photograph by anna traverse fogle
I’m writing to you from Reagan National Airport, where I’ve commandeered a wobbly café table on a sunny Sunday morning to catch up on emails and, well, this column. In an hour or thereabouts (assuming the travel gods smile upon me today), I’ll board a jet home to Memphis, where yet another wall-to-wall week awaits me. From my perch here, I’ve been watching other weary travelers wheel their luggage from gate to gate; their downcast eyes and springless steps reminders that we are, most of us, traveling home after days packed with conferences or competitions, meetings or family milestones.
The weekend has been a good one: I traveled here because a law school moot-court team my husband coaches achieved a coveted spot in the international round of their competition. Groups of law students from 138 countries converged on Washington for the occasion — a notable honor for all involved, and a genuinely inspiring spectacle to behold, even for the more cynical among us. The four team members argue both sides of an invented international-law case, two of them prepared to make a strong argument for one side, the other two for the opposing side. And there’s an analogy there to how I feel about the weekend that’s ending now and the weekend prior, which we spent at home, enjoying adventures in our own city. I can make an argument for either choice.
We encourage you to spend some time, this late spring and early summer, putting aside your to-do list for a few days and discovering or rediscovering a fun, invigorating activity or two.
This weekend, we ended up with a couple of days’ relative freedom to kick around one of our favorite cities in the country, and my husband’s former hometown. In addition to the legal arguments and group celebrations, we managed to squeeze in an impressive amount of memorably fun activities. We attended a Washington Nationals baseball game, a particular treat for my spouse, who has been a Nats fan since the franchise’s inception. We visited the National Portrait Gallery — somehow, despite the quantity of time both of us have spent in D.C., our first time exploring that space, which it turns out boasts a lot more than just stodgy old portraits. And we strolled along the waterfront, which has been transformed in recent years from a small dock and fish market to a shining mini-metropolis lined with restaurants and entertainment. All in all, it was a delightful, bustling weekend.
photograph by anna traverse fogle
But as I sit here at my wobbly café table, peering from beneath a ballcap at faces that mirror the exhaustion I feel, I admit that I might consider trading this Sunday for a fun, full day that nevertheless begins and ends in my own bed. That’s the sort of day we relished just last weekend, serendipitously. With my uncle Paul and his wife Michele visiting us for a few days, we planned an active but unhurried itinerary, filled with the sorts of activities that we love but often lack motivation to undertake, or sideline in the interest of a to-do list. We did absolutely no cooking, all weekend long, and largely neglected our weekly litany of household chores. Instead, we clambered into a canoe and paddled across the Mississippi River — a novel and beautiful way to introduce or reintroduce the city and region to anyone, locals and visitors alike. The next morning, we walked across the same water, on Big River Crossing, and marveled at the scale of it all, and at our own adventure.
It was a beautiful weekend, and a reminder for myself that one need not leave town in order to start Monday morning refreshed, reawakened to a sense of adventure. We were motivated that weekend by out-of-town visitors, but it helped me to remember that choosing a little more fun and a little less laundry and vacuuming is always possible, visitors or none.
Our cover story this month spotlights local adventures — or what we have sometimes called “staycations,” a portmanteau I don’t love. Whatever you choose to call it, we hope to encourage you to spend some time, this late spring and early summer, putting aside your to-do list for a few days and discovering or rediscovering a fun, invigorating activity or two. As an added bonus, you won’t even have to sit bleary-eyed in any airports, or arrange pet- or childcare, or watch the highway roll like a treadmill before you. You can just … enjoy.
