december 8 when you see a cane, I see a crock; when you see a crowd I see a flock -- it's sheep we're up against Pull up a pillow, this 'un's gonna be long.
December hasn't been a favorite month of mine thus far -- had a major delayed funk over the general state of my birthday last month (redeemed when certain friends made wise and judicious use of my Amazon Wish List, while others either missed the whole shebang or gave me ... well ... gifts that made me wonder where I'd gone wrong) and didn't feel much like writing, then got about 1,837 freelance assignments (okay, four) so that plus my regular work has meant not a lot of interest in journaling. Anyway, I wanted to do the Lake Walk next, and had to wait for Larry and Mom to come home from their vacation, on which they had a whale of a time. It sounds like a small trip to hell to me ("They never leave you alone! There's always stuff to do!" said Mom, who then also acknowledged you had to eat in the general dining room all the time, or suffer the pizza place upstairs, neither of which was much of an option) but I wouldn't mind seeing St. John or any of the Sainted Islands. But it was perfect for the two of them. We're a real foody family -- any place that feeds you in enormous quantities is pretty much a four-starrer in our book. I'm spoiled, though, living in New York. I like my tuna encrusted these days.
Other news: Lynda has been tapped to appear on Jeopardy! She told me about the initial stages months ago, when she took a test and didn't want to put in her social security number and figured that probably queered the whole deal, but no, that must have been all right because she was at work last week and this guy called to tell her they wanted her on Jeopardy. "Now everybody at the office knows who I am," she said. "Well, they knew already but didn't act like they cared. They just thought I was the weird one." I'm looking forward to Alex Trebek asking her on national television about her floaty-pen collection.
Her goal, she says, is to have one custom made when she's 40. I'm not sure what this custom floaty-pen (and yes, that's the real name for them) will do exactly, but it is a goal, and I wish her well with it. If she wins a stack on Jeopardy, it's a goal she can achieve earlier in life. I suggested she call The Baltimore Sun and get them to do a feature article on her. Then, if she doesn't get the big prize, they've got a headline already set: "She Lost On Jeopardy." (And if you suddenly felt the urge to go "ooooo wahh ooooo" after that, you're a child of the 80s, my friend. So she and her sister are going out West in early January for the tapings; when it will air, only Alex and his producers know at this point. She's boning up by reading the encyclopedia.
So. Without further ado, here's A Walk In The Clouds. Er, Lake. Around. A Walk Around The Lake. I wrote this at home, and would have made it the intro to the last entry, but ... well, you know what happened there. And a warning: A lot of it has nothing to do with the view around the lake.
Traveling by train is really the best way to get from New York to Washington, D.C., and doing it in spurts is even better. Sure, it's a little more expensive, but heading out from Queens or the middle of Manhattan to JFK or Newark takes about an hour (LaGuardia is better; I live close to LaGuardia, but if you're in the middle of Manhattan, again you're looking at close to an hour). Then there's the waiting for the plane, since they all want you to check in so early (earlier now, these days). Then there's the taxiing, the actual flight, landing, more taxiing, and you're only down in Northern Virginia (that's where National Airport is; the other options are Dulles (also Northern VA) and BWI (nearly at Baltimore) when you land, so there's another good hour spent on the Metro getting to the Shady Grove stop on the line (where Mom lives, or nearby another 15 minutes). Take the train (in NYC) and it's about a 15 minute walk from work to the train station, you can get there about a half hour before the train even leaves, the ride itself if you take the Metroliner is about 3 hours, tops, and when you get in at Union Station it's a 2 minute walk to the Metro, which is only 40 minutes to Shady Grove. It feels a lot faster. It's not necessarily cheaper. But it does feel faster.
And train riding is just plain nice. The view out the window goes by in a big rush, like a dream you can't hold on to, and it keeps providing endless information. You wonder what the lives of the people in the houses are like; you wonder who is in the cars below and where they are going. The woods that occasionally line the sides do what woods have always done to me ask me to jump out and come walking. I'll keep my eyes trained for a way in based on where we are by the side of the tracks,and wonder what it would look like if I could somehow start out on that small bare patch and go exploring. I don't know why I have this overwhelming desire I like the woods a lot more than it likes me; I always get bitten, or poison ivy, or I have to pee and I tell you, peeing without a can is a pain, or it gets cold and I always want to be back home in the safety of my bed. But in theory, I do love the woods.
When I was last home I never wrote this because world events overwhelmed much description of my trip for Rosh Hashanah to Maryland Lynda and I took a walk around the lake out back of my mom's house. It's a man-made lake, just a great big puddle with a few small islands that have become shit-stained from all of the Canada geese and ducks over the years. Don't get me started on Canada geese. In any case, it's got a funny shape I've memorized over the years. Come down the hill from the back of my mom's house, there's a slope along the lake that leads into a long flat stretch at near-water level. Trees hover over the lake as if looking at their reflection; the erosion has been eating away at their space for years.
Note playground and big patchy bare area. More soon.
bottom (or nearly so) of hill, to your left.
Toward the lake. Note wild air grates in the ground.
It's hard getting too nature-fied in this modern age.
And, bottom of hill, to right.Come around to the right (creature of habit, that's me) and you're heading into the prime geese 'hood.
I swan, they're everywhere. (No pun intended.) Bunch of freeloading Canucks. They're noisy and they hiss at you and they all look alike, which goes to prove that any bird can be a pigeon if there are too many of them. Craig swears they'll refuse to visit a lake that has a black swan in it. I'm not sure where we're supposed to get one, but maybe it's like borrowing a friend's cat to get rid of the mice in your apartment. Once the cat's been there a week or two, the mice can smell it, and won't come, even after the cat leaves. Anybody got a black swan we can borrow?
So anyway, after you've headed around the lake to the right and met some of the locals, the land juts out in a wide arc to the left to make space for picnic benches. The trees once there have been cut down; to the right of this arc is a small patch of standing trees and a lot of stumps, some of which don't seem native to the spot. It's a stump graveyard. My godmother Suzanne made a comment about how Montgomery County appears to have something against more than 7 trees standing together at once; they feel the need to hack them down and put up overpriced housing. I noted back that apparently more than 7 trees constituted an illegal assembly and had to be dispersed to avoid any revolutionary thoughts. "I speak for the trees!" In any case, I have no idea how this came to be. Obviously we're not allowed to chop down trees randomly, and nobody's made any effort to clean this area up. So I have no clue why this is. Maybe the geese were in on it. Past the stump graveyard it goes flat and close against the lake again, only you're about a foot higher than water level, and to the right a hill rises steeply to meet the backyards of the houses again. The lake used to be dotted with a "Fit-Trail," which has now been removed. When I was little and we first moved here, somebody decided the lake wasn't enough for just walking around or feeding the ducks or looking at; it had to have purpose. So the foundation (at that point, Montgomery Village was a Foundation, not a city or a town or anything of about 20,000 souls) put money forward and various exercise "stations" were set up along various points in this route. Along the big arc and the tree cemetery, for example, was a set of high parallel bars crossed with smaller bars, a lot like on a child's gym. We used that one for fun, going from side to side. One time when I was little I got up on top and sat there for ages, afraid to figure out how to get down again; ordering my brother not to go home and tell Mom I was stuck. Most of the rest of the trail "activities" (all described by a handy wood-framed and plastic-covered information sheet) were less interesting some wooden planks set up like steps for ankle workouts, for example. We ignored them, and probably they became eyesores. Now that they're gone, however, it almost feels a little sad, as if someone had uprooted more trees.
So the lake continues on to the halfway mark , the path passing under an enormous hanging Willow tree, which I love and also fear for ticks. (This is how I was raised there was rarely something gorgeous which didn't also have the potential to be awful, too.)
It's big and hairy looking, very soft and it ripples in the least little breeze. Funny, how there's not much discussion of the lake going on yet. More willow tree first:
And a wee bit more. What was cool is as I was taking these a woman walking around the lake stopped and said there was a great view across the lake of the tree, and she'd been meaning to bring her own camera out and take a picture, and that she might just do it today. I don't know if she did. The photo from the other side of the lake wasn't as good as these, though. What a tree, man. The picture above was taken by lying under the branches and facing skyward. I felt like I was under a protective tent.
This I just dig for the hell of it. Again, note wild man-made object (trash can) ruining the view in the lower left of the picture.
Want some lake? Well, just around the bend from the willow, the lake is fed by a creek (more soon), but for some reason the mouth of the creek is a big scummy area of green algae and various flotsam that gets stuck or thrown there. It isn't unusual to see a toy ball or a plastic soda bottle. You start to feel like the American Indian on the side of the road with a tear. People can be so thoughtless. Here's some scum:
This is within inches of the willow, so there you go: sublime and disgusting, side by side:
Mom said she liked that photo, until I told her the shiny stuff was oily scum. Yummy.
tunnel
berries at the end of the tunnelAt this point the path slopes in a curve up and to the right, then forks hard to the left. You can either go right, under a tunnel that runs under the main thoroughfare, and then to the tennis courts and pool. But to continue with the lake the best thing is to leave the path and quickly jog up the steep hill, finding the path again at the top. It then runs across a bridge. On your right is the avenue, quite close; on your left is a steep drop-off to where the lake is fed through two pipes by a creek on the other side. Or does the lake feed the creeks? Don't know. The path by the tennis courts on the opposite side of the Avenue runs the length of the creek, but we're not over there now. Up here the water tinkles gently and occasionally you'll run into wild Tiger Lilies and other beautiful colorful flowers. I pretty much always take the bridge, where you can't see most of the scum or anything yucchy.
Despite the intake pipe ribs, I still rather like this photo.
Note distinctive shadow of photographer. Poohsticks, anyone?
Monet would be proud.The bridge itself is rather flat, but once you start heading off of it, the path again slopes down in a steep arc that branches off to the right if you want to continue your jogging or walking or exploring on the sidewalk along the avenue but more naturally heads off to hug the lake again.
Trot down that little hill and on your right stands a Community Center just a small wooden building with a porch. When Craig and I were younger, for a few summers we attended "Camp Good Life" there. He loved it; I was a little too old and very spoiled by a much better camp called "Bar-T-Ranch," which, unfortunately, although relatively inexpensive, was out of our price range quite a lot. I usually got a few Bar-T weeks, and the rest of the summer was Good Life. It was very frustrating to be forced to hang around and do fairly lame activities and sports mere feet from my front door. I kept thinking I'd rather be home doing my own fairly lame activities and sports than be forced to participate. I was a little old for the camp anyway, and got stuck with more responsibility than fun most of the time. Adolescents, when you can get them to participate at all, usually get short-shrifted that way, as if we're training them to be adults, where fun takes a back seat to helping the snot-nosed six year olds. No wonder they rebel. Anyway, that was Camp Good Life, of which I have pretty much no specific memories, only a general malaise. As I walk by the Community Center, I'm never drawn to sit on the shady porch or sigh for the good times. Or the Good Life. It feels haunted to me. But I like the trees. They've left there in a wide triangle, which is a bit of a theme around the lake. (More than 7 is illegal assembly of foliage, after all.)
On the day I took the pictures I came across two intrepid fishermen. Nobody seriously fishes around the lake (technically, it's called North Creek Lake, a contradictorily stupid name that could only have been thought up in committee), and if you catch a sunfish you're not likely to do much more than throw him back, but maybe it's an existential thing with these guys. At least they're being watched over safely by another ugly trash can. I mean, I understand the concept of the trash can, and without it the place would probably be uglier than with it, but man, couldn't they find one that blended in a tad better? And wasn't in the center of everything? I swear, it's like R2-D2's cousin went fishing, too.
Beyond that stretch of lakefront property, the view gets boring for a while; the ducks rarely hang out away from the "islands" in the center of the lake, and you're raised up by about a foot. As for the "islands," they're just big mounds in the middle of the lake where the ducks and geese can feel safe; they're covered by a scrub of trees and shrub. One winter when the lake froze we walked over to the island and found it dull, but when it is surrounded by water there's that desire to go hide out there a while. The islands run just about parallel to the stump graveyard on the other side.
The spiders are lovely on this side, though; when Lynda and I walked it earlier this year we stood amazed at an enormous lacy concoction that put anything we'd ever made in our lives to shame. Spiders are cool, man. Don't want one crawling on me, but they're useful and make pretty things. I feel the same way about bees. So you continue on and eventually the houses start up again. This time, they're not the townhouses like where my mom lives; these are big standalone houses with big fat backyards fenced in and usually patrolled by a yippy dog who's so excited to see you pass by it doesn't know whether to protect or lick you all over the face. You also start noticing the path here although the geese don't seem to care where they poo, you should since they do a lot of it on the path itself, which is streaked with various shades of green and white, in various levels of fresh and dry. Eck.
Continuing on, the land again arcs out widely to the left, providing space for a bench. There were more Fit Trail things here, including a tilting plank which for years baffled us since it was too short for a slide. With the wisdom of later years er -- I now realize it was to maximize situp efficiency. Are you getting a sense of just how lame this Fit Trail was? So. Back on the trail again, it all goes flat, and you're raised up a good level from lake height. Taking away a lot of the lake romance stands a manhole. Ah, remember Whitman and his love for the manhole? Wait, that didn't come out quite like I wanted it to. But that's a man-made lake for you. It gets more fun in a minute. But I remember from about this place on the lake on the right the hill has again risen quite high a woman used to come out regularly with a bag of cracked corn, sit at the top of the hill and feed whatever waddled up her way. She'd have every duck in the lake hanging out there. I joined her once, envious of her popularity. I also remember that around this area lived a man who walked his two Golden Retrievers. Gorgeous, large, blond animals with that shaggy coat and permanent smile. That's when I fell in love with Goldens. They were wonderful dogs.
yawn.
double yawn.
A break in the action.
Prime sprinting territory.Back down on the path again, eventually it curves gently to the right and believe it or not makes room to accommodate a small grove of trees and a bench. I think there may even be more than seven there. That's my favorite spot. I'd like to say I spent many an afternoon there sitting on the bench and reading, but for some reason, I never did that. Maybe once or twice. It makes sense, but it's not something I ever did. As the path curves first right, then left, there once was the only other part of the Fit Trail I liked here the real parallel bars. That was my favorite gym activity, the parallel bars, swinging your legs over the side, curling them behind and advancing. It was a little bit like flying. Anyway, at this point the path does a wonderful thing wonderful, at least in my mind it goes hard, flat, the top of a hill on both sides; the lake is a good several yards at the bottom of the hill on the left; on the right is another intake pipe that turns the lake into another creek and leads into more forest. But for maybe 50 yards or so is this open flat path, and I love hitting high speed and just sprinting down it. I'm not much into running, but I've always loved sprinting. I'll gallop down that path, which at the end slopes steeply down the grade, curving to the left again (through another possibly illegal stand of pines) and passes a children's playground.
When I was younger it was a big wooden contraption with a pole to slide down and a slide, plus three swings. Maybe it rotted out but that's been replaced, too. Now, slightly higher up a steppe on the hill is a big ugly plastic thing. Funny how no matter what came before, the replacement rarely is an improvement. Thanks to the absence of the old jungle gym and a big flat Fit Trail stop, there are bare yellow and earthy patches in the grass. The new gym's background is the townhouses of my mom's development. The path continues on, and a fork springs up that'll lead you towards the new gym and in the direction you've just come from, but at an angle, heading up the hill to another section of the development, where it eventually meets sidewalk and dies. But if you continue on the path proper and don't take the fork, it slopes upwards again, and at long last you meet up with the space where you originally started, if you started near my mom's house. So that's the lake. 
Home, jeeves!But wait, there's more!
Going back to the prime sprinting area, where the photo of a dappled lake was taken, the houses end and there's a grassy hill that ascends for several yards. I always wanted to push the boundaries of where I could explore, and since that hill clearly led out of our neighborhood, when I was a kid it was always a bit dangerous to go over there. It's kind of sad on the one hand how constrained I felt about exploring; on the other hand, I'm encouraged because I did some of it anyway. Years ago, when you ascended that hill there was a good chance of running into uncharted lands -- at least, so far as the suburbs interpreted them.
Eventually you came upon a small stone shed made of gray, concrete blocks. The door was never locked, and there never seemed to be much in there. One time we checked it out and found what seemed to be some kind of animal pelt white, furry on the wall. It felt like Satan. We weren't even religious, exactly, but there was something spooky about it. I think we always thought we were going to stumble on some kind of Satan worship cult. So we retreated. Beyond that I think we once came upon a non-suburban, non-Foundation house (read: relatively rural, with an unfinished driveway and trucks) and felt like we'd suddenly walked into another state. We usually went home, afraid of getting in trouble. And when I say we, I don't know who was with me. Maybe Craig. Maybe a neighbor friend named Brian, who I occasionally watched play Atari. Maybe a female friend of mine. Dunno. Regardless, one of our favorite places to explore was the Fire Swamp -- er, woods, which sprung up at the bottom of the hill near the prime sprinting area. Lynda and I went back in September to do some roaming around.
First, we took a stroll around the lake, and at the flat sprint-area decided to do some woods exploring. The intake tunnel is concrete there, and spills out into a pretty little creek, which winds and cuts through the wooded area. For many years, as I grew up, this was as close as I got to "roughing it." I loved going out there and hanging out by the water. Craig and I made small dams that never took we were never that devoted and just played, though I can't remember any recurrent themes. When I was a freshman in college, I came home for winter recess and made a short comedy film that gave rise to the title Armchair News -- it was a joking parody of news broadcasts, though nothing as clever as The Daily Show. (One of the schticks had my dog, Pepper, getting 'kidnapped' and the "footage" of the taking being played over and over, a la SNL's Buckwheat shooting, which itself was a satire of the news's handling of the Reagan shooting. So you can see the level of sophistication we were dealing with.) 
"As you wiiiiiish......"
So for that little comedy film, Craig and I taped a segment down in the wooded area. I'll have to get Snappies of the final result, but basically I outlined a general plot for him (he's a hunter, out to capture this horrific, terrifying monster in the woods, which has haunted him and his dreams for years) he took off and improved from there. He introduced himself to his "interviewer" (also camerawoman, director, writer and producer) as "Eugene Eggbert Felsnick" (our long-held winner in the Geekiest Name Hall of Fame) and we took off from there. I was the documentary crew coming to follow him. Hey, this was about ten years pre-Blair Witch, man. BW was even filmed nearby; must be something about these woods that leads you to believe something's hiding in them. Okay, so so far that bit isn't much of a joke, so the punch line was this: We don't see the monster until "Eugene" points it out suddenly -- and it's a jumbo orange stuffed animal dog he's had for years. We perched it in a tree and had someone off camera tumble it on to his head as he "fled" by; that was our one special effect. Then he punched it until it was "dead" and walked off into the sunset. It's one of the stupidest things I've ever seen, and cracks me up every time. We saved outtakes: The scene where the "attack" occurs had to be filmed twice because the first time he fled, paused by the tree, saying, "I can't imagine where that guy is, I don't know where he could be," but kept cutting his eyes up right at the top of the tree and cracking up. Admittedly, a big orange dog in the middle of the woods is an eye-catcher. But Craig was brilliant, improving to my questions and sounding utterly sincere. I think he missed his calling as an actor. So. That was something we did in the woods later in life.
In earlier years, Brian, my friend Craig and I went exploring once. Now this is one of these stories I don't know how to explain. Despite the fact that people writing memoirs seem to have perfect recall of even dialogue, a lot of my strongest memories are half what I "remember" and half what my imagination did with it later on. I know for a fact that Craig, Brian and I all went exploring in the woods one day don't know if it was winter or summer; I think summer -- following a path. I know I was the oldest, but not by much, only that I'd get in shit trouble if we were gone too long or if Craig got lost.
So we started hiking, and when we came to a split in the path, I tried to mark it so we'd know how to get back if we got lost. It was that kind of long hike. Now, long for a kid is 15 minutes, but I'd think we were walking about a half hour. Brian was taking us to this mythical cabin where supposedly a guy had killed his daughters and turned into a hermit. For some reason every neighborhood seems to have one of those legends. I never heard about it before or after, but Brian seemed pretty certain it existed. So we hiked. And I got concerned about going back, due to time. Once again, a perfectly good memory spoiled by too much responsibility. Now here's where memory gets fuzzy, but if you put me on a lie detector I bet I'd pass: We came to a river. Seriously. There are no rivers in that area of the county, but I swear we came to a big roaring river. My guess now is the creek widened and was perhaps full that day, but I don't know for sure. I picture a river in my head. A tree extended across the width. And to get to this house, we'd have to cross on the tree. By myself I could do it, but I couldn't risk Craig. So I insisted that we'd been out too long and had to go back. So we went home. And never went back.
Today, a lot of that area we would have had to walk in has been cleared and new houses are up. So if there ever was a big fat area in the creek with a tree across it, on the other side of which lived a psycho hermit, I'll never know. I kind of would like to find Brian to ask him about it. Brian Hancock, formerly of Montgomery Village, Maryland, show yourself! (He had the coolest Atari games, I tell you. And liked Tangerine Dream music. And tried to get me to play Dungeons and Dragons. I had to draw the line somewhere.) Well. So that's the woods. Lynda and I decided to go check things out. There are still a good number of (illegal!) trees there, but unlike in the "old days" the primitive factor is pretty much nil -- you can see houses or civilization on most sides. The trees open up now into wide clearings covered by branches, creating a cathedral effect that's so peaceful and gentle. Lynda and I ended up just quietly walking along, then stopped for a moment and our hearts caught. A deer bounded away down the path. We crept along, following it, watching it whenever we could. We're such city slickers that way. Bambi stumbles into our lives and we're transfixed. Still, it does feel magical when nature of that size lets you get an eyeful. After the path meandered in and out and finally petered out, we turned back. So there's a little more exploring left to do there, but not nearly as much. Now that I'm old enough to be out as long as I want, I still can't seem to get to the boundaries.
