Connectivity

On a walk I took Monday and may take again today, I noticed how rich life feels when the path you are walking is not just an afterthought to a road but is a network complete unto itself. 

It leads from place to place, revealing parks and benches and fountains not easily seen otherwise. It has numerous intersections and junctions. You must know which way to turn or you will be lost, though not for long.

Such a trail has segments you recognize and enjoy: a few hundred feet winding among townhouses in the beginning, a wooded stretch, a ball field and little free library. Crossing one street, passing under another, and finally winding up in an urban village, complete with café, bookstore and community center. 

A walk from place to place is about more than exercise. It's about connectivity. 

Puddle Jumper

Last night's deluge tapered off by morning, leaving plenty of puddles in its wake. They presented a small challenge to the early-morning ambler. 

Despite the burbling, hard-working storm drains and runoff ditches, water was still pooled on walkways and streets.

Some puddles were best navigated by stepping around them, partly on tufted islands in the saturated grass and partly on the slightly raised edge of the macadam path. 

Other puddles were small enough for me to jump. Luckily, there weren't too many of those. 

New Town Square

I'm not a numbers person, but these numbers impress me: In 1986 there were only a few hundred miles of rails-to-trails in this country. Now there are more than 25,000. 

"We want trails that are connected in ways that are similar to roads or streets or that connect individual trails to places people want to go, be it shopping, schools or other activities, " said Ryan Chao, the president of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, in a recent Washington Post article. 

Chao sees these trails as the new town square. And why not? Trails connect people, too. 

Philadelphia has 400 miles of them and plans to double that. You can travel the Great Allegheny Passage from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Maryland, then pick up the C&O Canal Trail to cruise into D.C. 

You can take the Katy Trail across Missouri. You can cross much of Ohio on trails and big chunks of Illinois and Iowa, too. One of these days, you'll be able to take the Great American Rail Trail from here to Washington State. No rush to get in shape for that trek just yet ... but one of these days!

(The Capital Crescent Trail in Maryland, part of the future Great American Rail Trail.)

Vacation Loop

The sign says "End County Maintenance," another way of saying "No Outlet." But from the beginning I was intrigued by a break in the fence, a parting of the trees.

Last year I discovered it, and this year I've enjoyed it: a cut-through path, one that connects our street to the main drag of this neighborhood. 

The cut-through has created a loop walk where I thought there was none. And I've been strolling it this week whenever I can. 

(Not the loop walk but part of a detour, which is a vacation loop of its own.)

Just the Same

The Pacific Northwest is a city of vistas, proof of the good things that happen when water and mountains meet. 

Here on the other coast, a gentler, calmer, less dramatic form of beauty. My eyes adjust to it as they would a darkening room. 

I snap shots of one fetching curve of a favorite walk, note how trees and grasses frame a small pond. This is not the vast expanse of Puget Sound, the white-topped Olympic Mountains in the distance.  It's a more humble, everyday kind of beauty. But it's beauty, just the same. 

Loop Walk

Can confusion be knit into a landscape? Is there something about a particular topography, no matter how serene it appears, that can turn our heads? Would I be asking these questions if I didn't think there was? Yesterday I took a path I've hiked several times before. Once again, I paused at the juncture of three trails. Once again, I chose the "wrong" path.

Or was it? This trail led me into a cool green forest along the Snakeden Branch. I took deep breaths, heard a bird I didn't recognize. I knew approximately where I was. No need for panic. In fact, when the trail spit me out on a major thoroughfare, I realized there was circular potential.

The rails-to-trails marvel that is the W&OD was nearby, and the path I missed intersected it. If I could find that juncture, I could take a loop walk. The W&OD was sunny, and I wasn't sure how long I would be on it. Just when I thought I'd missed the crossroads, I saw the sign and escaped through a bright meadow into deep shade.

It was a different walk than the one I meant to take, but a good one just the same.

I Brake For Goslings

It's not just drivers who have to swerve, hit the brakes and, of course, stay on their side of the road. Walkers have similar obligations. 

When I'm hoofing it on the W&OD — a bike/hike trail frequented by walkers and cyclists and yesterday, strangely, by a motorcycle going 60 miles an hour — the key is to avoid sudden changes of "lane." There are signs that remind us of that fact: "Be alert and predictable," they say.

Last week, on a Franklin Farm stroll, my goal was to stay clear of mother goose and her adorable goslings. Luckily, she let me get close enough for a photograph.

Connector Trail

The trail beckoned, a trail beside the trail, a connector. It meandered from the Washington and Old Dominion (the W&OD), a rails-to-trails strip of asphalt that runs from the D.C. border to the foothills of the Blue Ridge, to a garden park. 

Connector trails are surprises. Often makeshift and cobbled together with stray pieces. Frankintrails, you might call them.

This one had a bridge, a warning to avoid trespassing on the surrounding land (on which was built one of the more impressive mansions I've seen in this region) and a bucolic stretch where the scenery had the scale and immediacy of a New England lane.

Beyond that, there was a street winding through a neighborhood, then a shaded trail threading its way among fir trees to the park itself. That part was hilly enough that I can feel it today in the backs of my legs.

Still, the connector walk was a beauty of a discovery. I'd take it again today, if I could. 

Sharing the Trail

The Capital Crescent Trail. A Monday afternoon that felt like a Sunday afternoon. A jumble of humanity — and mammal-anity, too, since there were plenty of dogs on hand. 

Without realizing it, I went into auto mode. That's "auto" as in automobile, glancing over my left shoulder before "changing lanes"  Cyclists use the trail, too, and they don't always sound their bells in warning.

Sharing the trail sometimes means walking defensively. 

Alert and Predictable

Noticed on my walk this morning: signs reading "Be Alert and Predictable!" Not your typical path-sign wording, but understandable given the busyness of the Washington and Old Dominion Trail, where bicycles whiz by at 30 miles an hour. 

An unsuspecting pedestrian who strays from her lane might be mowed down by one of these speeding cyclists, so better to walk steady and stay to the right. 

The signs had me thinking, though, about predictability and alertness and how those two don't always go hand-in-hand. An alert human may in fact be less predictable, more prone to straying off the beaten path and into a tangle of undergrowth, lured there by the song of a bird or an angle of light.

The Sandwich Trail

You might call it the Sandwich Trail: a route that begins in forest, exits on the other side of the neighborhood for a mile of striding down a prettier-than-average suburban lane, then dips back into parkland again before returning. 

In the language of sandwiches, the woods is the "bread" and the long stretch of pavement in the middle is its filling. 

In the woods section I notice dry stream beds, new plank bridges, a path I thought I'd lost. In the pavement part I see houses with new siding, a massive and magical rubber tree, boulders in a garden.

Two parts trees and beaten-dirt trail, one part easy striding along a less-traveled road. A sumptuous repast. 

Not So Fast

I took Thursday's late-day stroll at a faster pace than usual, so yesterday I paid the price. Nothing serious, just some soreness and tightness, a reminder that I let the cooler air and that fall feeling push me into moving more quickly than I should have.

In my defense, it was glorious weather. I wasn't slogging through humid air for a change, and there was an autumnal industriousness afoot, the kind of energy that sends squirrels scampering for acorns to store.

Like the squirrel, I was driven — only it was an experience that I was after, one more walk in a summer made rich by them. 

Almost Equinoctical Evening

A late walk yesterday, after I finished a class assignment. I drove to a favorite Reston trail itching to move through space after a computer-centric day. 

The path did not disappoint. There were the familiar markers of fern and stream and swamp. There were the dog walkers and stroller pushers and trail talkers, those who first appear at to be muttering to themselves but are revealed upon passing to be wearing those distinctive white ear pods.

The second leg of this walk is a segment of  the Cross County Trail, with its dips and valleys, already crunchy with brown leaves and blowsy with stilt grass gone to seed — but beautiful in its roughness. Laser-pointers of light struck the thin trunks of the understory.

Scampering through the lambent air in the almost-equinoctial evening was an excellent way to end the day. 

Three Paths

This is not about three paths — or two, for that matter — diverging in the woods, taking one and never knowing if it makes the difference. This is not about life choices, in other words. 

This is about three paths walked in the last three days: a Reston trail on Monday, the W&OD on Tuesday and Franklin Farm today. One shady and still, the next cloudy and cold, today's breezy and bright. 

I think about how often I've strode up and down my neighborhood's main drag, how boring it can be, how I thrive on variety, and how grateful I am that this week, at least, I've had it.

Biking the Trail

I spent the weekend hearing tales from Tom and his brothers, intrepid cyclists just returned from a 350-mile bike adventure down the Great Allegheny Passage and C&O Canal Towpath trails. 

These rails-to-trails paths allow walkers and bikers to make their way from Pittsburg to Washington, D.C. almost completely off-road. They provide a glimpse of the way life used to be, when people journeyed on foot or not at all. 

Tom and the guys hung panniers stuffed with tents and sleeping bags on their bikes, then cycled through forests, along rivers and across iron truss bridges. They told went swimming in the Potomac and heard train whistles in the night.

They passed through Pennsylvania towns like Boston, Connellsville and Ohiopyle (gateway to Falling Water), and Maryland burgs like Cumberland, Paw Paw and Hancock — meeting the same folks along the way.

It was challenging, exhausting, unforgettable. All I can say is ... sign me up!

(Photo: Tom Capehart)

Lake Audubon Trail

One aspect of walking I've learned to appreciate more in the last few months is its timing, how a stroll is shaded, colored, made whole by the time of day in which it happens. The fast dash of a morning feels totally different when transported into the slow slide of an afternoon. Or vice-versa.

I've walked the Lake Audubon Trail before but never at this time or in this season. Doing it in the morning, starting fresh from the ample parking lot rather than getting to it at the end of the long Glade Trail route — made it a new adventure. 

There were shady stretches, sunny sections and a feeling of expansiveness every time I glimpsed the water. There were fellow fast-walkers, one man tugging his two Jack Russell terriers, and a young mother pointing out butterflies and squirrels to her toddler. 

 I've learned the hard way that the trail doesn't go all the way around the lake. So I just made it an out-and-back. From the traffic I passed on the path, I wasn't the only one. 

Briefly Lost

I started off slowly yesterday, as if I knew the walk would be longer than usual. It was one of those sultry afternoons that envelops you in summer, humid without being oppressive, full-bodied and yet (to me at least) still comfortable. 

The Glade Trail beckoned, cool and single-minded, one long tunnel of green. I took it to the Cross-County Trail and then to Lake Audubon.

I had strolled around Lake Audubon before and knew you could not circumnavigate it, but I tried again anyway, knowing it would spit me out somewhere. And it did — only at first I had no idea where that somewhere was. Was it a neighborhood near the pool? A development near the shopping center? 

For a moment, I had to get my bearings. For a moment, I was lost. 

But I turned the way I thought I should, and there, on my right, was the Montessori School, a marker. Nowhere near where I thought I would be. But somewhere I knew, just the same. 

Mixing it Up

Walking yesterday I found myself going the "wrong" way on familiar routes. I was, without intending to when I began, mixing it up. 

Down West Ox and into Franklin Farm, striding down the shady path into the neighborhood instead of out of it, as I usually do. From there to Dower House Drive, and only picking up the open trail when I got to Flat Meadow.

One of the last times I was in this area the walking paths were being repaved, and I was chased away by a small tar-roller machine. This time it was quiet, a Sunday morning, fresh and cool after days of oppressive humidity. 

The trail was open, the way was clear. I need to mix it up more often. 

Drive to Walk

Now that I have a little more time on my hands (emphasis on "a little" ... but I'll talk about that in another post), I often drive to walk. That's drive to walk, not to work.

Before, I had meetings and deadlines that meant I would slip out of the house with 30 or 40 minutes only. No time for the 10-minute drive to my favorite Reston trail — only enough to get me up and down the main drag of my neighborhood.

Which is not a bad stroll. In fact, it's still my go-to favorite, with houses and people I know and a path so familiar I could probably trudge it in my sleep.

But now I can mix it up a little, even though that means indulging in the great suburban irony — driving ... to walk. 

(Bridge over Glade Creek on one of my favorite drive-to trails.)

A Constant

Morning on the Hunter's Woods Trail: Mozart in my ears, details in my brain, details I hoped would filter away like a dusting of snow through trampoline mesh. And the rhythm of footfall did clarify the day; it reminded me of what is most important, which is to live fully when and where we are.

I was aided in this by the appearance of wildlife: first, a fox sauntering down the trail ahead of me and then, on the drive home, a wild turkey beside the road, bobbing its head as it fled into the woods.  

The critters pulled me into the present and away from the fact that this is a departure day, which is not nearly as nice as an arrival day. 

But the warmth is finally here, and the day is as perfect in its way as the cold, windy Thursday that brought her here. Both days are required, one for coming, the other for going — with the walks a constant between the two.