to somewhere, after all.

On the way I pass gardens, kayaks, rock sculptures, a cafe and a bookstore. The best walks are like this, I think. They combine natural features — woods, fields and streams — with signs of human habitation: houses, stores, cafes. And then there are bridges. A good walk might include one of those, too.

You Never Know

You Never Know

Yesterday, sitting at the best desk ever, I looked up and saw a hummingbird. It was only there a minute, making several passes at the feeder, perching briefly on the thinnest of climbing rose twigs, before flying off to parts unknown.

Was it a straggler? A johnny-come-lately? A bird passing through from more northern climes? I don’t know. But I did relish the chance to look again at this amazing creature, to marvel at its bravery and its derring-do.

I thought then, as I often do, that you never know. I thought hummingbirds were gone for the year, that I wouldn’t hear that distinctive whirring sound until next April. But I heard it days later.

You never know when you might look up and see a rainbow or a hawk in flight. You never know much of anything, really.

Daf Yomi

Daf Yomi

These are the Jewish High Holy Days, and I’m writing about a tradition called daf yomi, the practice of reading one page (a daf) of the Talmud every day. There is something similar in the Christian faith, a year of studying the Bible, but such is the richness and heft of the Talmud that at a page a day it takes seven and a half years to read it all.

I mention this because a friend of mine paid the blog a compliment. What’s most important about the daf yomi, he’s been told, is not the daf, the page of sacred text, though it is holy beyond measure. The point is the yomi, the dailyness of the practice.

The point of my blog is the yomi, too, he said. I appreciated the fact that he understands A Walker in the Suburbs, though not surprised because he’s a former colleague who heard me talk about the blog in 2010, the year I started it.

My blog is daily by design. Some weeks I throw in a Saturday or Sunday, but I always post Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Some days I have much to say, others not much at all. But the discipline is what I’m after, bringing to each day the habit of noticing.

(On a woods walk last year, I noticed how a drop of water disturbed — and beautified — a puddle.)

Best Desk Ever

Best Desk Ever

The season has turned, mornings are cooler, but I still haul my laptop out to the best desk ever. That would be the glass-topped table that’s tucked under the rose arbor on our deck.

It may not be the place to sit when deep concentration is required. There’s too much to look at and listen to: the poplar whose leaves are just starting to turn at its crown, the liquid sound of blue jays calling to each other, the hawk crying from the oak next door. During rose season an errant petal may float down and land on my lap. But I love sitting here. I feel inspired and enabled. I seem to draw strength from the green, growing things around me.

I’ve worked in cubicles and carrels, at wide tables, and once, for a few months, in a converted closet. My office desk, where I park myself when it’s too cold to sit outside, has a similar view — more expansive since its higher up but less immersive since it’s inside.

But today, and I hope for a few more weeks, I’ll be working at the best desk ever.

Summer Preserved

Summer Preserved

I usually take months to fill a handwritten journal. The one I finished this morning took exactly six weeks. I began it in the dog days of summer, sitting in the hammock as twilight fell, two days before flying to France. I knew that when I returned, the season would almost be over.

And though we’ve had heat and humidity, dry parched earth and one torrential rain, the calendar tells me that autumn begins today. So I finished the journal, tying the summer in a bow.

I filled about half the 80 pages the last two weeks. In the rush of travel there may only be time to record names, dates, places, impressions. Digesting it all begins later. This time it began while I was waiting for the return flight. I wrote for hours, capturing moments I was afraid I’d forget: three Eurostar conductors on the platform frantically puffing their cigarettes after we reached Paris from Brussels. The flapping plaid flannel shirt of a cyclist who zoomed past me in Amsterdam. The translucent orange butterflies at the Botanical Gardens.

Words like ripe fruit that I process and freeze, preserved for the future. The words and the seasons were in sync for a while. Now summer is over, but the words remain.

Hummingbirds’ Farewell

Hummingbirds’ Farewell

In 2024, September 19th was the last day we spotted hummingbirds at the feeder. But so far this morning I’ve seen no sign of the tiny birds. We had two days of rain, which may have chased them off, or maybe they were following that mysterious call that sends them from suburban backyards to tropical rainforests.

They fly hundreds of miles, winging their way south over the Gulf of Mexico to their winter home in Central America. The calories they consume will help them make that journey.

On Tuesday, before the rains came, a hummingbird left the feeder and hovered right in front of me. Birds have done this before, almost buzzed me. They seem to be checking me out — or maybe they’re thanking me and saying goodbye.

I answer them in a soft voice, as I do to the parakeets inside. “You’re welcome,” I say. “Please come again next year.”

Postcard Weather

Postcard Weather

My trip to D.C. last Friday happened to be on one of those perfect late-summer afternoons. The mall was strangely empty — school’s in session, which has cut back on visitors — and those who work in the area must have taken off for a weekend at the beach.

I felt like I had the place to myself as I walked toward the Capitol, snapping a photo every few yards. I couldn’t help myself. Each view was better than the next.

This is the kind of day the postcard photographers should be out and about, I thought, before catching myself. Postcard photographers? Were there ever any? There can’t be many now given how few postcards are in circulation.

Meanwhile, I crossed Fourth, Third and First, the big white building coming into sharper focus. Snap, snap, snap. I soon had a dozen photos. Here are some of them.

House Fire

House Fire

It happened a week ago, on an ordinary suburban Monday. No one knows exactly why yet, but there are theories: a leaky gas meter, an air conditioner clicking on, a spark that ignited a conflagration. The occupants escaped with their lives, but they lost most everything else.

I live in a neighborhood of two-story and split-level houses. This one was split-level, with a more open floor plan than most. It went quickly, despite the efforts of numerous trucks and firefighters. Neighbors say the smoke was visible miles away, and I still catch a whiff of acrid air from time to time.

The ruined house now stands sentinel on my neighborhood walks. Part of its brick front remains but the garage and rear are mostly gone. Stalactites of charred wood loom eerily from its interior. It’s a sad and bracing reminder of how quickly it can all disappear.

(Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

Cinema Therapy

Cinema Therapy

I believe in cinema therapy. I know it works because upon occasion a film, a single work of art, has pulled me out of the doldrums. Whenever I try to explain this, I use “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” as an example.

That movie made me happy for months. I started wearing gaucho pants after wearing it, for goodness sake. Those and the boots I paired with them made me feel open and free, not exactly an outlaw but not my timid self, either. For months, I tromped around in this renegade costume, and I felt the darkness lifting.

Robert Redford was a big part of the reason I loved that film. The scene where he and Paul Newman jump off a high cliff into a raging river always entertained. It seemed the epitome of gutsiness, of braving danger for a desired end. Never mind that they just had robbed the Union Pacific Railroad and were jumping to avoid arrest. They were the heroes. I was pulling for them.

Redford died today at age 89. Another star from my youth is gone. I try to recognize and appreciate young actors, but it’s hard to forget the heartthrobs of my youth. Rest in peace, Robert Redford.

(The cliff-jumping scene was shot near this rugged area of Colorado, north of Durango. Photo: Wikimedia Commons)