I consider Germantown my hometown. We moved there when I was 8 years old, in third grade. It was February when we moved, and it was so cold for this Florida girl. My siblings and I saw snow for the first time! That was excitement.
But I remember Germantown being a slightly rural suburb of Washington D.C. It still had working dairy farms, and there were cornfields dotted here and there throughout town. The shopping was sparse and we had to drive twenty minutes for my parents to get to work, to get the library, or to get to the mall. Despite suburban crawl taking over all but one of the dairy farms, and about all of the other farms before I graduated from high school, I still retain the image of Germantown as a place out in the country.
Germantown is home to Seneca Creek State Park, where the old ruins of Clopper’s Mill sit crumbling above the creek. It is now home to streets like Leaman Farm Rd. but I used to know the Leaman Farm itself. My brother’s best friend’s family owned the land and my brother spent a lot of time there. I was just an occasional visitor. The Leaman’s have interesting stories in their family, which tell of the capture of a conspirator in Abraham Lincoln’s assassination on their land.
From parts of Germantown, you can glimpse the rounded top of Sugarloaf Mountain. I’ve climbed it once or twice, been to a sunrise Easter service there once, and generally woven my own myths and legends around it’s ancient place. It marks the beginnings of the Appalachian Mountains, rising off the river plains. I’ve always marvelled at how old it must be, at how tall and sharp it must have once been, to survive as one Lonely Mountain, now rounded and hunched.
When I go back to visit Germantown now, I’m shocked by it’s lack of character. I don’t say that to be mean, but it’s lost that slightly rural charm that it had back when I first knew it. The back roads have almost all been widened or made redundant. The woods I used to tromp so gleefully through have become smaller and smaller as mass housing developments and gleaming shopping centers take over the land. My high school has been marred by the addition of portable classrooms.
I’m glad to know, whenever I find my way back, that a few of my treasured spaces remain: The view of the mountain in the distance, the trails and creeks at the State Park and the adjoining lands of the Isaac Walton League (where I spent so many hours as a teenager). Even the Wendy’s where I used to hang out with my friends at lunchtime, munching on french fries and frosties was still there when last I checked. Thank goodness for some small things that haven’t changed in our mutating world.
