Less than a mile from the district line, Michigan Avenue lifts into a bridge. I’m on my toes now, running in the sunlight on the narrow sidewalk that slopes upward alongside the concrete barrier. There’s an ugly little tangle of asphalt below, low brick buildings with awnings, the kinds of places where they hammer the dents out of car doors. Ahead, the dome of the basilica. A seminarian passes on the other side of the sidewalk, head down, black cassock fluttering around his ankles, back backpack.
I’m still some six miles from the Lincoln Memorial. Here’s the children’s hospital, my old neighborhood, protestors, blocks of office workers walking out into the autumn afternoon. Tourists descending into the hillside of the Vietnam wall. When I get to the end of the emptied-out Reflecting Pool, I’ll stop. I’ll climb the steps to stand beside a stranger and read the second inaugural carved into the wall of the north chamber.