Last week I traveled for business to Washington, DC. While my original plans left me little time for sight-seeing, I still managed to take a long evening walk and see the memorials along the National Mall. Then old man winter intervened and pushed my flights around, giving me an unexpected whole day to visit museums. Now, I could give you a step-by-step itinerary of my trip, but it would likely bore you to death. (Now I’ve set myself up to have to write something non-boring. Uh oh.) What I’d rather talk about, though, is the overall experience I had.

This was my first visit to Washington. Ever since I was a kid I’ve been a history and government junkie, so I was excited to get to see some of the places for real that I’d only seen in pictures. I wasn’t disappointed. It’s even more impressive to be there and see them. First, because many of the buildings are massive in a way that a photograph just can’t communicate. (The Supreme Court? Unbelievably immense.) But second, because all the buildings are so close together. You come up from the Metro, and bam! there’s the Library of Congress. Walk past it and bam! there’s the Supreme Court. Then turn the corner and whammo! the Capitol building. And on and on. Amazing.

As I started my journey down the Mall, I felt a little bit sheepish playing tourist; I seemed to be the only tourist around, everyone else was just finishing up work for the day. Still, I had fun snapping pictures and marveling at the architecture. Halfway down the Mall you reach the Washington Monument. Some 500+ feet tall, it’s a massive obelisk that dominates the skyline. I took a few pictures to try to capture the sunset off in the west and the ring of flags that surrounds the monument. I’m sure I didn’t really capture it, though - it’s just too much to take in with a camera lens. (At least, too much for me and my camera lens.) At the Washington Monument I finally saw a few other tourists, all doing the same as me, gazing up at this massive two-tone tower.

I continued my trek westerly across the Mall. From the Washington Monument you have a long walk past the reflecting pool until you reach the Lincoln Memorial. Coming from the east like I did, it isn’t immediately apparent what exactly the reflecting pool reflects. The pool is long, fairly wide, a few feet deep, and made semi-famous as the pool that Forrest Gump wades into at the end of the movie. (I heard two separate tourists that I passed on the walk mention this fact, so it must have been more memorable to them than it was to me.) It was also drained for the winter; there was just a little bit of water in the center of the pool where the snowmelt had run. It was anything but impressive as I walked by it in the winter dusk, but it made a comfortable walking path as I headed toward Lincoln.

The guidebooks all describe the Lincoln Memorial as the most popular of the memorials on the Mall. This was evidenced to me as I walked toward it that night - the frequent camera flashes reflecting off the inner walls of the memorial lit it up beyond the already-bright normal lighting. When I reached the Memorial, there was no shortage of tourists, even though it was nearly seven pm. Adults, small children, families, a school group, all in awe of the massive man of marble. And then I turned around.

As magnificent as the Lincoln Memorial is, what really captured me (and many of the others) was the view back across the Mall. So that’s why they have a reflecting pool: from the Lincoln Memorial you can see the whole Washington Monument reflected. Even in the snowmelt a patchy reflection lit the Mall. Far in the distance the Capitol was lit up brightly. What an amazing scene.

Now why do I keep bringing up the number of tourists there? Wouldn’t I have preferred there were fewer so there would be less crowding? Well, crowding wasn’t really an issue. But what got to me was this: even in these contentious political days, a diverse group of visitors could all stop for a few minutes and share the wonder. We could all appreciate the beauty and truth of Lincoln’s words engraved in the wall of the memorial. We could all feel thankful for past leaders like George Washington. We could all stop and feel the love of a free country, this country, our country. Amazing.

Rich Mullins summed up my feelings toward my country so well in his song Land of my Sojurn:

Nobody tells you when you get born here How much you’ll come to love it And how you’ll never belong here So I’ll call you my country But I’ll be longing for my home And I wish that I could take you there with me…