(The District Boundary Stones. I have a great deal of admiration for the people who hacked out the forty miles of underbrush to place them. 36 are still in the ground, and I am short of visiting only one of them).

Shortly after my life took a dramatic new course in 2001, I started a little project that is still incomplete, but so close to accomplishment that it periodically rises to the level of a minor obsession.

​I will give you the shorthand version here, since one of these days I will put the whole narrative together for you. The first National Monuments of the young Republic were the commissioning of the Boundary Stones that delineate the Federal Enclave of the District of Columbia. Surveyed by Major Andrew Ellicott and freeman Benjamin Baneker, a sandstone marker was placed each statute mile, with the cardinal stones South, West, North and East slightly being slightly more imposing markers.

There are 36 of the original 40 stones still in the ground in wildly varying conditions. Seeing the ones on the SE side is a challenge in access and personal safety!

The Potomac is one big ass river as it opens up south of the Bluefields water treatment plant. It is broad and brown and probably unhealthy, and it is wild and tangled along the banks where trees and trash are piled willy-nilly, making land transit problematic.

(The overland route to SE-9. We made it to the highway bridge, and the path was impenetrable).

Argo and I had tried to find District Stone SE9 in the Spring. It looked simple enough from the overhead imagery- Oxen Hill Farm had relatively secure parking, and a path down the bluff to the forest. In the execution it was brutal- hard to imagine the wilderness that exists inside the limits of the District, fallen trees and clinging vines and uncertain footing. And all sorts of detritus washed down from the city in the periodic surges of rainfall that sweep all before it into the flow.

So, we decided the next attempt would be by boat, and there is a rental concession for kayaks that opened at National Harbor and Argo was in town, and it seemed like a natural- EZ in, EZ out.

Not so fast.

​We negotiated the kayak rental from a surly fellow at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention center. We shoved off from there after a cursory safety briefing and paddled to the north, battling the current and a strong quartering breeze.

There were no whitecaps but it was only just short of that. We got across the lagoon and under the Woodrow Wilson Bridge and then tried to hug the coast to avoid the massive pressure of all that water pouring down to the sea.

We got disoriented- the low freeboard of the boat meant we were wet and our phones were useless in their little plastic bags, and the shore was a wild tangle of logs and drifted debris, but we turned in a cove short of where we needed to be.

We were watching a police boat watching us when Argo suggested we beach the boat and go ashore.

We would have been on the wrong side of the cove, and based on the terrain and the tangled mass of logs and trash, I said “I surrender. No more injuries and no more surgery.”

We backed around and paddled along the shore dodging logs and rocks. It was a lot easier going back down the majestic river with the current- and it was a nice outing even if a failure. I don’t do enough adventures these days but I am still determined to avoid getting hurt again.

I will figure out a way to see that stone. Looking at the map, it appears that we were almost there- but of course we were unprepared. If we had printed and laminated the below image we would have done it:

We turned into the cove just north of the point of Rosalie island. Oh well.

Next time I will just charter a boat with a motor. I know it is possible- I have seen the picture of the stone. But it is something altogether different in visiting it in person. Forward!

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303