I didn’t meet up with my usual group of suspects today, and instead completed my morning run on my own and a little bit later than usual. Doing a five-mile loop that I can now accomplish in my sleep, I departed my apartment paradise towards Key Bridge about a half hour before sunrise. I’ve been doing this loop for months now at five in the morning and under cover of total blackness. While running at this time of day allows for only occasional sessions of human Frogger, it denies a person the opportunity to take in the aesthetic qualities of the city, and it also strains my eyes as I try to avoid running at Top Megan Speed into a tree or another runner. I’ve gotten good at these challenges, and I am now proudly cognizant of all the major pothole hazards that line Rock Creek Trail.
So I am out there running, feeling a little slow but happy to be on the other side of the Potomac and halfway through my run. I finally start to feel good as I turned back toward Virginia and onto the Memorial Bridge. I could definitely tell that it was later in the morning since planes were flying overhead and vehicular traffic was picking up on the bridge.
Perhaps it was my later start, the changing seasons, or the end of Daylight Savings (more than likely it was just dumb luck), but for the first time ever I came off of Memorial Drive as the sun was breaking and I was rewarded with the most spectacular view of Arlington Cemetery that I have ever seen in my short time here. Not only were the first swaths of sunlight painting all of the headstones with a soft pink color, the morning mist mixed with brilliant orange leaves on the maple trees created an ethereal effect that made me feel like I had stepped into a parallel world.
As most people know, the preponderance of the tombstones at Arlington Cemetery are simple marble slabs that create unassuming rows of perfect uniformity across hundreds of acres of land. I once took a tour of the cemetery, and while the guide did an adequate job of pointing out the sites of people with interesting and notable stories, I couldn’t help but scan the greater sea of the 300,000-plus people interred here. Each person, regardless of background or service status, led a notable and impactful life in some shape or form. How can one person be given greater mention over the next?
Further away from the Potomac River lies an older section of the cemetery that displays larger, more ornate headstones. These were placed back when families could still provide whatever they desired as a tribute to their loved ones: characterized designs that were sometimes adorned with massive statues and carved crosses, most etched with the names of high-ranking officers and officials who served with honor. Call my internal monologue a little inappropriate, but I observed the architectural disparity between the headstones of those long-toothed Generals and the cenotaphs of those never recovered (and also all wedged together as an afterthought on a hill) and I couldn’t see how I could possibly place an Eternal Flame or a great carved horse in any higher estimation over a forgotten and unassuming slab.
We’re all living on borrowed time, and when we die there’s nothing that will occur to make our exit any more or less remarkable than the next person. Someday the people we love will also die, and when I ran by the cemetery this morning I was so struck by its simple beauty that I kind of wondered if this might be what I would consider heaven to look like. Don’t get me wrong, my church of choice on Sunday is still that of the Farmer’s Market, but I absolutely love the autumn. The temperature drops and nature goes underground to start its period of renewal. We are obliged to start suffering through months of gray cold before signs of renewal show themselves in the spring and we can appreciate the ability to breathe again.
As I rounded the Memorial Drive off ramp and hugged the cemetery road, my feet were crunching the peach and white colors of maple leaves that graciously littered the running trail and the vast graveyard expanse. Even though I never knew any of the people who lie in the graves that created for me such visual splendor, those three minutes at sunrise made for what was probably the best run that I have had in a very long time.
I’m no literary scholar, but there’s a great Thornton Wilder quote that, when I first read at about age sixteen, kind of disturbed me. I hated it for what I interpreted as oversimplification and resignation at how we will all fulfill our lives. Clearly I’m not nearly as smart as I was back then because the older I get, the more clueless I become. I now find Wilder’s observation quite comforting:
“But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”
And people think I must get bored because I run without headphones.
This was taken from my window after I got back home. It’s beauty doesn’t touch what I saw at the cemetery, and I might try to go back out there tomorrow with a camera to see if I can post something better.