Birds were singing, and the sound of leaves swishing overhead made it impossible not to imagine yellow sweetgum leaves, and scarlet maples fluttering to the ground just outside the tent. I let out a long breath and crawled out to get ready for the day I’d been dreading—the beginning of the leg of our trip that took us into the big city.
I hate cities. All of them. I can almost give Rome a free pass, because it is hard to hate Rome, but not fully because like all cities, there are just way too many humans there. I've yet to find any American ones almost worthy of a free pass. Sometimes though it is necessary to go to these horrid places where humans willingly pack themselves in like sardines. This was one of those occasions.
There is an American tradition in which kids that are well-behaved in the fifth grade can become “safety patrols.” You wear a hideous neon orange belt thingie, and you stand in the halls before school and say things like “slow down” to your fellow (less responsible) students. This is something my extremely shy fifth grade self would never have done without the dangling carrot that would come to fruition at the end of the school year – all safety patrols are eligible to go on a trip to Washington D.C.
I’m not quite sure what the logic is here…responsible kids should see how the U.S. government is run by visiting its capital? I guess that’s it. Either way, as a kid without much money growing up, this was a sweet deal. Fast forward twenty-five years, and now I’ve got kids, except we homeschool. I didn’t want them to miss out on their elementary school opportunity to see the D.C. sights. So we decided to also do a special D.C. trip, only instead of a smelly over-packed bus and some really sad brown bag lunches, we’d be traveling in our van and eating pb&j on homemade bread. Homemade bread, y’all – that’s an upgrade.
Better still, instead of having to sleep in the bus on a twelve hour overnight drive, we took our sweet time and camped just outside the city. Pohick Regional Campground doesn’t really have anything earth shattering to say for itself to people that have camped in really cool places, other than the fact that it is a twenty minute drive to the metro station and it is an oasis of falling leaves near the big city.
So Back To Crawling Out Of The Tent
My husband and I rallied the children. I gave them the small drawstring backpacks to throw on their backs that had a snack and a reminder of our phone numbers written down on the inside…because I hate cities, and I’m always assuming the worst. As in somehow, despite the steely grip of my fingers around their wrists, if the children were to get separated from me, they could call me.
We got to the metro station and my husband inquired from the ticket-guy if children can use our adult passes, and I was expecting a horrid person to be wearing that metro uniform. Someone really jerky and uncaring and callous, you know? Someone appropriate to be living in the horrid city. The man rubbed a hand along his beard as he asked the children’s ages and advised “Only five and under are free.”
He then looks directly at me, does a very dramatic wink, and says “That boy has a tall grandpa, doesn’t he?” He ushered us through the turnstile. I decided he was entirely too nice to actually be from there. Clearly the man recently moved from some small town in Virginia.
I was expecting the worst, of course, as we got on the metro—maybe it would be slam packed with people trying really hard not to look at each other while a man with pigtails quietly sharpens a knife blade—that sort of thing. Actually it was very quiet, with most of the seats empty, and everyone was busy not looking at each other while otherwise being very normal.
The kids loved the metro, because who doesn’t enjoy a train ride when you are young enough to not think about all the germs on the hand rails.
We Spent The Next Several Days On And Off The Metro
We went to the museums and hit all the famous monuments. And D.C. just kept right on disproving my theory about all cities. It was oddly quiet, which I suppose had to do with our choice to visit in quiet September. I tried really hard to prove that it was an unfriendly, horrid place, but the people were friendly…and not horrid. I completely failed at teaching the children that cities are horrible places, but I did manage to have a lot of great history discussions, prompted by the Vietnam and Korean War memorials, among others.
It was an eye-opening experience for the kids, because there is just something magical to staring up at the nineteen foot tall statue of Lincoln forever gazing at the little people beneath him, or the absurdly enormous obelisk for old George. My favorite was the noisy silence of the Roosevelt monument’s waterfalls. D.C. is a great place for contemplation, if you are lucky enough to beat the crowds.
But every evening, after traipsing around that place of human sardines, it felt so good to return to the woods. With lots of history and a few Smithsonian museums under our belts, we left the D.C. area for greener, more mountainous pastures.
We headed to a place with just as many leaves falling outside our tent, but far less people. I’d take leaves over people any day of the week…even if the people aren’t horrid.