Walking to Work on a Snowy Day

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

 — Robert Frost, Stopping By Woods On a Snowy Evening

If you regularly read my blogs, you know that I walk to work.  My Potomac Village, MD office is less than a mile from my home. I can stroll down the River Road bike path into the village. It is actually one of the greatest boosts to my longevity. It keeps me moving almost every weekday morning. And I appointed myself the unelected mayor of Potomac, with the sole job responsibility of picking up trash along my route.

I even walk to work when it snows, “bravely “risking falling on the black ice that lurks below the frosty cover. I have some new hiking boots, and they seem to be working well. Indeed, the most invigorating of walks is in the fresh virgin snow, newly fallen, before anyone else has trampled it down.  The world feels new and clean once again, and there is, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said about Jay Gatsby, “some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life….”

Lately, in part because of the piled-up snow from the snowplows, and because it is un-shoveled in various spots, I cannot walk my usual route. I tried walking in those spots a few times but decided it was hazardous. I do not want to be the guy who falls and breaks his leg or knocks himself out because he was too dumb to heed the hazards. So, I loop around the neighborhood. Here is a call out to whomever takes their plow and plows the bike path from Schultz Lane to Hall Road. Thank you.

And here are my three Chinese cheers – phooey, phooey, phooey – for the Potomac Episcopal Church which refuses to clear the sidewalk in front of the Church on River Road. They clear their own internal sidewalks but seem to be waiting for god to perform their legal duties for the public sidewalks. Is there a church exemption to the County law about shoveling your public sidewalks? And same for Capital One Bank at the corner of River Road and Falls Road. The crossroads of our great village are impassable as a result of the bank malfeasance. When the most powerful institutions of our community will not perform their public duties, you know some kind of malaise is loose in the land. So, I walk around the neighborhood streets weaving my way to work.

As I write this blog, my landlord just showed up with a new key fob. Thank you Mr. Landlord. A week and half ago, I walked to work on Sunday morning in the snow only to find that I was locked out of the office building. My key fob of 7 years had stopped working. It was really cold, and I gave up waiting around for some other Sunday morning workaholic to show up. Instead, I trudged back home and worked from home ( “WFH”) like the rest of you. One of the things that made my life better was I did not have to have to WFH during the pandemic and could stroll down to my office whenever I wished. My wife appreciated that. She says I am too loud on the telephone, and some space is good for our marriage.

When I worked in downtown Washington, DC for 35 years, I used to dread the snow because of how it fouled up my commute. One year, under Marion Barry’s leadership, the city stopped paying the private contract plow drivers and they stopped working for the city. The City only had six snowplows! One particularly nasty snowstorm did not melt for maybe three weeks and snarled the city traffic almost to a standstill. I am still recovering from a few of those weather-related commutes.

But now, because I walk to work, I lift my glass to snow -- except for the sleet that caked my driveway with a sheet of ice and required me to chip it away piece-by-piece with my mother’s long-handled chisel. I think she would be surprised to know that her rusty old garden tool may be the item of inheritance that I appreciate the most.

So, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.