Last Drive to Vienna?

Last Drive to Vienna?

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It’s a gray day (not like this photo), flecks of rain on the pavement, when I rush out the door. I grab the newspaper, jump in the car, buckle up — and I’m gone. There’s the familiar route down Fox Mill to Vale to Hunter Mill.

I know every curve and hill of these western Fairfax lanes. I know where the school buses stop, the garbage trucks too. It’s 17 minutes of twists and turns that make me feel as if I’ve come down the mountain. And in fact, the route once took hours instead of minutes.

But today’s trip was different — though I was three-quarters of the way there when I realized it:  The next time I take public transportation downtown I will most likely be riding the Silver Line. I will be leaving from Reston, not Vienna. I will drive different roads — or maybe not drive at all.

I can still ride the Orange Line, of course; no one will stop me. But will I want to when the Wiehle Station is half as far from home?

It was a poignant moment, even at 6:20 a.m.

It’s Horizontal

It’s Horizontal

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Sometimes I snap a shot because I can see it here in the blog one day. It is usually horizontal, for starters. And it is generic. And, in my own eyes at least, it is beautiful.

This is one of those pictures. I was walking through Annapolis with Ellen, talking about our work, our kids, what we’re reading now (we had just browsed in a bookstore) and there was the wall, the greenery and the stone.

Annapolis is a place I could photograph forever. The water and the land. The old and new. Church spires and weathered shutters. Flashy yachts and quiet gardens. Landscapes and close-ups. And horizontals, those especially, as many as possible.

Urban Corn

Urban Corn

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Was it whimsy that landed this corn plant here? An urban gardener looking for some fun?

I can’t imagine that it’s a volunteer. And if the sower of the seed was hoping for a bumper crop, well, there are only so many ears you can harvest with a single plant.

When I first saw the corn plant I was on a bicycle, phone camera back at the house. But my recent wanderings have taken me all over Reston, so on Saturday afternoon I found myself right back at the corner — the urban corn corner — where I’d spied it a few hours earlier.

So here’s the little corn stalk that could. Not exactly of Midwestern proportions, but not bad for a little plant in the Virginia suburbs!

Test Walks

Test Walks

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Metro’s new Silver Line opens in six days. Over the weekend I attended a ribbon-cutting for the new station and came home with bus schedules and maps and a plan in my head. On days when I’m not driving or biking to the new station (and there may be many of those!), I may bus the five miles to the new station — then walk home.

I tried out half the new route Saturday, Reston trail map in hand. I felt like a tourist in my own community. And in a way, I was. Like anyone else, I’m a creature of routine. I must be drug kicking and screaming from my well-trod trails and sidewalks.

But change is coming to this suburb, and I want to experience it feet first. So I parked in the Hunter’s Woods shopping center lot and picked up a Reston trail that took me to a park, then a golf course and finally to within a 10-minute stroll of the new station. Today I’ll amble the southern half of the course, from home to the shopping center lot.

So while Metro is doing test runs, I’m doing test walks. Soon we’ll both be in business.

Most Walkable

Most Walkable

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The facts are in — and they’re surprising: Washington, D.C., is the nation’s most walkable city!

Yes, that’s right. I thought the same thing: What about New York (just for starters)? Turns out, it’s Number Two.

 I heard a fleeting mention of this yesterday on the radio and looked it up today thinking I had misheard. But according to a report prepared by George Washington University’s School of Business, Washington has more Walkable Urban Places (WalkUPs) than New York City, Boston, San Francisco or Chicago.

Having lived and walked in three of these top five (and not owned a car in two of them),
I’ll admit I was scratching my head. But then I started reading
the report. WalkUPs are based on the amount of office and retail space and a Walk Score, which looks at how easy it is to run errands without a car. New York comes in second because although Manhattan earns an 89-percent WalkUP score, the other boroughs aren’t quite so walkable.

The most amazing nugget: The D.C. area has the most balanced walkability ratio between city (51 percent) and suburbs (49 percent). Really? The George Washington University researchers must be strolling in Arlington or Bethesda, not Oak Hill. Still, there are more paths here than there used to be, and Metro’s Silver Line (4 and a half miles from my house) opens a week from today.

So I’m optimistic about walking in the suburbs. It’s nice to know I’m not alone.

Blackberry Winter

Blackberry Winter

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I grew up with this expression, used to describe a patch of cool summer weather. I’ve been thinking about it the last few mornings waking to temperatures in the high 50s — in July!

“A colloquial expression used in the south and midwest North America referring to a cold snap that occurs in late spring when the blackberries are in bloom,” Wikipedia says.

That’s not the way I remember it. Late-spring cold was dogwood winter. Mid-summer cold was blackberry winter. The time when blackberries were in fruit — not in flower.

Doesn’t matter. Both are lovely ways to talk about unseasonable chill. Poetic descriptions of essential contradictions. 

And the blackberries are in fruit and ready for picking. I see them along side roads and fence rows, in what remains of the meadow. They should peak this weekend.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Shifting My Weight

Shifting My Weight

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“Tap is easy,” Candy says. “But shifting your weight, that’s hard.” This is not the first bit of life wisdom I’ve learned from my tap teacher. But it’s the most recent.

“It’s like gymnastics,” she continues. “Gymnastics is easy. Landing is hard.”

Well, I don’t know about that. But I do know that hopping on my left foot, flapping with my right (or as my tap buddy Denise would say, “falapping,” since we give it two beats), landing on the ball of that foot before transferring weight to my left ball, heel and right ball, heel — yes, that is difficult.

In fact, balance is the most challenging part of tap class, apart from the traffic I must drive through to get there. And what makes balance tricky is letting go. To transfer weight from one foot to the other, one must, for a single terrifying moment, not have weight anywhere. One must leap into the void.

It’s not unlike a trapeze artist or a mid-life career changer. Yes, there is practice, preparation, mastery. But there is also the hand off, the letting go.

I’m thinking there’s a point where shifting my weight will cease to frustrate and begin to exhilarate. I’m still waiting for that to happen.

(A tap class in Iowa, 1942, courtesy Wikipedia)

Land Between Storms

Land Between Storms

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Driving home yesterday, dashing through puddles left from an earlier shower, racing to reach the house before the skies opened for another deluge, I thought about where I was. It was an interval of time, true, but it was also a place. The Land between Storms. The terrain: Steaming pavement, black clouds, a feel in the air that was part peace and part anticipation.

How many other times are places? The week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, the last week of May. But these are fixed in time, not mobile like the Land Between Storms.

There is also the place that springs up after a blizzard. A world of white — silent for an hour or two then filled with the sound of snowblowers whirring and shovels scraping.

It has taken me a long while to realize the commonality of these experiences, how they pull together sights, sounds and smells so reliably, so ineluctably, that I can find the places every time.

Blue Spruce

Blue Spruce

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For some reason blue spruce trees have been calling to me lately. I can’t quite understand what they’re saying — other than look at me.

Maybe it’s their bracing attitude, as if they have imbibed the winter air. They make me feel cooler just looking at them. Or their color, which stands out amidst the oranges and yellows and pinks of summer bloom.

They bring to mind trudging through a frost-hardened field to chop down the Christmas tree, even though when it’s time to choose, we always go for a fir.

For whatever reason, they are catching my eye these days. They’re not letting me forget them.

Photo: Fairylandscape.net

Open House

Open House

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Common sense tells me to turn on the air conditioning. It will be in the low nineties today, high humidity. But another impulse keeps it off, a desire to be one with the summer, to feel the heat, to be cooled by fans and not refrigerated air.

And I think the house likes it, too. The wood swells, the plants thrive. Paper softens and curls. Deck doors are thrown open so the outside comes in.

A breeze flows through from back to front. A chorus of cicada song rises and falls, and because the windows are open I can hear it.

Summer is best in an open house.