Morning - Annapolis Harbor

The day dawn cool bordering on cold. The sun was a broken egg yolk oozing across the gray sky.

Morning Over Annapolis Harbor

New Places with Slightly Different Perspectives

As the sun cracked over the horizon, I was struck by the tension that seems to pervade much of the environment around me.  It is a tension between what I see, and what I think I'm being told I should be experiencing. On the one hand, it's almost impossible to escape folks selling fear, disgust, danger, chaos, scarcity, and even hate.

Dawn emerges over the Anacostia with the USS Barry

None of those things existed this morning along the mile and a half I covered while giving the left foot another day of break-in time. I made my way out onto a robust and completely accessible dock floating out on the Anacostia. Now I don't like to be a pollyanna, and I know this kind of wealth isn't necessarily representative but I've walked a long way in a diverse set of locations over the last year.  The things I'm bombarded with on any number of media outlets as being the norm simply do not exist in the quantities or with the menace with which they are portrayed.

USS Barry on the Anacostia

I live in an extraordinary place during an extraordinary time. Many of the problems from just 100 years ago have been vanquished, and I have access to a freedom that is without equal in all of human history.

Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge - South Capitol Street, SW, Washington, DC

I am grateful that walking has given me the opportunity to open my eyes and the time to critically evaluate what I see. To experience the moment and the meter of space and all the exceptional things happening all around me. It's there for the "taking (in)" for anyone who can just slow down for a minute, stopping to notice and understand what a wonder is happening right before our eyes. The world isn't perfect, but it is fantastically good. I'll be on the lookout for additional beauty as tomorrow unfolds.

Square One

The crisp air pulled at his jacket. Weeks of inactivity had resulted in a creeping softness in dealing with the outside air temperature. Back in January before the injury, he would have welcomed the 53 degree weather which, at the time, would have felt like a warm tropical breeze. Lethargy had erased that perspective, and the breezy gusts of air pushed into his skin with a damp chill that made him question his fortitude.

The old girl of the waterfront still stood the watch as the sun cracked over the horizon like an oozing egg yolk.

Old Girl of the waterfront at sunrise

She hadn't seen this walker for awhile, but the scene had passed in front of her bow more than once over the previous three decades. Returning from an injury, the first tentative steps betrayed the lack of confidence in the healing that had been happening during the walker's absence. Stepping out, his gait wasn't quite right. Not so much limp as awkward rolling strides manifesting the doubt in the foot. Would the bone crack? Would the ligament pull away? A tentative slowness ruled the day.

As the steps rolled on, some level of confidence returned. His senses became more in tune with the air and the trail. A little more than halfway out, he crossed a bridge.

Crossing the bridge back into the land of routine - Yards Park, DC

The pop didn't happen. The fire didn't return. The breeze scoured away a bit of the softness and the nerves in his hands and legs began the process of settling in to a more natural state. Action, as it always does, exfoliated the discomfort and pushed a bit of toughness back into his core.

The world was there for exploring. The color began to return.

A new adventure in Yards Park

He'd slowed down quite a bit. His thirst for distance and pace had yet to reawaken, but the first steps out from square one had been taken. Another day had passed into the books, and a new one was just over the horizon.

Unsettled

Just after dusk, the storm front rolled up from the southeast. It cut a swath of damage caused by wind, hail, and several tornadoes that left fatalities in their wake. Fingers of heavy rain scratched their way across the suburbs as long snakes of traffic made their way along the glistening highways in endless, red, LED lit rivers of angst.

The wind whipped the trees and sheets of lightening cascaded from cloud top to cloud top. The weather was as unsettled as the political landscape.

Sitting in the waning grey light, surrounded by the metal cocoon of the best Japanese engineering $28K can acquire my own thoughts rattled around in my head. The time had come to part ways with a familiar companion.

Five weeks had passed since the pop followed by a fiery wave of pain had been loosed from the outside of my left foot and washed up my calf to the knee. Since then, the CAM Boot and I had gone everywhere together. Up stairs and down. Clomping down sidewalks and streets. Through the grey corridors so typical of government facilities.

The CAM Boot Retired

Locking my foot and ankle in the tight wrap of it's velcro and unyielding sole, the boot had become my companion and confidant. It shifted my gait and my pelvis ever so slightly. I walked with a starboard list, but my friend had clobbered the pain. After a mere week or two in the boot's familiar embrace, the Motrin had been placed back in the corner of the dark cupboard.  Short walks from the car park to work or a store with a slightly off center list were the norm. Thoughts of my lower back and lower left leg faded into obscurity to be replaced with more pedestrian concerns.

It's been a good run with the boot. I'm left to wonder what tomorrow will reveal. What will it feel like to be restored to a completely vertical orientation. Will each step carry a tickle of worry that the fifth metatarsal will snap throwing me to the pavement. Will my ankle flap and flop like a flag that has lost one corner of mooring from the flagpole.

Time will tell, and I'm looking forward to the next steps.

Same Vistas, Different Thoughts

It has been said that life is hard, and it's harder if you're stupid.  I walked down to the waterfront again today, to capture the same set of images that I did yesterday. That part of the objective was successful. I failed to check that the scan your badge turnstile gates were working to allow me ready access back to my automobile for the commute back home. They were not powered up, a fact that was painfully obvious had I taken a moment to check the lights (a red one and a green one) that indicate the turnstile is open for your return through the secured area. The red one was ominously dark, and that little oversight on my part cost me quite a bit (based on recent history anyway) of unplanned walking.

Anacostia Sunset

The lesson observed was to check the power by ensuring that the red light is lit. All that aside, I was successful in accomplishing the initial goal, and the bit of extra walking gave me a chance to cogitate a little more that I'd planned. The first thing I noticed about the photos is that I was correct in assessing that the work is wrapping up on the new pier. I was incorrect about the number of slips being constructed, and I suspect that there are much more ambitious plans than just servicing water taxis. By my count there are spots for about 42 boats on the new piers with lengths up to 24 feet. I never would have imagined five weeks ago that this was the plan. I still can't find any obvious news about this construction project based on a quick Google search.  

Aside from the scale of the project being beyond what I imagined, I felt an even more acute sense of restlessness due to the "end of the boot" that's coming up on Thursday. I am going to have to make a conscious effort to ease back into the walking because I really have missed the activity backed by mindfulness that the practice engenders.

Fortunately, I was able to conduct a little test because of my failure to notice the lack of power to the turnstiles.  I trundled along at a bit less than a mile in order to find an operable gate. Though still in the notorious boot, I felt pretty good, so I'm hopeful that the transition to my walking shoes will be uneventful.

Anacostia Evening with the USS Barry

I also determined that I've gotten a little soft over the intervening weeks.  The temperature wasn't too intemperate at a balmy 48 degrees, and the rain, such that it was, came in more like a light mist than a gully-washer. Rory Conlan is fond of saying that "physical discomfort is only important if your attitude is wrong." I may have some work to do in that regard because I could have done without the liquid precipitation, hovever light.

Tomorrow is a new day, and I look forward to what the universe will serve up.

Remembering Change

One of the things that I really appreciate about walking the same, or at least very similar routes, every day for over a year was that I could observe the change that was happening along the route in a tangible way.  I've really missed that element of watching things unfold in daily snapshots of time.

Anacostia Sunset

Today I made my way down to the Anacostia waterfront for the first time in weeks. At the time of my injury almost five weeks ago, the crane in the foreground of this picture was just starting to put the structure on pilings that had been set in the bank of the river. The rumor circulating was that the pilings were being installed to support a dock for a water taxi service. Over the past five weeks, a great deal of progress has been made, and it appears to my semi-trained eye that the project is nearing completion.

I don't know if the dock that's being built will service water taxis or not, but there are at least four and possibly five or six floating boat slips that have been built. I envisioned a single pier jutting out into the river, but it seems that the project is just a bit more ambitious that I imagined. The change that I saw today gives me pause to wonder about the other things that have been progressing during my diminished ambulatory capacity.

I'm getting restless. According to the doctors, I should be able to come out of the walking boot this coming Thursday and ease back into a more active lifestyle. The rest has been beneficial, and I have used the time to progress other areas of my daily practice, but I'm becoming more anxious to get back on the trail again. I wonder if the scaffolding around the Capitol Dome has been removed. That was scheduled to happen this winter, and I had great plans to capture the progress. I hope I haven't missed all of that action because if history is any guide it won't happen again for another five decades or so. We shall see. 

Although there have been obvious changes, some things remain relatively constant, and there is a certain amount of comfort in the fact that I haven't missed all the big developments along the river.

Anacostia Evening with the ex-USS Barry

The USS Barry is still keeping it's three decade watch over the Washington Navy Yard. This silent sentinel is scheduled to be retired someday in the not too distant future. Today, or the intervening five weeks, wasn't that day. With any manner of good fortune, I'll be able to watch that project progress on a more routine basis as I return to my walking on the Anacostia River Trail.

As always, I'm looking forward to what tomorrow my have in store.

Longer Days and Different Sunrises

I made a tepid attempt to get back into the swing of photography this morning.  I'm looking forward to later this week getting out of the walking boot and making an attempt to get back in the practice of walking.  The last five weeks have been a little disruptive as far as photography and blogging.  The walks fed the opportunity for photography and the photographs fed the blog.

At any rate, now that the sun is rising earlier and setting later there is a distinct difference in the texture of the sunrises and sunsets that I have been able to capture.

Severn River Morning

This one wasn't too bad, and I do like the way the clouds give the morning some character.  I'm looking forward to returning to a more normal routine this week.