Storm King Morning

 Storm King is acres of meadows,woods, treed alleys, ponds and SCULPTURE. The land has been groomed to provide excellent vistas of tons (literally) of monumental sculpture. Mown trails guide you through the meadows where wildflowers and butterflies abound. 

Sculpture is meant to be seen from all sides and I enjoy being surprised by the way each piece changes as I approach it. One sculpture, appeared as a tight ball from one side, but expanded into a long series of interlocking shapes as we drew near.

Other favorites were the mirrored fence by Alyson Shotz, the orange zigzag  by Alexander Lieberman, Andy Goldsworthy’s serpentine wall, Maya Lin’s waves of grass, and the field of Mark de Suvero sculptures.  It’s impossible to see it all in a few hours, but you have a better chance

 if you rent a bike to get around and pack a picnic.  We only had a few hours, but you could easily spend a whole day here.  I feel like we saw so much but when I look at their website, I see how much we missed. We’ll be back.

Walking Arlington - part 2 "Magical Moments"

A walk is exercise.  It is informational, historical, territorial, but sometimes everything converges and it's magical. These have been some lovely moments on our walks:

• A sloping wooded neighborhood street, where each resident had not only decorated their house and yard with lights, but had coordinated to hang strings of lights crisscrossing the street all the way up the hill.
• A giant pine tree hung with at least 25 handmade birdhouses, most made from re-purposed materials.  The yard alive with birdsong as birds stood on their homes or sang from inside their crafty digs.
• Tree stumps carved into Roosters, stacked balls, waterfalls, benches, and bears, to name a few.
  
• A walkway lined with colorful bowling balls.
• A more permanent game of hopscotch made from stepping stones.
• A house covered in ceramic faces.
• A corrugated whale hung on a garage door.
• Many fairy houses and gnomes, in yards, on tree stumps, and sometimes even appearing along a bike path.
• A giant property strung up with over the top Christmas lights.
•  Enormous inflatable Mushrooms lit up in the dark.
• Painted "eyes" staring up from the sidewalk.
• Rosie who sniffs and licks every statue of a dog.
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Walking Arlington (part 1) Where the Sidewalk Ends

 In three weeks, Bill and I walked one hundred miles.  We hadn't gone very far, and we'd retraced our path many times, but we covered a lot of ground.

Our quarantine hobby is to walk all of the residential streets in Arlington County; we are more than halfway towards our goal.  Before the quarantine, date night would mean going out to see a movie or a concert and eating out.  Now we walk our dog

We walk our dog every day, but with the quarantine, this duty which was usually done by one or the other of us, started to become something we could do together.  

At first we walked our usual routes, or we'd mix it up by walking it in reverse,  or adding a little detour.  Then we started crossing the borders of our neighborhood and began to explore places we had never walked before.  What if walked that bike path under route 50?  What's on the other side of Glebe Road? How far can we walk down Columbia Pike?

Eventually we walked every neighborhood that we could get to from our house.  One day I looked at Bill and said, "You know, we could get in the car and drive to another neighborhood and then walk from there."  And so we did.  At some point we felt like we must have walked most of Arlington, so we found a paper bicycle map in a drawer and started to mark off all of the streets we had walked.  Well, it wasn't even close. We needed a plan. So we pinned the map up on the wall and started being more methodical planning our walks.  

We have chipped away at areas that seemed impossibly vast.  We have started using Google maps to track our walks so we can make sure we haven't missed any streets.  Some neighborhoods have a fairly logical grid to follow, but most don't.  A lot of backtracking, abruptly turning around, and walking tiny cul de sacs are par for the course. 

The hardest task has been walking the border between Arlington and Fairfax.  You have to keep your eyes open for clues: street signs change color; trash cans look different and Neighborhood Watch signs appear.  But the most reliable clue seems to be that Arlington stops where the sidewalk ends.