Long Walks On Leafy Streets

8/25/2013 Mount Vernon trail, VA
Today I am up very early in preparation for a hike I am leading for Sierra Club. The sun is yet to rise. In fact it is not dawn yet. My Sierra Club Outings colleague Russ and I plan to take people on a tour of some of the civil war fort sites in the northern part of Washington, DC. During the civil war 68 forts were built in a ring around the District of Columbia which at that time was a small town of about 75,000 people comprising mainly of the Capitol, the White House and the areas around them. A 37-mile long circle of defenses consisting of forts with large cannons bolstered by rifle pits and gun batteries in between them was built. Many trees were cut down to clear the view from the forts. At that time Washington, DC was mostly farms, plantations and woodlands. Now the farms are gone and many of the areas that were denuded are now forested. At the same time the population has grown to about 600,000 and there are a lot more houses and streets now that didn’t exist in those times.
The site of one of these forts, Fort Slocum, is near my house. When I walk to work I pass by this site on Kansas Ave less than 10 minutes after leaving my house. It is now under the National Park Service management. There are no ruins of the old fort. The whole site is covered in vegetation. There are some mature trees in the middle and some bushes around them. There is also a nice grassy meadow with a picnic shelter outside of these bushes and trees. Yesterday and on Friday morning I went inside the fort site. There were some foot trails inside and I was able to see where the ground was higher. That is where they would have placed the big guns. There were also a few clear spots around the big trees that seemed to be serving as natural hangouts for young people. Soda and water bottles, beer bottles and cigar packets were lying strewn about. I had taken some trash bags with me in anticipation and filled up one trash bag. I must say that it was not as bad as some of the other parklands in the area where I had gone for cleanups.
Yesterday morning Nicole and I joined with thousands of other people in commemorating the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington that was led by Martin Luther King, Jr. It was a beautiful day, sunny and pleasant. We were able to listen to speeches by legends of the civil rights movement such as Myrlie Evers and John Lewis. Incidentally that march itself took place just about hundred years after the cannons and guns had fallen silent in the civil war.
Later in the afternoon I went back to Fort Slocum to check it out for one last time. It was wonderful to be trudging up the meadows on either side of Kansas Ave on this sunny afternoon. I wondered what the view would have been 150 years ago. I also often wonder about the Indian tribes that lived in the area. When John Smith first came up the Potomac River in the early 1600’s there were many Indian fishing villages in the area that is now Washington, DC. Many of the roads in Washington, DC are built over what used to be Indian trails. Since the Native Americans did not have horses or other animals to ride they traveled everywhere on foot. They were excellent runners capable of going long distances. Although it saddens me to think of what has been lost it gives me a little solace to be able to walk and run in the trails first blazed by the Native Americans.

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