Haven't posted on the blog in such a long time, and essentially phoning it in: but I wanted to complete the story.  Three years after our last trip, kid and I finally finished the C&O Canal towpath, in one 62-mile trek.  And it was grand.

2019: We planned to go in August, shortly before moving apartments against our will, and only a couple of weeks before kid was due to start college.  But, just a few days beforehand, my stepfather-- who'd been part of my family since I was four years old-- began to die.  He was old, but the timing was still unexpected.  We went home to be with him, then stayed through the funeral.  After the funeral, it was time to pack, to get kid through their driver's license test, to move, to pack again for college.  The hike had to be postponed till 2020.

2020: Kid came home in March, college having closed due to covid.  There ensued a very long period of time in which nobody in the household was working, and kid was also home from school much of the time.  We could easily have gone backpacking, except that the C&O Canal decided that providing water to their pumps along the trail was somehow... not covid-safe?  The entire season, no water.  So the hike was postponed until May 2021, when hopefully they would turn the pumps back on.

May 2021 came around and, at the last moment, they did turn the pumps on.  But, by the time we knew for sure, kid was going back to school soon (atypical summer session added due to covid), having wisdom teeth out, and we were hunting for apartments again (and again against our will).  No time, many tears.  How about September?  

These years have provided, if nothing else, valuable lessons in flexibility.  But I am so glad we were finally able to go.  It felt like unfinished business, between us and the trail, and also between me and kid.  The original timing, prior to college, had been an appropriate coming-of-age, a launch.  Covid delayed and complicated that launch.  Home again, home again, jiggety-jog.  How to live in a series of two-bedroom apartments with your unemployed parents when you long desperately to be with your friends, to engage in activities, to be your adult self in the world.  Even though the delays are externally-imposed, you begin to doubt yourself: do you have what it takes to grow up?  What has happened to your toughness and independence-- is it still in there?

The trail said it was.

I didn't realize that the main topic of this post would be what a proud mother I am.  

I'm proud of myself, also.  I'm 49, will be 50 in less than two months, which is a terrifying prospect.  There is no sense in which I am still young.  I've let my hair go gray.  I've had foot problems over the past few years, sometimes back pain, knee pain, aches and pains.  When I first put my pack back on, I was shocked by how heavy it felt.  I'm going to do what?  Hike 62 miles carrying this thing?  But we put one foot in front of another, and prepared carefully with some nice anti-blister hiking socks, and we did it.  Even cheerfully, the majority of the time.

We spent 3 out of 4 nights tent camping in the small hiker-biker campsites, like this:

And one night sleeping in a converted bus in Paw Paw, WV, like this.

Shout-out to the Liberty station in Paw Paw, which provided hot meals, genuine friendliness, groceries, and the opportunity to meet gregarious thru-cyclists.  Our home away from home.

We enjoyed beautiful late-summer landscapes:

An amazing array of animals, including spiders, bugs, butterflies, moths, praying mantises, dragonflies, caterpillars, slugs, worms, millipedes, daddy-long-legs; tons of toads and a few frogs; many, many turtles, an eastern fence lizard, two black rat snakes, a ribbon snake, and a probable copperhead outside the showers in Paw Paw; green and blue herons, a million assorted ducks, a small hawk or falcon, a kingfisher, pileated woodpeckers, geese, an American redstart, and a bank of jewelweed frequented by many hummingbirds; many deer with fawns, squirrels, a tree gnawed by beaver.

We enjoyed absurdities such as the existence of Lock 64 & 2/3:

And ultimately we made it to Cumberland.  The feeling when the woods opened up to that view of town, the last mile, the jubilance... it was a surprise.  A hard-won joyful success in a time of so few simple victories.  In our hearts, we'd expected something to go wrong to the end.  But it didn't.

The End.

It was a drizzly September day-- there's been little respite lately from the damp-- and I decided to go for one of my expeditions.  This Georgia Avenue trail was not one of the most scenic or fascinating of the Neighborhood Heritage Trails, but its main advantage was that I got to view the campus of Howard University for the first time.  As I've lived here longer, I've come to regard Howard with a certain reverence.  The campus, too, while not ostentatious, felt dignified and solid and old.  A few details, though overall the rain depressed my photographic efforts:

I ate lunch at a Potbelly close to campus and read Bob Woodward's Fear.  From Howard, the trail mostly moseys straight up Georgia Avenue, with a brief detour over to parallel Sherman Avenue, only a block away.  It's an excellent illustration of the gentrification landscape: Georgia Avenue, mostly, is still lined with small local storefronts that are graffitied, barred, and/or drab and dingy-looking.  Down-and-out individuals limp by with regularity.  But turn off this main drag onto a side street and the row houses are looking freshly-painted and bright, with many rainbow flags (strangely, often the first sign of DC gentrification), flowers, and arty-looking porches.  The businesses along Sherman Avenue are a little more upscale and funky-in-a-cute-way, despite being only one street away from Georgia.  Here and there, a block of Georgia Ave. is following suit.  It's only a matter of time, it seems, before all of Northwest DC is downright adorable.

Ah, my beloved Washington DC, how you have changed in these past two years.  No longer can I wander your streets and feel pride in ever-strengthening democracy and a president beloved by the world.  Now I narrow my eyes at federal buildings and look suspiciously at passing tourists.  What have we become?  Our beautiful stately buildings house a cancer that must be cut out sooner rather than later.  

Beginning at the Archives Metro station and proceeding up Pennsylvania Avenue and back down Constitution, the Federal Triangle Trail passes institution after crucial institution: the Department of Justice, the FBI, the Old Post Office, the EPA, the Department of Commerce, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the IRS, and the National Archives, as well as several Smithsonian museums, the Newseum, and multiple outdoor memorials.  The area is architecturally lovely, imposing, and full of contradictions.  The flowers are pretty.  A significant number of homeless people try to catch some more sleep beneath makeshift shelters, their possessions strewn over expensive benches.  Inside the stone walls of the buildings, state power lurks quietly, big enough to devour us all if it chose.

I had never before been to the center of the Federal Triangle, where Federal Triangle Metro station-- strangely-- nestles into and underneath the EPA building, and a large enclosed courtyard hides beyond it, almost Italian in style, full of sculptures and with arched passageways leading out to Pennsylvania Avenue, Constitution Avenue, 12th Street, 14th Street.  There is an odd semi-circular shopping center punched into the ground, accessible by a down escalator from street level.  Apart from the shopping mall, it reminded me a bit of Florence.  There were trees, benches, sidewalk cafe tables.  Only steps from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol building, a Tibetan monk strolled one of the arched passageways.  A woman wearing a chador rode the escalator down towards the shopping mall.  The heart of DC persists in being wildly international despite the hostility to internationality that inhabits it now.

The fuck-you tour:

On the other hand, beauty:

And then there are the things that are neither alarming nor beautiful, but iconic:

Hang in there, America.

As an aside, there are some pretty damn weird sculptures outside some of these federal buildings.  This guy is guarding the National Archives:

Immediately after I took this photograph, I was approached by a DC street vendor (they will sell anything), who asked if I wanted to buy a Trump hat.

And, because I know you were wondering, here is a picture of the below-ground shopping mall.

I cannot give a objective assessment of the trail from Route 40 near Greenbrier State Park to Annapolis Rocks, as I had a headache the entire time, and by the end a full-on migraine.  I threw up in my friend's car-- I mean my car, my friend was driving because I couldn't-- on the way home.  Fortunately my well-prepared friend had ziploc baggies handy in her backpack and I used one of those.  But I digress.

We drove a solid hour and a quarter to get to this section of the Appalachian Trail, west of Frederick.  The day was lovely: sunny and warm but not too hot, with a good breeze.  It was the first time my coworker and I had hiked together, and, given that we are now vomit sisters (that's like blood brothers), I wonder whether it will be the last.  My coworker seemed nervous, worried that I would be in better shape than she was, and conscious of young gazelle-like women in sports bras who occasionally zoomed past us.  There was a lot of uphill to begin with-- not painful climbing, but long stretches of dirt-and-logs arranged into rudimentary staircases.  Not so hard, but kind of tiring and boring.  Other hikers abounded, including a very large group of children with chaperones.  The woods were green on top, brown on the bottom, unremarkable, with little in the way of noticeable wildlife besides squirrels and a few birds.  

There were some interesting, quartz-y stones here and there, if you're into that sort of thing.

If I thought much of anything, I thought: this is the famous AT?  Is it all so damaged and dusty from generations of hikers passing through? 

We reached Annapolis Rocks, and there were indeed rocks there at the top of a cliff-face, a whole assortment of them perfect for picnic-sitting nooks, which was fortunate because there were a lot of people inhabiting all the nooks.  There was this view:

My friend and I ate things and talked and I wished ever more fervently that-I-did-not-have-this-headache until we decided to start back.

Diagnosis: perimenopausal hormone chaos (on my third period in a row at two-week intervals) plus an exhausting past few days plus some exertion/heat/dehydration plus I accidentally made decaf coffee in the morning instead of regular.  Plus the eternal fucking background stress of Donald fucking Trump.

The hike back to the car is largely a blur.  It was the same hike backwards, anyway, but now with more blinding pain.  I asked my friend to drive back, which, if you knew me, you'd know meant it was an emergency.  I always want to drive.  I didn't fully recover for two days.

That was Annapolis Rocks.  Your experience may differ.