When you’re in the middle of Rock Creek Park at night, you
can’t see lights on either side. You’re in the center of the District of
Columbia, the reputed “capital of the free world”, but you can’t tell.
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| Imagine it's pitch-black night. |
A few weeks ago I moved to Northwest Washington, D.C. after
living in the Virginia suburbs for six months. This follows my two year sojourn in Spain and five years in
Oregon before that. I live in a nice,
semi-urban neighborhood, one that doesn’t look much like its cosmopolitan
counterparts on the other side of town. I’m about three miles uphill from
DuPont Circle and downtown D.C. It may not be the hippest of trendiest of
hipsterest of coolest D.C.ist villes, but it will do. It is nice to walk to the
grocery store. It is pleasant to walk to a hipster coffee shop inside a hipster
book store. A hipster book store where Obama buys his Christmas presents.
(Seriously: http://www.politics-prose.com/)
It’s nice. I feel younger. I feel vitality. I feel myself
spending money on books I cannot finish.
Rock Creek Park is an interesting place, though. A swatch of
wild, deciduous jungle in the middle of a more confusing concrete one. A few
nights ago I was on my way home from work. I felt restless, and I wanted to
break the mold of wake-up-go-to-work-drive-home. I was almost back to my cozy
parking garage, when instead of turning right like I always do, I went left.
Homeward I was not bound: I decided I was going to find the Maryland border
without using my phone’s GPS.
I cheated and used my
phone’s GPS, but I found an amazing street called Western Avenue. You see,
adoring readership, Western Avenue is an interesting place. A place where
wonder and joy and intrigue thrive. You see, as I drove along Western Avenue,
the houses on my right were in Washington, D.C., and the houses on my left were
in Bethesda, Maryland. The license plates in the driveways reflected this
oddity. They also reflected because they are made out of shit that reflects so
you can see them in the dark. Fuck yeah.
I marveled at this geopolitical curiosity, this two state
conundrum. If you shot someone from one side of the street and they died on the
other, which police would arrest you? Where would you go to court? More apropos
to the situation, what traffic cop would pull me over if they caught me Googling
these questions as I drove along Western Avenue?
I totally wasn’t doing that.
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| Semi-urban: we have lightpoles with historical paintings on them. |
Eventually, I saw on my right the sign for Oregon Avenue. Y’all
know I’m a sucker, so I had to turn right on that shit. ‘Twas destiny. In a
super sweet way, on my left was an impenetrable abyss of forest, and on my
right were ramshackle, but clearly expensive, homes, some of which had porches
with hanging Buddhist prayer flags. Very appropriate for Oregon Avenue.
It was about 10 o’clock at night and I hadn’t seen another
car in about five or six minutes, rambling along Oregon Avenue in Northwest
Washington, D.C. Then, at some point, I took a left and found myself in the
middle of Rock Creek Park, pitch-black, and after about three minutes of driving,
there were no more cars anywhere and I couldn’t see any lights on either side.
It looked like I was in the woods in Wyoming. Or Oregon.
Rock Creek Park. Epic. I’m in The Capital of the Free World
(in capital letters this time – whattup, D.C.?) and I could be in a forest in
Wyoming for all I know. This city’s parks and recreation department must be real.
And then I thought:
Man, this would be a great place to hide a body.
Yeah, I think I’m going to like this city.
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