Cliffs Notes

The weather in our area has been very nice of late, but this development has not been convincing enough to persuade my wife to join my daughter and me on our weekend walks. Her loss was in evidence today as Amber and I made our way out to Calvert Cliffs State Park in Lusby, Maryland, located on the Western Shore of Chesapeake Bay, not far from the mouth of the Patuxent River. In only 90 minutes or so after setting off from Falls Church, my daughter was ready to hit the Cliff Trail at the park, butterfly net in hand:

It was an easy walk of 1.8 miles (2.9 kilometers) from the start of the trail to Chesapeake Bay. The red-blazed path began at a small pond:

Wild mushrooms were sprouting everywhere we walked this afternoon. Although Amber loves mushrooms, she knows not to pick the wild variety:

My daughter takes a break in an armchair (including footrest) that someone had thoughtfully carved out of a felled tree:

Roughly halfway to the shore, the trail opened up to reveal a large marsh. Evidence of beaver dams could be easily seen, though the engineers themselves remained elusive:

On the other hand, the local turtles were not so shy:

It was already beginning to look and feel like fall in the marshes:

The highlight of Calvert Cliffs State Park is the cliffs that give it its name. They are 100 feet (30 meters) in height and were formed 18 to 15 million years ago during the Miocene epoch, when the southern part of Maryland was under the sea. The area has proven to be a bonanza for fossil hunters (according to the information boards), but the cliffs themselves are off-limits due to instability. On the other hand, the beach is open, and the waters of Chesapeake Bay felt warm enough that I had wished we had brought along swimming suits. That didn't stop my daughter from having fun, as she set about looking for shells to bury in the sand:

For the return leg of our walk, we opted for a longer path back to the parking lot. This route, the Orange Trail, was more heavily forested than our trail in, though it passed through Thomas Creek Bog as we set off:

The Orange Trail followed a lot of up-and-down terrain, but Amber didn't seem to mind much. Though butterflies proved to be elusive for the most part, she was happy picking up acorns from the ground, and watching Daddy longlegs crisscrossing the trail:

My child of the corn. Just before taking this picture, a park ranger came by to warn us to be careful of hunters in the woods (the very ones we had just been walking through!). Although hunting on state land is banned on Sundays, the ranger told us illegal activities do take place, and that accidents do occur. Soon after the photo was snapped, we were warned by some hikers coming from the opposite direction to beware of a copperhead snake lurking in the grass off to the side of the trail ahead. Unfortunately, we weren't able to catch a glimpse of the magnificent beast, but we did reach our parked car without having been shot or bitten:

The vital stats for today's outing include a total distance of 4.8 miles (7.7 kilometers); a gain in elevation of 330 feet (101 meters); and, most importantly, one very satisfied offspring.

A little taste of 美洲

There's certainly a lot to see and do in Washington, D.C., but our little corner of suburbia, Falls Church, occasionally has its little attractions. Today was one of those things to do, an event called "A Taste of Falls Church", held in front of the small community center (where my little one will start a weekly ballet class next 星期四 adjacent to City Hall. It was one of those small-town bits of Americana (food stands selling items from local restaurants, Led Zeppelin cover bands performing on a small stage next to the tennis court, booths manned by local businesses ranging from bath fitters to realtors) ideally suited to a warm and sunny mid-September Saturday. We stuffed ourselves silly for a grand total of only $25 for the three of us; Amber had a lot of fun on some inflatable kid magnets set up in the park next to City Hall; and my wife and I supported local artisans by purchasing a tie-dyed T-shirt (me) and a ceramic bowl (Pamela). It was a pleasant way to spend a few hours on a pleasant afternoon, and all just a few minutes' drive from our apartment complex.

My wife and daughter walk along Broad Street toward the festival site. There are a lot of nice shops and restaurants along Falls Church's downtown drag. My favorite place is The Local Market, which carries a good range of tasty sodas and organic foodstuffs. I've been trying to persuade Pamela to do our fruit and vegetable shopping there and thus help support local farmers, but she seems to have a thing for large, impersonal supermarket chains.

The local emergency services all had displays set up. My daughter was able to sit inside both a fire engine and an ambulance, and got to pet a police dog named Fany. 

Food was the theme of the festival. Buying ten tickets for the three of us for a total of $25 allowed us to sample a variety of offerings from about a dozen local restaurateurs, with most dishes costing only a single ticket. Pamela is holding a plate of shrimp in the above photo, but we also had Indian food, salmon, corn on the cob, oysters and chili. Multicultural cuisine in a multicultural community located in a multicultural country - the United States has its issues, mainly caused by those who can't face no longer being at the top of the food chain, but the future looks very bright.

For my daughter, the best thing about today were the various air-inflated playthings that she could jump on, crawl through and slide down. Why didn't I get to do any of these things when I was her age?

On the walk back to the parking lot, we passed a wall outside a CVS Pharmacy with photographs of old Falls Church. The caption on the one above reads:

The Columbia Baptist Church located at 160 E. Broad Street also served as a high school and a hospital, during the Civil War. This 1862 view shows photographer Mathew Brady in the foreground.

One thing I like about this area is the small signs posted at various spots around the city explaining local connections to the American Revolution and the Civil War.

I'm looking forward to more of these local events as they serve as great ways to introduce what is essentially a new country to the both my wife and my daughter.

My own taste of fall

Being put in my place

As most of you are probably aware, the Foreign Service suffered a great loss on Tuesday with the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three of his colleagues in the line of duty in Libya (see link). It goes without saying that I hope I will never find myself in that kind of situation.

Unfortunately, while reading through the heartfelt remarks left on Facebook by some of my colleagues, I came across the unfortunate and insensitive rants of one of my relatives (and some of his Facebook buddies) regarding the tragedy in Benghazi. In their view, and I quote:

“…if the Marines would have cleared the area and made it a wasteland Our (sic) people would be alive ...”

Perhaps I should have just left that alone. However, I found it inappropriate to call for Rambo-style “ass kickings”, feeling that it somewhat cheapened the deaths of four of my colleagues in the service of their country. It was my mistake to call attention to the primary mission of the Marine Security Guards – contrary to popular belief, the main job of these well-trained professionals isn’t to open fire on mobs besieging diplomatic compounds, but to secure classified information and equipment within embassies and consulates. Their secondary mission is the safety of American citizens within our overseas outposts, of course, but that duty does not involve simplistic fantasies of gung-ho Marines wiping out uncivilized foreigners. However, when I tried to point this out, I soon found myself and my profession (and by hopefully unintended inference, my murdered colleagues) referred to in the manner of the following examples:

“You of all people should welcome a Marine security force that is capable of doing PROactive security to save YOUR ass.” 

“And incase (sic) you have not noticed the whiney kiss ass diplomacy does not work in certain areas of the world and ALL they will understand is RAMBO ASS KICKING ....” A comment: Ambassador Stevens, who had tours of duty in Israel, Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well as in Libya, would probably have tried to explain the complexities of the peoples and cultures of the Middle East, and why Rambo would not have been the answer. All to no avail, no doubt.

“Someone needs to let you know who you work for, and I can tell you, you should welcome a force that has the authority to keep you safe ... as you are an employee of mine .... I can actually demand it.” 

“Again you fit into an Obama Admin perfectly…”

.He (meaning me) just showed me (meaning one of my relative’s Facebook friends) that He (me again) only Paraphrases (sic) like all Federal Government Civilian Employees. By “federal civilian employees”, does that include Ambassador Stevens and his three colleagues? 

“Maybe you need to take a few ass kicking classes  ...” 

“I'll remind you that as an employee of the government your (sic) sworn to the constitution (sic) and the people of this country ....” 

“There is NO WAY we are ever going to talk to heathens and get them to come around to anything but being heathens” By heathens, you mean Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, animists, agnostics and atheists etc., aka the majority of the people on this Earth?

And on and on it went, depressingly and ad nauseum. 

The blame lies with me, of course, as I shouldn’t have bothered in the first place. After all, I know better, or at least I should have. My relative is not a bad guy – he’s a good husband and a loving father, and I remember him being a lot of fun to be around when I was growing up. However, there was (or is) another side to him that I also recall from earlier times. That is, and my apologies to anyone who may be offended, his frequent use of the word “nigger” when describing African-Americans. My parents would voice their discomfort about this in private with each other, chalking it up to his background. When I recently reconnected with him on Facebook, I was curious to see if he had changed over the years. While his vocabulary has undergone alterations, his views about the country’s first black president showed that the underlying beliefs haven’t. The visceral hatred toward Obama evidenced in his daily (and sometimes hourly) postings have gone beyond acceptable disagreements based on honest differences in political philosophies, and into that dark underbelly of the American psyche that provides nourishment to the likes of the Tea Party and Michele Bachmann. It’s rather depressing to find that after more than twenty years away from the U.S., I’ve returned to find the country hasn’t progressed as far I had hoped when it comes to living up to the ideals that supposedly underlie our society and its political culture. 

But as I was reminded this afternoon, I am now a public servant, and that means I have to serve everyone in this country, no matter what their views. I am bound by oath to carry out the policies of whoever occupies the White House, regardless of which party they belong to, the color of their skin, the religion they choose to follow, their state of birth or the land of their forefathers (or mothers). It is an oath I take seriously, and which I will endeavor to follow to the best of my abilities. It is the same promise the FSO’s who were killed in Libya also made. It is our job to serve the interests of the United States and its people.

And if some of them think that American soldiers should be allowed to indiscriminately kill "heathens" instead of being shackled by a non-white Commander-in-Chief, who in turn should be tried for treason, there is nothing I can or should do about it. It’s a mistake I’ll try not to make again.   

Virginia, 我爱你

I have a new mistress, and her name is Virginia. My heart will always lie with my first love, the West Coast (take, for example, the drive along Highway 1 from north of Los Angeles up to Washington's Olympic Peninsula, or the glorious mountain ranges that are the Sierra Nevadas and the Cascades), but we separated more than 20 years ago. Next followed a lengthy, torrid love affair with the Japanese archipelago. When that relationship ended, I plunged into a long, self-destructive affair with the Beautiful Island, Formosa. Now it appears that I have a new land to love, the rolling hills and beautiful countryside or rural Virginia that I encountered this morning as I drove away from the suburbs of Washington, D.C. and headed east on Interstate 66.

I was introduced to the charms of the commonwealth by AMC's 50 Best Day Hikes Near Washington, D.C., a hiking guide by Stephen Mauro and Beth Homicz that I've been using to explore the outdoor possibilities near our temporary home in Falls Church. A one-hour drive on I-66 brought me to Sky Meadows State Park, which, according to the above guide, offers "an incredible blend of pastures and woodlands on the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge Mountains." For once, the hype was believable. 

The hike began from the parking lot, watched over by the historic Mount Bleak House, standing next to the park's visitor center and gift shop (where I later bought a butterfly net for my daughter):

The first trail I took was called the Piedmont Overlook Trail. A short huff and a puff uphill led to some benches which offered fine views of the pastures and farm fields below. According to the guidebook:

George Washington mapped this area in the 1740s, and in 1861, the valley served as the jumping-off point for Confederate soldiers en route to the Battle of Bull Run.

Alas, the photos I took at Piedmont Overlook illustrated the limitations of both my camera (which couldn't handle the glare from the bright blue sky above) and of the clueless photographer taking the pictures:

The path from here went into the woods, eventually leading to a junction with the Ambassador Whitehorse Trail, the next leg of my hike. In the distance was a curious notch in the treeline, which I later realized was part of the Appalachian Trail:

The Ambassador Whitehouse Trail was my favorite part of the walk today. Much of it traversed open ground filled with beautiful yellow-flowered plants of some sort:

Soon after taking the above photo, I came across another overlook with a stunning view. And again my camera couldn't do the scene justice:

Portraiture turned out better, not only done by yours truly, but by a friendly couple that came along while I was admiring the view:

The Ambassador Whitehouse Trail eventually joined up with the Appalachian Trail. Covering 2184 miles (3515 kilometers) from Maine to Georgia, the Appalachian is one of the world's great hiking courses. I was only intending to cover a mile (1.6 kilometers) of it. At the point where the photo below was taken, I caught sight of two large deer crashing through the woods to my left:

As it turned out, I covered significantly more than a mile of the Appalachian Trail. I was supposed to go right at a bench, but I mistook the first bench I came across for the one mentioned in the guidebook, and ended up making the wrong right turn. I knew something was amiss when, instead of the "wide, soft-packed stretch" of trail referred to in the guidebook, the path started looking like this:

If that wasn't warning enough, this sign should have set off some alarm bells. The entry for Sky Meadows State Park said nothing about venturing into a hunting area, though the book does talk about taking care during hunting season. When fall comes, I'm going to have to hope that Billy Bob and his inbred cousin, their judgements impaired by a twelve-pack of Bud Lite, don't mistake me for a tall, upright-walking Bambi. At least I was wearing bright orange today:

A trio of hikers came along and confirmed my suspicions that I was still on the Appalachian Trail. The misstep added a total of about 90 minutes to my time today, but I didn't mind. Eventually, I found my way to that "wide, soft-packed stretch", aka the South Ridge Trail. Clearly signposted, of course:

Back on course, the trail eventually came out of the woods and provided more eye candy in the form of scenic vistas:

At one point during the descent, I came across the ruins of Snowden Manor, "a Federal-style house built in the 1860s and consumed by fire in 1913". Today, all that stands are some piles of rubble and the remains of a chimney:

Soon after Snowden Manor, a short side trip led up a grassy hill to what was probably the best of all the scenic overlooks today. Behold the glory that is the Crooked Run Valley:

Shortly afterward, I found myself back at the parking lot in front of the visitor center, feeling great after a walk (mostly) successfully completed:

I stopped by the gift shop, where I picked up the aforementioned butterfly net for Amber (who tried it out this evening, and promptly caught a firefly). The park ranger working there had a great view from the shop window. Before going back to my car, I checked out the kitchen of an 19th century home. It was in a separate building from the main house (the also aforementioned Mount Bleak House). According to a sign outside, the advantages of having a detached kitchen included knowing that if the kitchen should catch fire and burn down, the owners would still have a house to sleep in:

The numbers for today: at least 5.8 miles (9.3 kilometers) covered, but a lot more, thanks to the unintended detour; 4½ hours in duration (including the extra hour and a half); and a gain in elevation of 1000 feet (305 meters). All that, plus a new-found appreciation for the charms of the Virginia countryside. My heart is true...until that tramp New England shows up.