The Secret of Connectedness and Contentment

Over the last several months, I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't on a quest to track down the secret ingredient of connectedness and contentment.  Today, on a relatively quiet and beautiful fall day, the secret was revealed to me.  There is no secret to connectedness.  We're connected.  It's just that simple, and whether we acknowledge it or not the fact remains that we're tied together by strings that run through time and space. Now capturing the feeling of connectedness, well, that might be another story all together that will probably require continuing practice.

On my afternoon walk this afternoon, I also managed to capture the feeling of connectedness as well as the intellectual acknowledgement of the fact of connectedness.  It was exhilarating.  I started off on one of my standard routes, but deviated from it a bit at about the two mile point.

Supreme Court Building

As you can see, the weather was beautiful, though a bit cooler than yesterday.  I meandered my way back to Union Station and this time took some time out of making progress to go inside.  Truth be known, I was looking for a restroom.  Failing to find one, and not willing to ask, I exited the main entrance and came upon this view.

Center Arch of the Main Entrance to Union Station

Although I've seen this view from the opposite side a couple of times, I really didn't imagine it would line up this nicely from the inside looking out.  The lighting was wonderful, and when I walked out the door this sight stopped me short.  I pulled up and just about caused the woman exiting behind me with a roller bag (it is the supposedly the busiest travel day of the year after all) to run into my newly imobile backside.  I let the exiting traffic clear a little, and then lined up slightly left of the center of the door to snap this picture.  I didn't want to impede folks on their way, and have botched the symmetry just a little. Be that as it may, the flag gently blowing and outlined in the wreath was an remains a sight to behold.  One thing that I plan on doing relatively shortly is returning to this magnificent train station after dark to see what the blackness and lighting will reveal. With any manner of luck, there will be more pictures to follow.  There are just too many interesting aspects of the station to not explore them a little.  It's the gift of breaking up my routine, and I'm glad that whatever moved me wander on down here had the wisdom to know what I needed to see.

Failing to find a bathroom, I headed up toward the United States Botanic Garden. This place is a real gem located just south and west of the Capitol Building, and perhaps more importantly it has one of only a few easily accessible restrooms on the Washington Mall.  I made it there with twenty minutes to spare before closing, made my way through the main exhibit hall, into the primeval forest, through the section representing Hawaii, into and through the desert, and finally into the best public restrooms that federal tax dollars can buy. On the way back out, I noticed that the main hall had what amounted to a model of the Washington Mall running down the length of the hall.  There were stylized models of the major buildings rendered in a bronze colored patina and lit from within. These were surrounded by a collection of plants meant to invoke the feeling of the holidays. Mirroring the actual mall, the east end of the hall hosted the model of the Supreme Court Building.

Model of the Supreme Court Building

Seeing the model of the United States Supreme Court caused me to capture that feeling of connectedness that I've been walking around for the last year trying to track down. If I hadn't needed to find a restroom, I wouldn't have gone into Union Station where on exiting I was treated to a view I hadn't imagined existed. Failing to find one, I hot footed it over to the Botanic Garden where I saw a model of the area I've been walking around regularly for the last year.  I had no idea that this display was here, and it wasn't here the last time I came in the garden.  It's almost as if I was being led by an invisible hand to see what I needed to see and I felt the connectedness and contentment that I needed to feel today.  Sounds a bit daft, but it felt pretty good.

On the way back to the starting point, the cars in the lots surrounding the Capitol Building had largely cleared out and the Botanic Garden had closed to visitors. The lights on the inside of the garden caught my eye, and I was able to capture a panoramic photo of a scene that I've walked past countless times but was still somehow new.  A slightly different perspective where the Gardens and the Capitol were linked visually in a way that I've never noticed before.

Light show at the United States Botanic Garden and the United States Capitol

The walk was the perfect way to kick off the Thanksgiving weekend and I'm grateful to have experienced the journey. The sights I took in ended up being beyond my most optimistic imaginings of what would unfold, and it happened in a way that was unforced and organic.  The path didn't have the geographic symmetry that I've become accustomed to on these little jaunts, but there was visual thread that wound through it all.