|
|
|
History’s Crossroads
advanced in his farming and land management practices. He got the best information available and advocated soil conservation, used a range of fertilizers to keep the soil vital, controlled erosion, and practiced other progressive farming practices. The house’s interior is painted in the remarkably saturated colors of the era and filled with 18th-Century objects whose delicate design contrasts with the abrasiveness of the physical struggles it took to sustain such an estate. The major contrast was, of course, slavery. Now prettied up for 21st-Century visitors, the slave quarters look clean, and on the cold and rainy morning I visited, a little bit inviting. But when you start counting bunks, think of sleeping on straw (with whatever else lived in there with you), and sitting on hard stools as the soft part of one’s life, then the harshness of slavery comes into sharper focus. Down a forest path, we found the Slave Memorial and Burial Ground not far from the tomb of George and Martha Washington. It’s a solemn place, worth contemplating. Ultimately, I found the visit to Mount Vernon and learning more about President Washington, inspiring. In our perhaps more cynical era, dominated by competition, corporations, and commerce, it was a good reminder to me that idealism was once a more prominent force in government. Perhaps it can be again. Moving forward in time, our small group of writers went a few miles to end of a runway at Dulles Airport. By the way, if you’re travelling by air to Fairfax, then fly into Dulles. It’s close. A strange airport whose design in the 1970s was considered revolutionary, it’s now just a hassle, but an efficient one. Every single flight is accessed to the main terminal via a shuttle that winds around for what seems like miles. I almost got on the wrong one coming back early in the morning — late to arrive at the airport and having trouble reading the little faded print on my boarding pass. Was that a C or a G shuttle? So, word of advice, if you need them, make sure you bring your glasses. I got lucky. One of the world’s great attractions for aviation aficionados, the Steven Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air and Space Museum sits at the end of one of Dulles’ runways. The Center is not accessible from the airport, but is an easy 30 minutes from Fairfax, or you can take a shuttle from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum on The Mall in DC. The newest Smithsonian addition is the Udvar-Hazy Center which is designed to house up to 200 craft, some of them too huge (like the Concord and the space shuttle) to keep at the Smithsonian’s Washington Mall location. The 760,000-square-foot facility is a bit of a holy grail to aviation fanatics. The space shuttle Enterprise is in a closed area for now while they are restoring it (an outside edge of a wing, removed for research purposes, is sadly missing). Near the shuttle, greeting you as you enter the building, is what I consider the coolest aircraft ever built, the high-flying Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, the fastest airplane ever flown until recently. Down the hangar from that razor-thin Blackbird sits one of the saddest aircraft ever flown, the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that delivered the first atomic bomb to Hiroshima. Hanging in the air and sitting on the ground are aerobatic planes, some seem almost too small to fly, as well as fighters, sea planes, and a dazzling collection of familiar and exotic aircraft. You can get in simulators, a mock control tower (where you can view the operations at Dulles), and see displays galore. There is also a gift shop, of course, where you can pick up, oh say, an SR-71 refrigerator magnet, for example. Wear your comfy shoes, the hangar is big enough to fly inside of. Wanting to see just how convenient DC is to reach from Fairfax the next day, a rainy cool Sunday, I got dropped at the Metro stop next |
||||||