Welcomed by poets, accompanied by statesmen and generals (the Liberators), walking mostly in the shade of lofty elms and oaks, the open-eyed pedestrian strolling down this street will be inspired, delighted and refreshed. That’s why I’m writing a travelogue about this 1.1 mile gem of a street in the northwest part of Washington, D.C. called Virginia Avenue.
A walk awaits
The Dream
I enjoy reading accounts of trips. My favorite, Days and Nights on the Grand Trunk Road, by Anthony Weller who describes his journey on the famous road in India and Pakistan that runs from Calcutta to the Khyber Pass, is a well-written page turner of a book I highly recommend. I dream of writing about traveling on one of the slightly less exotic but nevertheless fascinating and historic U.S. highways such as U.S. 30 (Lincolnway), U.S. 40 (National Highway), or U.S. 1 (Atlantic Highway). I would interview people along the way, gather local history and stories, and paint a word picture of the road’s past and present. The trouble with this dream is resources. I have neither the time nor the money to take a trip like this, do the research, then write about it. Since I haven’t yet gotten a call from National Geographic offering to sponsor me on such a venture, and since I am gainfully employed in a day job that gobbles up large chunks of my week, I need to put my dream of writing a travelogue on a back burner.
Or do I?
Discovering Virginia Avenue, NW
A handy express bus runs from in front of where I live in Alexandria, Virginia, to a block away from my office in a building near Virginia Avenue. In April, 2011, I started stepping off the bus at a stop farther from work to enjoy a brisk 20 minute walk each morning, a healthful and fun thing to do. On this Monday through Friday constitutional, I became acquainted with the southern half of the avenue from Constitution to 23rd Street. I quickly grew to enjoy the architecture, the green spaces, and the majestic trees that line much of the route. One day, it dawned on me that this street is home to five statues of Latin American statesmen and generals known collectively as the Statues of the Liberators. I became fascinated about how and why the avenue was given this theme and began to look at the area differently, to experience it and feel it as a unified whole as if it were a single destination. I also realized that last year, during lunchtime walks while working in another office a block further west, I had become well acquainted with most of the western half of this street. I combined my enjoyment of Virginia Avenue with my dream of writing a travelogue and came up with Among the Liberators: A Walk Down Virginia Avenue.
To See, To Respond
I do not intend this to be an exhaustive or even mostly descriptive list of every single feature along the 1.1 mile stretch of street, though I plan to mention many points of interest. I have two goals for Among the Liberators. First, I hope to simply show the many lovely, fascinating features of this street in the greater context of its history and present. I also want to paint Virginia Avenue’s big picture as a collection of interesting parts. In this travelogue, the reader will get trees and forest in equal doses and how they all fit together, missing neither for the other. My second goal is more fundamental. I am energized by how I or anybody reacts to another person, thing or event. How does this make me feel? How does it move me? More than data or bare information about this street, I will try to communicate how I react to it all. I hope that by describing both the object and my response to it, I will have laid an emotional map over the Avenue itself so that future pedestrians who walk in my footsteps will see at least some of what I saw and a bit, perhaps, of how I felt.
In The Know
A strand from my childhood weaves its way into this project. I remember, when I was a child of 10 or 11 or so, visiting my uncle in the city where he worked and lived with his family. I remember riding in the back seat of his car, listening to him tell my father about the community. I will never forget how impressed I was at what seemed to me at the time his extensive knowledge of the place. To my youthful mind, he was a font of information. I was fascinated and enthralled and, I think, I hold him up as a model to be able to say a lot about wherever I am. I think there’s a piece of that in this travelogue.
Photos
I’m going to augment this travelogue with pictures. I hope that’s not cheating too much. My goal as a writer is to set things down so well, so nicely, that the words don’t need the crutch of photographs. On the other hand, writing opens my eyes to visual scenes, patterns, beautiful and intriguing angles and shots. Virginia Avenue is mostly lovely and completely photogenic. I’ll include some pics in the body of the text as well as links to galleries of photos I’ve taken during the many hours I’ve spent loitering on this singular street.
Stop! (and look around you)
Installment Plan
I’m going to write this serially, setting in tree after tree until I’ve planted the whole forest. Eventually, I’ll put together the final version in a booklet with chapters, a combination of all the parts I first published in the blog. Each chapter will cover a block of Virginia Avenue between north and south (numbered) streets. Since a blog’s articles are typically more bite-sized, the serialized version will better fit that format.
An Invitation to Enjoy Almost Endless Variety
Are you ready to take this walk with me? Recently, I took a two-week vacation. Though I enjoy my work, I didn’t really miss it while I was away. About three or four days into the vacation I realized, with a smile, I was missing one part of my work days: my walks on Virginia Avenue. I’ve come to cherish the time I spend strolling up and down that street and am amazed how those environs don’t get old. Each time I step out onto the avenue, looking and listening, I see something new, something I missed before. Viewing the street in different seasons, varying weather, different times of day provides an almost infinite variety of things to see and ways to see them. I hope this walking guide helps you discover the same thing.
Where the fun begins
