September 6, 2013
by David Ryan
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A Wandering Adventure Along the Glen Echo Trolley Line in Washington, D.C.

One of the themes of The Gentle Art of Wandering is that you can even find the natural world in a densely populated urban area by seeking out the many creases and corridors that exist there. My dog Petey and I had a chance to do this when we visited Washington, D.C. in July.

This particular adventure actually started over 48 years ago in 1965 when a friend and I visited Washington when we were in high school. We were traveling on our own, and, after spending several days of doing what you are supposed to do in Washington, we decided to take a walk.

Our walk started by following a set of streetcar tracks to see where they went. Streetcars were no longer running in Washington in 1965, but many of the streets still had tracks. We followed a set of tracks that were near the White House and headed west.

The route took us through the Georgetown neighborhood. At the edge of Georgetown, the tracks left the street and entered a private right-of-way. The tracks were still on the ground even though it had been a few years since the last streetcar had run on them. We followed the tracks as they ran along the top of a bluff overlooking the Potomac River.

The tracks finally ended at an old fashioned amusement park in Glen Echo, Maryland. From there we kept the walk going by following the nearby tow path of the old C & O Canal. We stopped walking when we reached the Great Falls of the Potomac and took a bus back to Washington.

Since that walk I have often wondered if the old right-of-way to Glen Echo was still there. I had been to Washington many times since that first walk but always had other things to do and never took the time to check it out. This time I made the right-of-way the reason for the visit.

Our adventure began by parking our car on P Street in Georgetown. Surprisingly on this section of P Street, there was still a streetcar track. But rather than immediately following the track, we made a brief detour to the main street (M Street) of Georgetown to climb the Georgetown stairs.

These are the tracks on P Street. Rather than getting power from an overhead wire, the streetcars in Washington got their power from an underground wire. The middle rail in the picture was a slot for the streetcars to access the underground wire.

If you have seen the movie The Exorcist, you have seen these stairs. Ironically the stairs are adjacent to an old streetcar barn. You can even see the tracks on the floor of the barn. We climbed the stairs and walked back to P Street to start following the old streetcar track. Continue Reading →

August 22, 2013
by David Ryan
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A Hiker at Tinker Creek (Part 2)

This post is a continuation of the previous post, A Hiker at Tinker Creek (Part 1)

After checking out Annie Dillard’s former neighborhood, it was time for Petey and me to hike the Appalachian Trail to see some of the places she mentions in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek up close. To do that we drove to Four Pines Hostel near Catawba, Virginia, a few miles southwest of Roanoke, to park our car. From there we got a shuttle to where the trail crosses US Highway 220, to the northwest of Roanoke. Our plan was to hike about twenty miles from US 220 back to our car and to spend a night on the trail.

A quick note about hiker hostels, there are many of these along the Appalachian Trail. For the long-distance hiker, they are a place to shower and to spend the night for very little money. For someone on a shorter hike, like us, they can be a safe place to park the car and to get a shuttle. Information on hostels and other hiker services along the trail can be found in a Thru-Hiker companion guide. Companion guides are available from outfitters or the Appalachian Trail Conservancy.

Our chosen route would take us across Tinker Creek, up to the top of Tinker Mountain, over Tinker Ridge, by Tinker Cliffs, and then over McAfee Knob. Many hikers consider this to be one of the more scenic sections of the Appalachian Trail in Virginia.

Although it is very busy, US 220 is a paradise for a long-distance hiker. There are shopping centers, motels, and restaurants only footsteps from the Appalachian Trail. It is a perfect place for a long-distance hiker to take a well-earned rest day.

As soon we left the highway we stepped into the woods and soon approached the easternmost extension of Tinker Mountain. The mountain was between us and Annie Dillard’s neighborhood.

In less than a mile we crossed Tinker Creek several miles upstream from her neighborhood. (The trail uses a bridge from an abandoned road to cross the creek.) On page 102 of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard tells us that the source of Tinker Creek is on the north side (the side hidden from her house) of Tinker Mountain.

Tinker Creek from the Appalachian Trail. Continue Reading →

August 10, 2013
by David Ryan
14 Comments

A Hiker at Tinker Creek (Part 1)

A little northwest of Roanoke, Virginia, the Appalachian Trail crosses Tinker Creek. About forty years ago, in a home not too far from Hollins College outside of Roanoke, Annie Dillard would have been finishing up her 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning classic Pilgrim at Tinker Creek; the same Tinker Creek crossed by the Appalachian Trail.

The book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, is a very personal narrative that is not about the author. Annie Dillard does not tell us about her life or what she thinks about the burning issues of the day. She only offers an almost lyrical weaving of facts and her actual observations to present a sometimes startling portrayal of the natural world around us and our role in it.

On the very first page of the narrative she writes of an old tomcat that would come into her bedroom at night, knead her chest with his front paws, and then leave bloody paw prints on her chest that looked like rose petals. Four pages later she tells us of a giant water bug injecting a frog with an enzyme to dissolve its tissue and then actually seeing the frog disappear right before her eyes as the water bug sucked the life out of it. The book doesn’t quit there; it keeps that pace all the way to the end.

If you look back at the summer of 1973, America’s involvement in the Viet Nam War was coming to an end and the unfolding Watergate scandal was dominating the nightly news. Yet like all burning issues, these have faded away like a blip on a radar scope, only to be replaced, many times over, by a new burning issue. Yet if you were to pick up a copy of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek today and read it, it would still be fresh and ring true.

I first read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek many years after it was published and a couple of years after I completed the Appalachian Trail. By the time I reached the second page I realized that Annie Dillard was writing about an area near the Appalachian Trail when she said, “I live by a creek, Tinker Creek, in a valley in Virginia’s Blue Ridge.”

As she continues the description of the area, she literally identifies the Appalachian Trail one page later. “The mountains – Tinker and Brushy, McAfee’s Knob and Dead Man – are a passive mystery…”  The Appalachian Trail goes over all four of those mountains.

Tinker (Dead Man’s) Mountain from the east

Continue Reading →