Much as I hate to repeat a phrase, this one from my social media, D.C. was grand in every sense of the word.
I regret that none of my photos speak to how much fun Rachel and I had with my family. My mother, brothers, and Uncle Mark arrived on various trains and at various times on June 13 and 14.
Rachel and I got in around 1:30 p.m. and made a beeline for our hotel, just a few blocks from Union Station. Our family members were at the Lincoln Memorial at the time, a few miles away, so we agreed to sightsee separately for a few hours.
We grabbed some of that sweet, sweet hotel coffee and headed toward the Capitol, which sits at the opposite end of the National Mall from the Lincoln Memorial.
Sadly, we could only see the Capitol from the distance of the Grant Memorial, but it was still a magnificent structure to someone who’s been in nature and the occasional small town for the last three months. We wondered south on the Mall, zig-zagging as necessary to read signs. We walked past the Smithsonian Castle, the Air and Space Museum, the American Indian Museum, and all sorts of other beautiful buildings and institutions I can’t remember.
In the middle of the Mall is the Washington Monument, which I found myself compelled to touch. The marble was warm from the sun and soft as if others had also touched it there. I felt stupid for not previously noticing that the monument is the shape of the number “1”, representing Washington’s status as the first U.S. President. Nearby is the World War II memorial, where I was strangley glad to see the “Missouri” statue associated with the European Theater, where my grandfather Overmann, who I never got to meet, was stationed.
Past the mid-Mall memorials were too many ice cream trucks making sounds too light for the scene. I couldn’t believe how hurried and impersonal everyone, both in cars and on the sidewalk, seemed.
We finished the Mall and reached the Lincoln Memorial around 3 p.m. I pondered the inscriptions while awaiting our chance to get a photo with Abe. One was taken from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, delivered at the height of the war, and the other from his Second Inaugural Address, given right before the war ended and Lincoln was assassinated.
We spent the afternoon taking in the rest of the nearby memorials. We couldn’t see the Korean War Memorial, as it was closed and fenced for rehabilitation. The Vietnam Memorial’s reflective effect is powerful and not captured well by photos. The World War I Memorial is poetic, with quotes from an officer who Theodore Roosevelt nominated to be the Congressional Librarian.
Of all the memorials we saw, I spent the most time with the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. In it, King’s head represents the “stone of hope” he repeatedly referenced. Around it are other King quotes our nation is still struggling to live up to, more than 50 years later. The progress we have made is great, but not as great as the gap between the U.S. in 2021 and MLK’s vision of a just society free from oppression and poverty.
After viewing the memorials, we walked back to our accomodations. On the way, we glimpsed–just glimpsed–the White House, which is also behind large fencing still due to the Capitol insurrection. We also walked past the FBI building, the DC Court of Appeals, and Ford’s Theater.
Back at the hotel, we met my mother and Uncle Mark for a drink. We couldn’t seem to share quickly enough and talked over each other a bit, but it was the experience of being with family after not for a long time that made the moment perfect. Andy arrived, and then Tom, and we all walked over to Union Station for a bite to eat. Nothing was open but Chipotle and a fast-Mediterranean place called Cava, so we ordered and ate in the common area. It was wonderfully filling, especially after eating just snacks for lunch. Rachel and I stayed up late with my brothers in our new-age swanky room. The best treats of all were last: a shower and bed.
The next day, Rachel and I got up around 8 a.m. and grabbed breakfast from the nearby, cheap, and delicious West Wing Cafe. We next walked to Walgreens for a couple of trail needs, then back to the National Mall. On the Mall, we just made our 11 a.m. appointment for the National Gallery of Art, which was nothing short of spectacular.
The Gallery’s first major attraction was Rodin’s “The Thinker,” which we got a family photo at and which my Dad would have appreciated. The Gallery also had Degas’ Dancer series, the only Da Vinci in the West, an enormous French Impressionist collection, multiple rooms of Italian Renaissance works. My personal favorite was the Thomas Cole room, which contained a series of fantasy landscape paintings that depicted a man’s life in an allegorical boat. The associated story, delivered as a prose poem, made it stand out in a museum of painting and sculpture. The Joan of Arc series was a close second.
After the museum closed at 4 p.m., we walked to Chinatown for a meal. Although our original target was takeout only, we lucked out at the Chinese place next door. We shared hotpots, stir-fries, and soup until we were full and then some. So, of course, we ordered pizza a couple of hours later to the hotel, courtesy of Mark.
Overeating came in handy the next morning when, before hitting a cafe, we learned that Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Seth Moulton, as well as Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand would be giving a press conference about high-speed rail at 9 a.m. at Union Station, just blocks from our hotel. We arrived early to ensure we got a spot at the front of the crowd.
In that moment, standing barely 10 feet from AOC’s podium, it felt like the universe was listening. Multiple of us had joked that it would make the trip just to see AOC. Had Tom bought a better plane ticket, or had he not talked to the officials cordoning off the area, or had AOC been anywhere else in the world that day but a block from our hotel, it wouldn’t have happened. She’s an articulate woman and seemed genuinely invested in the issue. A high-speed rail network would be economically beneficial for cities and rural areas, make transit faster and safer, and significantly cut U.S. carbon emissions.
After the press conference ended and we finished fangirling, we grabbed breakfast sandwiches and made for the sculpture garden, the perfect hour-ish activity before our Museum of the American Indian visit. During our time there, we enjoyed the contrast of modern art with the “Art History 101” collection (Rachel’s words) on the attached National Gallery. I enjoyed the giant typewriter eraser, though I didn’t recognize it until I read the sign; a black rectangle with softened edges that cast pleasant shadows; and a house sculpture by Roy Lichtenstein whose walls are positioned in a way that tricks the eye into seeing it in two dimensions.
The America Indian Museum was like a cross of the two other major museums we hit, the National Gallery and the Holocaust Memorial Museum. I appreciate American Indian art because it’s so symbolic, and because it simply doesn’t fit in the gothic–naturalist–modernist–post-modernist scheme of Western Art. Some older Native American art is surprising abstract.
The other half of the American Indian Museum is filled with broken promises by the federal government, land grabs, and outright massacres. Andrew Jackson, in particular, was a heartless asshole.
We enjoyed a last dinner and drinks that evening with my family, all of whom had early tickets out of the city. The Irish pub we ended the night at was the perfect working-class, dark-wood sort of place that pours strong drinks and fries everything to perfection. Again, my dad would have appreciated it.
I’m profoundly glad my family came to see Rachel and I, and that we got to see so much with them. Aside from touring the buildings that house our three branches of government, which wasn’t on the table to begin with, I think everyone got to do and see multiple top picks.
Rachel and I had the fortune of an extra day in the city, which we spent first seeing sad things and then beautiful, awe-inspiring ones. The Holocaust Museum is raw and gut-wrenching. Not just the evil, but the systemization of evil, is what stuck with me. How the Nazis played so many different power brokers, and how rapidly and drastically they changed Europe’s geopolitical scene speaks to an ugly brilliance.
At the end of the regular exhibit was a special exhibit on Myanmar’s persecution of Rohingya Muslims, which echoed in very unpleasant ways. We weren’t able to finish, unfortunately, due to the Museum’s closing time.
To clear our heads, and because it was nearby, we walked over to the Roosevelt Memorial (FDR, to be clear). It was refreshing, after the Holocaust Memorial, to see memorialized inclusion and respect for others. FDR was the first, and perhaps the only modern,working man’s President. The adjacent Jefferson Memorial, which we also saw, made me similarly proud, though Jefferson’s treatment of African Americans–not unlike, some might point out, FDR’s treatment of Japanese-Americans–didn’t get the attention it deserved.
Although our feet hurt, we walked the couple miles back to the Capitol in order to see the Supreme Court and Library of Congress, which are just to the north of it. We watched a CBS news crew breaking down outside of SCOTUS, which handed down the third confirmation of the Affordable Care Act earlier that day. The Library of Congress is grand enough to rival structures built by European monarchies.
That evening, we enjoyed a date at an upscale Ethiopian restaurant. Eating by hand, we shared a platter of spiced vegetarian foods–lentils, cabbage, chickpea balls, and more–with a whole fried fish.
Our checkout day, the 18th, was not glamorous. We did laundry, got groceries, and hit REI for a poncho for Rachel. Our hotel graciously held our bags post-checkout, though we lost a pack of crackers to a squirrel (who took them while I was sitting on a bench beside them) when she went to collect them.
We caught our train out around 4 p.m., and didn’t get back to the trail proper until 6 p.m. Rather than fight a raccoon for the first site in Maryland, we walked in twilight to the second. We technically weren’t supposed to camp there, and the train noise made multi-hour sleep hard. But we’re here in Maryland, and, as I knew we would, glad to be back in the woods.
The family trip that never happened, did. Thanks for one more adventure, Dad.
