Long Walks On Leafy Streets

8/25/2014 Near Skyline drive, Shenandoah Mountains, VA
Sometime back, in the heat of the elections in India I was writing about how tragic it would be if the Hindu nationalists came to power. My friend Ganesh commented that the Indian people would go on regardless of who is in power. Now of course they are in power and I can only hope that they are not as bad as I thought they were. Anyway, at that time the full import of Ganesh's remark didn't register.
Coming back to the present, Wednesday evening I was doing my evening prayer / meditation (Sandhyavandanam). I was trying to focus but I could hear the TV from upstairs. It reminded me of growing up in India where of course there would be all sorts of sounds coming from all directions. It brought back to my mind quite vividly how it would feel on an evening back home at dusk as the mind became more contemplative amid the hum of people going about their routine.
Somehow that hum of routine seemed part of and not an intrusion on the contemplation. Women preparing dinner or singing prayer while evening puja was performed in the temples, children playing or doing their homework. There was a certain flow to life itself, as if we were all part of an expansive and slowly flowing river. Of course there is a flow to life in the U.S as well, but perhaps because of my expectations from it or awareness of the problems, that flow feels a bit turbulent. On the other hand even today with all the changes that have happened in India when I go back to Chennai or Coimbatore I feel the same energy of the flow of life, with its roots in traditions that seem to date back to the beginning of time, as if they were forever a part of the truth of this earth. Politics and other happenings in the country felt then and feel even now a distant and insignificant part of the scene on the other shore of that eternal river.
On Friday Nicole took off from work for the start of our second weekend vacation of the summer. Actually it turned out to be a “staycation” because we decided we didn’t want to spend the money and effort to travel for such a short time. We got on our bikes, me on my trusty companion of twenty years “Pegasus” and Nicole on her newly acquired hybrid bike that she has christened “Shakti.” It was supposed to rain that day but the rain was slight and we decided to go. We biked on Peabody Street and after about 1.5 miles were inside Rock Creek Park. It was great to glide down Joyce Avenue down to Beach drive. On both sides of Joyce Road the slopes were covered in lush green shrubs, vines and trees. The rain made them look even greener. Beach Drive is a winding tree-covered road that runs along Rock Creek. We biked for another two or three miles to Pierce Mill. Nicole especially enjoyed biking along the creek because this was the first time that she had done it. Because of the rains the creek was full of water and this ride was surely the highlight of our day. At Pierce Mill we stopped to take a break and found that the mill was actually open. We took a quick tour inside. This Mill was operating until 1897 not long after the plantations had given way to a new national park. It was nice to see the wooden wheels and elevator mechanisms still looking in good shape. Apparently they even have demonstration runs of the mill on Saturdays.
We then biked to Woodley Park and took the metro to Ballston. After a nice lunch at Uncle Julio’s Café we biked for another two miles along the Custis trail and the W & O.D trail before “Shakti” developed a flat. Then we took a bus from nearby Wilson Blvd to get back to Ballston.
Our original plan was to take metro all the way to Reston and bike for a long distance on the W & O.D trail. It is an old railroad path that has been converted to a hiker/biker trail. I have biked on it all the way to Purcellville from Reston, a distance of about 25 miles and then another 7 miles on country roads to the Blue Ridge mountains. That was a great trip. Pictures from that trip can be seen on my Flickr page, in the “Blue Ridge trip” album. There is also a partial story of that trip titled “Between the Rivers” on my website. [Click on the little picture on the top of this page, then “Writings”].

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