Once a Reston resident

Winter colors

Every town has something that defines its passing of the seasons.

I like to think Roanoke, Virginia's passage into the cold months is defined by the colors over the downtown just after sunset.

When you start seeing the pinks and blues that are in the picture to the left, you can be sure winter is around.

There is no place that I know to get a view of Reston like my mountainside view of Roanoke.

What always signaled the coming of winter to me in Reston was the ice on the rink at Town Center.  So maybe the Reston winter color is white?

Every time I stayed in Reston at the Hyatt in winter, it was easy to pretend that I was in a miniature New York City.

With cold temperatures and bustling crowds, all that was missing was a little NY rudeness.

I can still remember giving my oldest daughter and one of her friends a gift certificate to stay in the Hyatt while they looked for jobs.

After going to Sweet Briar, staying at Town Center was definitely like a trip to the big city.

One  other thing that reminds me of Reston in the fall would be the huge piles of leaves that end up in the streets.

While Reston is well treed for good reasons, all those fall leaves make a huge mess in a city like Reston with lots of traffic.

Thanksgiving target destination and a different cityscape

I am not sure what Reston would look like from the side of a mountain.

While this shot of Roanoke, Virginia makes the Roanoke Valley bottom look flat, but it is anything but flat.

From the Roanoke River which winds through the trees, the terrain moves steadily upward on all sides of the valley.

Roanoke is one of those places where it is a wonderful place to raise your children, but where they often flee when they want a good job.  Two of our three children are working in Reston.  We know others that are in Alexandria, Arlington, and other northern Virginia spots.

That means that Roanoke also is a target destination for Thanksgiving travelers headed home.  Our son's trip down Interstate 81 took him an hour and fifteen minutes more than normal yesterday.  He said that the Interstate 81 traffic was the worst that he had ever seen.

There are plenty of differences between Roanoke and Reston.  Roanoke is place of reasonably priced homes, some of the lowest priced auto insurance in the country, and mountains which come close to surrounding the city.  None of those things fit Reston

There is one other big difference, our parking spaces are bigger and much more plentiful.  While traffic in Reston is often a challenge, it would be a challenge to find lots of traffic in the Roanoke area unless, Virginia Tech is playing a football game or it is holiday travel time.

The funny thing is that getting to Roanoke shopping takes about as long as it does to get to stores in Reston.  The shopping is more spread out in Roanoke, and the time you spend in Reston in slow parkway traffic is countered by the extra miles to the malls in Roanoke.

As I look at the treed Roanoke Valley, I am struck by the one thing that is very different.  That is the pace of life.  People aren't quite as much in hurry down here.  Store keepers are more willing to talk to you, and many people here are pretty close to their rural roots.

When Thanksgiving rolls around is nice to be one of those target destinations even if it means lots more traffic rolling through our valley.

The entrance to the valley from the north is just at the foot of that flat topped mountain, Tinker Mountain.

It is not unusual to see a haze of pollution drifting into the valley early in the morning from the valley to the north.

That is one of the things I guess we will have to accept if we expect all those kids to drive home.

Just maybe we are above the worst of it here on the mountain.

The mood of the season

Fall is finally here on the coast.  Our few trees that change colors are looking great.

Thoughts are turning to the holidays.  We have a "Toys for Tots" box in the office.  Tonight might be the night that the frost gets the tomatoes.

I have covered the plants with some blankets since I would love to get a December tomato from a live outdoor plant.

Next week, we will all be celebrating Thanksgiving.

I remember Thanksgiving as the beginning great yearly holiday evacuation of Reston.

At least that is what it always seemed to be.  In my years of working in Reston which stretched from 1992 to 2006, I can remember many Thanksgiving week traffic jams on the roads headed out of town.

It got to the point that I would do everything possible to avoid being in Reston those three or four days before Thanksgiving.

This year we will be on the road ourselves one of those days.  Fortunately we will not be on either Interstate 95, Interstate 66, or Interstate 81 all of which become near parking lots at Thanksgiving.

When I can get out of the traffic, Thanksgiving always gets me to thinking of the past.  A couple of years ago I wrote, The first cold night, Thanksgiving in sight. 

My wife and I have a running battle over the size of holiday turkeys.  Sometimes I win a turkey battle and other times we end up with a tiny turkey which is my book is anything twelve pounds and under.

When our son makes it home for the holiday, we have to go on  The great Tofurky hunt since he only likes deli turkey.  Holidays are about making everyone welcome even if a little tofu is involved.

It is a great time of year even if you have to spend some time in traffic.  It would be interesting to see a diagram mapping population shifts during the holiday, I wonder how much the DC area shrinks.

Looking at leaves, but searching for serenity

There is no doubt that fall is a lovely time of year.

I have actually enjoyed the leaves driving down Reston Parkway. Reston is so well treed, that it is usually a really neat place to visit in the fall.

We are actually in Roanoke this weekend, but in the last few days we have been on the NC coast and near lake Norman in the Charlotte area.

That means we have seen everything from leaves that have not changed to leaves that are completely off the trees.

We have not had the time to go hiking which is probably why I am restless for the sound and feel of the coastal surf.

While a nice valley with beautiful leaves on the hills surrounding it are nice, you really can't enjoy fall from the inside of a car.

A couple of years ago we went on a Great Fall Leaf Hunt.  It included a trip to a wilderness area, Bottom Creek Gorge, near Roanoke.  That hike really made me feel like I was enjoying fall. Part of me thought that I enjoyed the hike so much because I wore real boots like I used to wear on the farm.

I am not sure that was the case,  I suspect it was just being outside away from civilization.  That is pretty hard to do in Reston where you can still here the hum of the Toll Road from nearly every park.

For many years we were able to hike up the mountains behind our home in Roanoke. It was a way to get away from life in the suburbs. Everyone needs that.

I tried hard to convince the county to buy the almost one hundred acres of wild land that was there, but as is often the case, they were more interested in tax revenues.

When I spent lots of time in Reston, I could almost feel my spirit draining away.  Yet always when I could get back into the woods I would feel renewed.

I tried some hikes in Reston, but I do not think I ever found the right spot, and being in the world of technology at the time, I always had to work more hours than there was daylight.

As more and more places become developed, that place where there is an opportunity to renew the soul gets harder and harder to find.

When I snapped the first picture in the post, I could not help but remember the same valley twenty years ago when there were almost no homes in view and certainly none farther back up the mountain like there are today.

There were many days in the late nineties when our late Lab, Chester, and I spent hours wandering those mountains.  We kept miles of trails clean for hikers.

I miss the days on the mountain though not nearly as much as I miss Chester.

These days, I do not have to run from the rhythm of the city now that we live on the coast.  While the Toll Road is not taking a toll from me, I still work and like any job, being a Realtor® has its frustrations.

What comes the closest to giving me the same feeling as those walks in the woods is kayaking or walking in the surf.

The beach does not have to be completely deserted for me to renew my spirit.

Where we live on NC's Southern Outer Banks, you do not have to try very hard to find peace and quiet on a beach especially this time of year.

Still once in a while I need to escape and get to the point that only with a zoom lens can I find another human being.

That is when I head to the White Oak River.

I can be out there an hour or two and just see one or two boats.  That is just fine with me.

It is lot better than riding around in a car looking for leaves. 

It is almost as good as being on the mountain with my faithful Lab.

Fall in Reston

This is fall on the NC Coast.  While we have a little color in a few spots, mostly we have a lot of trees that stay green.

We even had the temperature reach eighty degrees Fahrenheit over on the beach this week.  The warm temperature and big waves from Noel brought out the surfers.

Fall is a great time in Reston.  Gone is the heat and humidity.  The traffic has settled down for the long stretch until the holidays.

Here on the Carolina coast, it is festival time.  Almost every weekend has a festival.  I cannot remember many Reston festivals, but I did not spend many weekends there.

My daughter has already got her pansies planted.  I am sure the first of the massive amounts of leaves that descend on Reston have started.

I can remember them blowing into the streets and getting crumbled on the streets while waiting for leaf pickup.

Still it is a good time of year.  The holidays are just around the corner and in general people are in a good mood.  While there might be lots of leaves, at least you don't have to shovel them.