Windy Run, Ho!

The suburbs of Northern Virginia are teeming these days. Gangs of faux-foresters bumper sticker their SUVs with pleas to Save the Bay! and Stop Global Warming! Purebred Labradors have nannies. Designer kayaks cling to the tops of Range Rovers except when they are removed by workers at the Mr. Wash.

Take heed, dear reader! If you are one of the twenty people living in North Arlington who is utterly unaffected by the alternative minimum tax, I have discovered a trail where you can flaunt your Costco water shoes and unleash your Humane Society mutt.

First, locate the large brick building on Vacation Lane that looks suspiciously like a school. This building houses the HB Woodlawn Program (Yes! It looks JUST like a school, but parents did not keep their children on the waiting list for five long years to have it be called a SCHOOL! )

Next, walk northeast down Vacation Lane towards a menacing white steeple and stained glass Jesus. Cross Lorcom Lane– in the crosswalk for God’s sake! Walk two blocks; turn left onto North Kenmore. Don’t be deterred by the motion-sensors and surveillance cameras, or by the feeling that you’re trespassing on a private roadway. The entrance to a flourishing micro jungle is at the end of the street behind a steaming water treatment shack, and it is most definitely public land.

Pass the shack, exit the asphalt, then roll and rip through gravelly tire-ridged trails, cower under George Washington Parkway’s roaring overpass, stare into cluttered yards of political powerhouses, thread between decaying Wendy’s paper cups and flourishing plastic Sprite bottles and wonder (out loud if it helps): How?? How can this crappy trail possibly lead to a roaring waterfall, lush greenery, secret beaches, and magical stone stairs? How?! A few miles of doubt and disgust will only intensify the yards and yards of enjoyment at the end.

Soon (okay, eventually) you will be presented with this choice: plummet to your death or mountain-goat across an unmarked stream to an unmarked trail. I suggest the latter. A sinister black handrail marks the entrance to the Stone Stairway. Clutch its shaking steel spine because you will be overwhelmed by the view.

Also overwhelming: the conflicting messages. I’m in suburbia. That waterfall is huge. I can see a news helicopter. Was that a fox? Those leaves look like tablecloths. Does someone live here? Is it safe to put hypodermic needles in my trail trash bag?

The Stone Stairway is magical for the following reasons: it was carved out of a steep suburban cliff God knows when; it is right next to a frickin suburban waterfall!; and each of its eighty five million individual stairs is a different height (another reason to hold onto the hand rail!).

At the bottom (if you make it to the bottom!) walk to the left and you will find a hidden beach with tiny, sparkly shells. Yes! Shells! Continue on beyond the beach and I don’t know what you’ll find but it definitely won’t top those dainty, pearlescent shells. Walk to the right, and you will stumble (literally stumble– eagle scouts avoid this project) into a merry jungle scene.

Try to use a different expletive to describe each layer of foliage: Effing canopies draped in blickin vines! Dangling into bloody new growth! Nestled in plates and plates of green!! Moss! Effing moss!

Here, you will need to walk veeeery slowly. Take a load off for ten minutes, write poetry, eat a granola bar, and soak it up, because in (possibly fewer than) eighteen minutes traffic on the George Washington Parkway will whirr perilously close to your right arm.

This is where you, the reader, must make a choice (a real one this time): turn around and do it all over again in reverse (there is no “scenic loop” back to the HB Woodlawn Program) or; continue on for much, much longer, to get coffee at Dean & Deluca.

If you choose to continue, know that this passage– from tropical utopia to caffeine– requires much trickery and lunacy. The correct procedure is: Keep your arms in, ditch that ridiculous trash bag, and mush on even though there is no trail, sidewalk, or curb. Duck from police cruisers, dive into underbrush from Capitol counter-terrorism units. Keep it tight until you reach Key Bridge. Cross over, get a latte at Dean & Deluca, and when you cruise back toward Vacation Lane in a cab, see if you can spot the entrance to North Kenmore. It will be on the right this time.

No doubt you’ve developed an appreciation for that uncomfortably exclusive cul-de-sac and steaming water treatment shack that guard such a sacred suburban gem: Windy Run.