Mountain Momma

Photo by Gina

New Year’s Day, 2012, and we took a drive out to the Blue Ridge Mountains in Shenandoah National Park in order to drive the famous Blue Ridge Parkway. It was an unpromising drive out – west from DC along a little bit of Route 66, where nobody was getting any kicks until Siena fell asleep, and then through various small and increasingly agricultural towns to the entrance, as far as I can tell, at Swift Run Gap, which we had reached on the instructions of the Garmin in our rented Nissan. There’s a point with these devices where faith kicks in. Unable to find a suitable address (Number 1, Skyline Drive, Virginia?) we gave it the broadest possible pointers and hoped for the best. It worked out really well: we entered the park quite far to the south, exited right at the top with a shorter drive home than there, and it only really started raining when we were near the end of our walk to Dark Hollow Falls. The setup of the park is odd. Having run a ribbon of tarmacadam all the way along the Blue Ridge, splitting a quite substantial wilderness area down the middle, the Americans (not all of them, obviously, but you know) decided to leave well enough alone. So the facilities thereafter are sketchy. Numerous view sites, a couple of lodges, a restaurant and camping store setup at Big Meadow, and that’s it. None of it, of course, operational at this time of year, except the signs telling us to watch out for bears, although not what to do if we don’t manage to. But what a drive: the Shenandoah valley with its patchwork farmlands and indeed the West to the west, the coastal plain to the east and miles and miles of bare, grey winter forest at various gradients of extremely steep in between. A couple of grey deer looking hopeful, a handful of tourists like ourselves who didn’t get the note about it not being the done thing at this time of year, some patches of sun then the swift arrival of weather in the mountains. We’ll definitely be back, because there are many trails we’d like to walk together, but having enjoyed the place in solitude I’m not sure if we’ll have stomach for the hordes. Driving home was an object lesson in American scale. The scenic route out was sparsely sprinkled with gift shops, wine cellars and farm stalls – any comparable route in SA would be more densely baubled – but the minute you start to get into the cities of the plain, it’s chains and strip malls and big box retailers all the way – huge, featureless, bleak and enervating, just horrible. And nothing in between. But the Virginia countryside, which we caught in some late afternoon light which set the grey woods ablaze, was beautiful.

a thoughtful meander

A brief tour of the past couple weeks: we have found, secured and moved into a pleasant (four storey) home in Chevy Chase, DC (as opposd to Chevy Chase, Maryland, them're stange folk thar, or indeed, Chevy Chase the noted comic) and James has started school across the road at Lafayette. I have become tutored in the Way of Ikea*, and Gina has drafted memos to Robert Zoellick. We are still swimming upstream, but someone has thoughtfully untied our hands: we both have phones, we have superfast wireless at home, James has made some friends and Siena has a new local park, where I exchange online shopping tips with local moms. Strangely, or not when you consider that the automobile built this country with its riveted hands, and we are about five different bureaucracies away from a valid driver's licence yet, online is the only place to go. "Shoes? Nossir, you have to go all the way up Rockville Pike for shoes, and that's quite a ways." I duly went the other day in search of a winter coat for Siena to White Flint, an edge city every bit as forbidding as it sounds, along, yes, Rockville Pike. Next door to the Metro station is the National Nucelar Regulatory Commission (with groups of worried-looking Japanese people in suits scuyrrying in and out) and that palce is a gingerbread cottage compared with the rest of White Flint, believe me. No coat for the Seabiscuit either. I lucked into that one, pictured above in Lafayette Park, at a crazy all you can eat before 2pm sale at Macy's, London Fog, $20 marked down from $75. I nearly picked up one for myself at that price.
*A martial art in the purest sense. Backbreaking, repetitive and the self must be subordinated to the Way if progress is to be achieved. Everything has its time and its place, and to attempt to change either of these is to howl in the face of the order of things. The knuckles become calloused, movements which have no apparent meaning or purpose must be endlessly repeated, agonising positions must be held on hard wooden floors for hours at a time, and yet when you are done, you have something of such logic, power and simple beauty that you could weep if you had tears left to cry.

an old friend

The haze you see at the bottom right of the photo would be a tendril of the mists of nostalgia. Although as is so often the case with beer, the object of the nostalgia has dimmed somewhat. All I know for sure is that during some period of the 1990s I entertained a powerful affection for Rolling Rock, which back then, before it was acquired by Annheuser Busch, was what passed for an independent beer. My dear friend Pete McCallum tells me that I referred to it as being "as crisp as a lettuce" back when I still had my descriptive faculties. Now, I find that despite my best intentions to sample some of the thousands of microbrews on offer in every liquor store (Old Sturdy Bastard? Rancid? Turkey Tom's Thanksgiving Ale? I am making these up, but just barely) I continually default to the American beer I like best. And it still has much to recommend it, although read the reviews (there were 700 of them on the one beer site I looked at) and I really shouldn't. It's apparently not all that. Beer snobs are less coherent and more aggressive than wine snobs, as you'd expect, and even the clerk down at the off licence looks at me with a kind of pity when I ask for a six pack, and they bring it, somewhat pointedly, in a hand-me-down sixpack from a more excitingly artisinal brand. But two of these chaps slide down grateful after a day of metroing, bussing, swinging (the kind you do in a park, obviously. And not that sort of park, either) and vacuuming. You cannot fiddle with the label, as it is printed on, so all of your attention is focussed on the light, slighly melony dryness of the palate. And yes, it remains as crisp as a lettuce, particularly in the steamy bathroom at 6pm with Siena splashing happily in the tub, and labour's end within sight.

we were told there would be cake

After a long day out today - shopping in Georgetown, a boat trip down the Potomac to the twee historic tourist town of Alexandria, Virginia - we happened upon the Occupy camp in Lafayette Park. It was late in the afternoon, and there was a muted atmosphere, with two or three drummers drumming and no one engaging in any actual protesting. There was however a lot of earnest discussion happening between small knots of people, with half caught words and phrases like "direct action" and "caucus". The movement here seems small, but still somehow important. Its principles resonate with many people, and it looks sustainable - there is apparently talk of winding things back for winter then embarking on a spring offensive. Being a magnet for crazies, I spent some time in conversation with a tall man wearing a sort of hasidic bearskin hat with a single, false red ringlet hanging rakishly over his forehead, on subjects as wide ranging as the Dalai Lama and Sasol. He was very well-informed on South African issues. On the way back to P Street where we live, Gina remarked how everyone in Washington seemed to be on some sort of earth changing mission, and that this was not a bad thing. It is indeed a very earnest place, but a lot of fun, too.

red in tooth and claw

A couple of shots from a walk home the other day. The weather has been truly spectacular - this is  Indian Summer, global warming style: it generally happens in early October. So, J and beautiful autumn leaves, then a rather grim one of a Peregrine falcon which flew past my nose carrying an unfortunate black squirrel, which it dispatched on a chimney across the street.

two schools of thought

Our search for a school, which in turn informs our search for a home, has thrown up two candidates, both of them, as far as we can tell, in the top ten public elementary schools in Washington. Lafayette Elementary is in Friendship Heights, about five stops on the red line northwest of Dupont Circle, while Janney Elementary is just a little closer in, in neighbouring American University Park. When we phoned Lafayette, we went straight though to the principal, who told us to pop in anytime and when we did, took us on personal tour. Mrs Main, gruff but twinkly, addressed most of her remarks to James, who was suitably intimidated. By Model C standards, the school was on the crowded and even the run down side, with some of the classes (including Grade 3) housed in prefabs outside the 1920's red brick building of the main schoolhouse. But we got a good sense of industry and warmth. Janney, which we toured today with two other families, was one of the most impressive public buildings, let alone schools, that any of us have seen. The idea of heaven for a certain kind of educator, one imagines - iMacs in every classroom (and 40 in the computer lab) vast white corridors and silent classes of earnest little students. A first grade class was being told about folk tales, and at various points of interest in the narrative I noticed some of the kids shaking a fist with the little finger and thumb extended. This according to the very enthusiastic (and perhaps aptly named) Ms Sell, the deputy head who led the tour, is a sort of silent cheer to indicate appreciation for a particularly nifty bit of pedagogy. James felt that the place was "a bit too disorganised" for his taste. Which we took to mean, too organised by half, a view with which we sympathise. So we are looking at properties in Friendship Heights, and hoping to start at Lafayette within the next  couple of weeks. Or before someone kills someone else, at any rate. Home schooling is off the agenda.

a wiwwa runs through it

A lovely Sunday amble through a short section of Rock Creek Park, which runs 12 miles through the suburbs of DC and Maryland and ends at the Potomac. Many joggers and cyclists, beautiful autumn leaves and a couple of mallards which James spotted and photographed. Siena was fascinated with the river, or indeed creek, and celebrated with a new word, see title. In the morning we went to mass at St Matthews Cathedral, vast and Byzantine, where JFK lay in state. Very low key, with typically drony Catholic singing led by an austere lady cantor in a maroon cassock.