The swamp: An affectionate farewell

There’s nothing magical about government paperwork, as those working in this government town perhaps know best. And I still feel more comfortable in my Midwestern homeland. But as my time in Washington comes to an unexpected end (for now), I’ve realized that I’ve grown far more comfortable in Washington than I ever expected to. And that I will actually miss it when I am gone. It’s fun to hate on D.C., but it seems only fair, then, to admit: It’s not so bad.

Mine’s a familiar story. I came to Washington just after graduating from college to work in politics. A part of me always resented the fact that I felt the need to join this transient city to pursue this line of work. So, too, do our leaders, judging by the rarity of politicians running pro-Washington campaigns. As far back as 2006, California Rep. Nancy Pelosi was campaigning for a Democratic majority in the House on a platform to “drain the swamp” after a decade-plus of Republican congressional domination. And a decade later, Pelosi’s now-nemesis, President Trump, used the same phrase. The parties may differ, but the slogan, and the distaste for Washington, is the same.

There is legitimacy to this criticism. For Washington is, indeed, a swampy place, home to lobbying, sausage-making, and those who profit from both. “It’s not that money controls Washington,” former Trump adviser Steve Bannon said in a 2013 interview with Sean Hannity. “Washington controls the money.” Liberal columnist Thomas Frank, who claims credit for Bannon’s anti-D.C. language, has been writing about the wealth of Washington as coming from “the political donors and the K Street lobbyists, who act in combination with politicians of the Tom DeLay variety,” as early as his 2008 book, The Wrecking Crew. And neither complaint is totally off-base. According to the latest available Census figures, in 2017, four of the top-10 U.S. counties by median income bordered Washington. My fear of becoming part of this metaphorical swamp in some way, of mutating into a D.C. creature who forgot his honest-to-goodness, family-loving, Midwestern roots, kept me wary for many years of getting too comfortable in Washington.

It helps that D.C.’s climate and topography can give a literal reinforcement to this metaphorical murkiness. The frequent, heavy rains, often-stifling heat, and omnipresent humidity speak for themselves. It’s one reason why many Washingtonians flee the city in its brutal summer months, and why even more did before air conditioning.

But as I prepare to leave Washington, I’m finding it more difficult to say goodbye than I expected. I can lament all I want the economic forces encouraging young people to gravitate toward a handful of cities that seem geared toward them at the moment. Yet I shouldn’t deny that this trend has benefited me, and many good friends from different parts of my life who have come to Washington.

This complaint also ignores that Washington has a history and culture all its own. And the longer I’ve stayed here, the more I’ve gotten to experience it. It has changed a lot in its 200-plus years, but then again, so has the nation of which it is the capital. Go-go music and Marvin Gaye. Ben’s Chili Bowl and mambo sauce (plus Maryland crab, sneaking in). The Nats and the Redsk … uh, I mean the Capitals. The Exorcist steps and the Deepthroat parking garage (I know, I know, that’s technically Rosslyn). And then, of course, a host of world-class museums, art galleries, and other tourist attractions, many of them free. There is a stereotype that D.C. residents never visit these places, instead always thinking something along the lines of, “They’re always there. I’ll see them at some point.” But that doesn’t mean they’re not there.

A harder critique to subvert is Washington’s moral swampiness. I can’t escape the fact that D.C. does, in some ways, live up to its reputation in this regard, even if all cities have their own demons. And it doesn’t help that I am discomfited, in a different way, by the unrealistic zeal that drives many idealistic youths here despite (or because of) this character. As a one-industry town whose industry is government, Washington self-selects for people interested in politics in a variety of ways.

Yet such people can be part of an unusual characteristic of Washington: its decidedly anti-megapolis sense of community. D.C. operates like a small town. Sometimes that takes the form of bars opening early for important congressional testimonies, fawning over the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, etc. Other times, though, the camaraderie is apolitical. I’ve lived here long enough to see D.C. teams win their sports’ championships in both baseball and hockey. In celebrating these, Washington has behaved much like you’d expect any victorious city to, suggesting that many who live here are more than mere transients. (And, yes, every city has its fairweather fans.)

Washington, D.C., is one of the most important cities in America, and in the world. Yet you wouldn’t know it walking around Capitol Hill on a normal night, where quiet, rowhouse-flanked streets seem genuinely suburban. Only the occasional, striking view of the Capitol, looming nearby from multiple vantage points, serves as a reminder of where you actually are. It’s a city big enough to have a subway system, whose foibles and failings are only too well known to those who use it and perversely bond over complaining about it. But it’s a city small enough that, if you take the same commute enough times, you may begin to recognize some of the people you see on it, not exactly a common feature of big cities.

To defeat the final criticism of Washington, its weather, would be a Herculean task. It’s foolish to deny that summers here can be awful. You haven’t really lived in D.C. until you’ve opened the door to leave an air-conditioned building and hit a wall of summer heat and humidity. Or until you’ve sweat through at least one dress shirt. Or until you’ve finished a run and people can’t tell if you’ve just done that or gone for a swim. But, at the risk of lowering the bar too much, there’s something triumphant about surviving it.

And the triumphs go beyond the summer. For outside of the brutal summers, Washington actually does have decent weather: great falls (to say nothing of Great Falls), mild winters with only the occasional heavy snow (and the apolitical joy of seeing Capitol Hill turned into a winter wonderland when it does come), and beautiful springs. Weather-wise, there are worse places to live.

The weather has rarely been bad enough to keep me from running. For Washington is a wonderful place to run, one of the best urban locales in America in which to do so. Lacking a car, and limited by the Metro, I’ve gotten to know the city really by running. There’s the C&O towpath, a seemingly limitless expanse of dirt trail between the old canal and the Potomac River. If you’re lucky, you’ll run into, and then with, someone you know there, as I have many times. The more pavement-minded can cut down to the Capital Crescent Trail. Those of an arboreal bent can travel up to Rock Creek Park, a cornucopia of trees and trails, both dirt and paved, or head down to Theodore Roosevelt Island, a mile-plus dirt loop at whose center is the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial, one of D.C.’s hidden gems.

From there, you can head down the Mt. Vernon Trail to Gravelly Park and watch planes take off and land from Reagan National, or cross one of the city’s many bridges and head to the National Mall. Even though many tourists may have the same idea, there’s nothing quite like running up the Lincoln Memorial steps to stare in awe at the 16th president, and then following his view across the Mall, as beautifully lit by the sun in the day as it is artificially at night. Or running in the shadow of the Washington Monument. Or running up Capitol Hill, where, if you’re lucky (or unlucky, perhaps), you’ll spot some politicians on their own exercise routines. And don’t forget the Metropolitan Branch Trail, with its cinematic view of the Capitol in the distance, the Anacostia Trail, whose namesake river peeks through dense forest as you run along it, and the National Arboretum, another one of D.C.’s hidden gems.

These are all also fantastic places to catch the sunrise, as are East Capitol Street and Constitution Avenue, from the latter of which I’ve seen both the sunrise and the sunset on runs. It’s enough to make you wonder if the real purpose of Pierre L’Enfant’s idiosyncratic design for the city was to provide as many beautiful views of the sunrise as possible, an intent somehow shared by all of those who have expanded the city in the years since. I’ve even been lucky enough to experience many of D.C.’s best running areas during its races: the Cherry Blossom 10-Miler, the Marine Corps Marathon, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon, and many more.

So, yes. The Swamp gives America plenty of things to complain about. But Washington is also a place to call home. And as I make my way out of it, I leave behind many friends, many fond places, some of which have themselves already gone (RIP Capitol Hill Armand’s), and many memories. They are memories of many things, but broadly speaking of the time when reality forced me to become an adult.

My connection to D.C. also lives in things that seem a bit more mundane on their face. Something like my first-ever Metro card, which I’ve improbably managed never to lose after first getting it in the summer of 2012, just before starting my first D.C. internship. I’ve used it virtually every day of my life here. And even though where I’m going, I’ll not need it, I think I’ll keep it anyway. You know, just in case I visit.

And then there’s my Washington, D.C., driver’s license, that hard-won spoil of a long day in June 2018. For the next few years, the most important and most readily accessible proof of my identity will not say that I’m from Ohio, but that I’m from Washington, D.C.

And I think I’m OK with that.

Jack Butler is the host of Ricochet’s Young Americans podcast.