Walking in Lake Accotink Park
On my walk this morning I felt my throat close from allergens. My nose got itchy. By the end of it, I had a mild headache and lots of sneezes. I get the worst allergies in spring/summer, though I also get them in fall/winter. They are different. In colder weather they tend to be more sinus-leaning and I'm at risk of an infection if I don't take extra care. In warmer weather that still happens, but I'm also itchy all over and sensitive to the mere thought of existing.
It's pretty manageable with a bunch of sprays and pills and small habits but when I actually intentionally leave my house to go out and be in nature, it impacts a little harder. It's always worth it though!
On hot hot days I walk in heavily shaded parks with water. Between the shade and the breezes carrying droplets of the lake, I can stand to go for 3 miles, or a 60+ min walk, which is what I strive for. The suggestion is to get 150 mins of exercise a week and I try to get at least two hours of it on weekends. My Saturday walk is usually the first of those.
It doesn't always work. Sometimes my Saturday walk closes my throat, makes my eyes itchy, and sends me into migarainaville (this is where I live until my migraine goes away). Luckily today, extra rehydration and more saline spray were all I needed to come back to life.
Today after getting my smoothie, gluten free protein brownie, and ice cold water, I went to Lake Accotink Park in Fairfax, VA.
I've been there a few times before but not enough times to be very familiar with it. I park in the overflow because there are less people and then usually I go left, straight into the forest, please get me out of the sun immediately.
This time, I went right, which was a lovely trail on the side of the lake with the sun with many benches to enjoy the water views and lots of fun ups and downs and root patches. Everyone was friendly, no one forced you to say hi if you didn't want to (but I like to), and there were many dogs.
Because I went a different direction this time and walked much further and longer than I did last time, I found out that the trail in Lake Accotink Park intersects with multiple trails. It was a nice little wandering up Accotink Creek and exploring further along the loop!
I will do this again sometime to share photos, but today was a thoughts walk, not a photos walk. There were so many interesting differences between the ground next to lake vs creek, between the shapes of the leaves on the plants, the flowers that grew, to the consistency of the mud. I would like to document that now that I have a new phone with a much better camera for capturing details!
While I was wandering and working out things in my head, I thought about how sometimes you go out on walks and only see colors, and sometimes you go out on walks and see the vibrant textures of the world underneath the colors - different shapes of leaves, depth, shadows, the way the light hits the branches.
Of course, it's easier to forget the details when there's a striking difference.
I find when I'm in some depth of numbness, like depression or anger, it's hard to see the details. I spent a lot of my life like that. It would be nice to revisit the places I went during those times so I could soak in the details, but some of them don't exist anymore.
Something changed in this walk. Did you catch that? I had a moment where I thought about something, and then took photos because I knew it'd be included in the post I made later about my walk. When I drove to the lake, all I was thinking was: I want to take a walk. I hadn't even planned to go there when I left to get breakfast this morning.
There are many reasons I keep a blog which perhaps I'll explain some other time (though I have shared why I continue to keep a seasons blog), but one is the connection. I'm not just experiencing something and then keeping it to myself: I'm taking photos and sharing it with you, dear reader, wherever you are. For a moment, we are in this park together.
After my walk I ran errands and when I got home I decided to sit down to this post, though I hadn't planned for it to be this thoughtful. Thought walk leads to thought writing, I guess.
I read about the trail and park. I learned that sitting with us together in that park are many, many ghosts. That's common for this area which is rich in Civil War history.
A railroad line runs through the park (Orange and Alexandria, O&A), which was constructed in the 1850s to link the shipping port Alexandria to the agricultural heartland of Virginia. Since it effectively linked northern Virginia to the rest of the South, it had strategic value for the war and the Union Army used it to supply campaigns in the Confederate territory.
I found a few neat ghost stories, some about the man in the stovepipe hat.
A former park manager discovered a Civil War-era photo of the park's train trestle featuring a tall man in a long black coat and a tall stovepipe hat standing in the foreground. Believing it was different from the historical photo hanging on her office wall, she called park staff to double-check. They assured her the office photo contained no such person. However, when she returned to her office with the new copy, she and her staff were shocked to discover that the man in the stovepipe hat was now visibly standing in the original office photo as well... seemingly having materialized across both prints simultaneously.
Years prior to that event, a night watchman at the park abruptly quit his job after a terrifying encounter. He reported seeing a tall man dressed in a long black coat and a stovepipe hat walking near the trails. Oddly, the figure appeared to be walking with the lower half of his legs completely beneath the soil, as if navigating a past terrain elevation from a century before.
Zenny was in the window when I got home.
