(resurrection by an old friend)

The first time I saw the words Dumbarton Oaks, they were printed in typewriter font on a yellowing card pulled from the heavy wooden tray of a card catalog. They stopped me in my tracks, as I was used to the entries under Location: being Tozzer or Widener or any of the many other campus libraries. Dumbarton Oaks I had never heard of, so I headed to the information desk to ask how to get to it. The librarian smiled kindly and explained that I would need to take a plane—to Washington, DC. She could surely order the book for me, but it might take a few weeks to come in. Thinking about the deadline for my paper, I knew I had to decline the offer; but over the next few years, as I researched more papers for anthropology classes and continued to encounter that elegant name, I decided that one day I should find this displaced library, because I couldn’t, for the life of me, understand why a university with more books than exist in most countries would relegate some to housing so far away.

The winter after I graduated, I spent a week in Washington visiting friends and relatives. As all would be working during the week, I started compiling a list of the five museums among DC’s plethora of them that I would most like to see. Not sure what all the options were, I sat my uncle down to discuss. He knowingly suggested I head out to Georgetown, to a beautiful old museum, as he described it, full of archaeological artifacts that would dazzle me. I readily agreed and asked him for the name of the place. Dumbarton Oaks, of course.

That week, six inches of snow fell on Washington, shutting the city down for two days. As soon as I could, I hopped on the three buses my uncle had suggested I take, spending no less than an hour and a half getting a few miles across town, shivering as I waited 20 minutes at one bus stop, grumbling as I found I had to wait at another, running to the nearest bagel shop the minute I de-boarded the last one and buying the biggest hot chocolate they sold.

With warm drink in hand, I trudged through the snow the few blocks to R Street, turned down it, and stared in awe. Off a busy, trafficked road stood regal mansions of red and white brick, with the barren arms of trees and shrubbery hugging in all around them. I walked slowly, studying each one, thinking how different they were from the row houses and brownstones in other parts of town.

Shortly I encountered a tall gate, and by it, a placard that welcomed me to the museum. Inside, the place was silent; the marble halls were free of visitors. Yet life filled their walls and cases. Byzantine masterpieces of sculpture, carving, metal and stone work, and painting surrounded me. I knew I should stop and look at each one, but the museum hours were short each day, and these were not the marvels I had come to see.

To enter the Pre-Columbian collection, you leave stern marble floors and walls for an airy and open experience that made me wonder, at the time, if Frank Lloyd Wright had designed it. (Later I would not be surprised to find out that the wing’s creator was Philip Johnson, of Glass House fame.) Cylindrical rooms of floor-to-ceiling glass led one from the next, with small walkways connecting the eight of them. In the center of each sat a large, stout pot; within it grew an elegantly poised orchid. Outside the rooms, nature stretched forth. The cold-weary boughs of a tree hung low by one window, that delicate coating of snow giving them the look of sagging. The drifts piled up around each room, and the tangerine sky of winter late afternoon cast a warm glow across the crystalline grounds beyond.

Within that breathtaking setting rested an array of artifacts from the entirety of the Pre-Columbian world. Andean gold, shimmering from the faces of gods and the wings of birds, sparkled against the white backdrop. Central American jade, carved by the Maya and the Olmec, looked menacing on the face of a jaguar or the tip of a bloodletter; beautiful on a pendant; delicate on a small sculpture. Items of stone and shell, weavings, all the usual types of media from this region were represented, and the pieces themselves were of superior craftsmanship.

This place, for a student of Mesoamerican archaeology, was better than any kid’s candy shop. I had a magical day walking through the snow, flowers, and branches to see gorgeous handiwork after gorgeous handiwork.

About two years after that visit, my mom moved to DC. She’d been living in Atlanta for 30 years and was ready for a change, and so was I. I had fallen for the District, as locals always refer to it, that winter week I’d spent there, so I was thrilled to start visiting Washington regularly and continue my exploration of it.

The first time I visited in spring, my mom announced there was somewhere we just had to go. It will be perfect right about now, she assured me, not telling me what “it” was. We got in the car, turned onto Wisconsin Ave., and soon I was smiling, having realized where we were. “Turning on R Street?” I asked her, and she was appalled, wondering how I could have known.

But surprises still awaited me, for my mom did not lead me to the side gate through which I had previously entered the museum. Instead, we walked to the main gate, where a guard instructed us to buy a ticket and enjoy our stroll. And as it turns out, in addition to being a museum and a library, Dumbarton Oaks is also a massive mansion, and its grounds are beautifully landscaped and open for visitors every afternoon.

To enter the grounds you walk a sand-colored, pebble path. It divides in half a rolling lawn of thick grass that begs for bare feet and dresses and long days of reading books. As you approach the mansion, the lavender and deep-purple flowers of a wisteria vine drip in delicate clumps from its walls. The lacey-fine leaves of a Japanese maple wave at you; the pollen-laden branches of an oak tree bend down to welcome you, new leaves budding forth at their tips. You take a path to the right, and suddenly you stand amidst violets and daffodils, blue bells and narcissus, all kinds of perky yellows and blues. Around the corner, you enter a rose garden; beyond that, a stone-pebbled mosaic patio encircled by tulips, standing erect and open, in vigorous reds, oranges, yellows, purples, and pinks. If you turn left, you might overlook the swimming pool; turn right, and you’ll find a giant copper beech overhanging an algae-coated tile pool that might represent a turtle shell if you stand at one end and look down at it just right. The rustling of bamboo leaves positioned to catch the breeze will catch your attention, and then you’ll stumble through the deep grass of a hillside strewn with daffodils until you reach a long row of lilacs, and inhale them, and inhale them, and inhale them. Wander further and you are in a sea of cherry blossoms; further still and the entire hill is lit with the fiery flowers of forsythia. You can’t, of course, see every one of these flowers in bloom on a given visit; they are arranged very carefully, so that every time you come in springtime, you see a different multitude of flora reaching their peak.

As I sat, once again, on a bench on these grounds last Friday afternoon, I was weary; I had to lie in the grass. While on vacation in DC, I had developed a violent illness, probably a reaction to ingesting raw milk, and for three days I had tossed and shaken with high fevers, felt tumult in my insides, been confined to the house. Once I started antibiotics, I began to revive; I was very weak from lack of sleep or nutrients, but my fever was gone, and my thoughts felt burdened by slightly less of a fog. I had already missed one return flight to San Francisco; I planned to take another one the next day if I could hold up. But I could not bear to leave Washington without seeing my fairytale friend, Dumbarton Oaks. It was the only time I left the house in four days, but it was worth it. I moved slowly through the grounds and sat down often, but what a place to nurse you back to health. We walked down a hillside of blossoming apple trees and the aroma was like a lozenge or a hot compress for my whole being, for my physical body but even more for my spirit.