A Pilgrim’s Digression

“Take Metrorail to l’Enfant Plaza. Exit on the 7th st. and Maryland Ave. side. At the top of the escalator, turn right and enter the Department of Transportation.”

These were the directions I received, but actually, I had to cross the plaza to another DOT building. I was not present to collect my Metrocheks last week, so today, on my lunch hour, I had to make the trip down to the DOT complex at l’Enfant Plaza to collect my fare cards personally.

One of the benefits of working for the government is that we are given fare cards, called Metrocheks, to ride public transportation. I will never understand why anyone would not take advantage of such a benefit, but nonetheless some people still insist on driving to work.

The square plaza in the center of the DOT complex of buildings is distinguished by a large fountain that sprays the choking smell of chlorine into the air. People sit on benches around the fountain having lunch. It looks like a pleasant place to spend a lunch hour, though the fountain makes the area smell like a public swimming pool.

The DOT building is one of those high windowed, marbled office complexes that remind me of some Reagan-era monument to soaring efficiency. The marble is a little soot-darkened, the carpet and long drapes a little faded now. It’s not a building I’d like to work in, but I’m spoiled.

Myself and two other federal employees have to empty our pockets before being allowed into the DOT building. Then we are issued temporary IDs, though we are all wearing our federal employee IDs around our necks.

Security measures vary from building to building in D.C. The museums have almost no security measures. Some federal buildings, like DOT, are very strict. Security at the Botanic Garden, oddly enough, is very strict. When I visit the Garden in winter, I have to take my coat off and place it on the conveyer belt to be x-rayed. A Botanic Garden would seem like an unlikely place for a terrorist to detonate a bomb, but then the terrorist in Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent wanted to blow up the observatory at Greenwich as a strike against science. Perhaps there is a terrorist out there who has as his mission in life dealing a mortal blow to the field of botany.

Security at my building is relative relaxed, even though through my building, one has direct access to the Capitol and all the House Office Buildings and Senate Office Buildings via the tunnel network under Capitol Hill.

After leaving DOT, I had to ask a policewoman for directions towards the Mall. My bearings were all out of whack, having come up out of the subway into the inner courtyard of the Department of Transportation. I decided I’d have lunch at the Museum of the American Indian.

This museum is one of the most visually attractive, most interesting museums I’ve ever been in, and having spent time in some of the best museums in the world I think I’m a pretty good judge of them. The facade itself is uneven and craggy like a rock face, and birds and pigeons love it. Rather than the usual ornamental flower beds around the outside of the museum, this museum grows thick, green patches of corn and squash and other vegetables. The smell of the corn reminds me of my Grandpa’s vegetable garden, and for a moment I imagine I am walking down a row of well-tended corn, feeling the scratchy caress of the corn plants.

Instead of fountains in the outdoor public areas, one finds marshes overgrown with cattails and lily pads. I wonder if frogs live there? I can’t hear any, but I begin to imagine a children’s story involving frogs in the museum marsh, something along the lines of McCloskey’s Make Way for Ducklings.

Inside the museum, I walk through security with my cell phone in my pocket, showing my ID to a disinterested guard. I enter a spacious, ovular hall with a white, domed ceiling so high I have to crane my head way back to look up at the top. The opening at the top is bright, like staring into the sun, and I think how this place is almost like a temple to the sun, the whole place so bright, so open.

I don’t have much time to look today. I have to eat lunch and return to work. I stop briefly and look at an example of a native watercraft of some kind; it looks like a kayak. I glance at the jewlery on sale in the gift shop. But my real goal is the restaurant.

If you are ever in Washington, let me recommend to you the restaurant in the Museum of the American Indian. The other museum restaurants tend toward the fast and fattening food of which tourists usually partake. The restaurant in the Museum of the American Indian serves familiar, but traditional fare. I had a bison burger with cheese and hot chili fries today from the “Great Plains” section of the restaurant. It was not a particularly challenging meal, being basically a hamburger, but the meat was buffalo meat. It reminded me of deer, which is admittedly not to everyone’s taste. I liked it quite a lot, and felt I was eating pretty healthy, considering what I’ve read about buffalo meat as an alternative to beef. I had a peppermint herbal tea to drink.

The restaurant is divided into sections named after geographic regions represented in the museum: Northern Woodlands, South America, Northwest Coast, Meso America, and Great Plains. Next time I think I’ll try the juniper-roasted salmon from the Northwest, although I admit just about everything on the menu sounded great to me. I also thought the chicken tamales with peanuts and chiles from South America sounded good as well.

I don’t know if this restaurant would be reviewed in a newspaper like the Washington Post, since it is technically a museum cafeteria, but I found it to be a cut way above any museum food court in which I’ve ever eaten. I’m looking forward to going back.

The museum itself is also worth a visit some afternoon. I visited for the exhibits shortly after it opened, skipping the dining. I was a little startled, maybe even disappointed at first. This is not an archaeological museum, so if you are going there expecting to see American Indian mummies and dusty artifacts (as I expected), you will be disappointed. This is a living museum. Most of the art on display is contemporary, for example. This museum celebrates the present as well as the past.

I’ve discovered a greater appreciation for the beauty of this museum each time I go back, and I expect that is true for others as well. For a hot, July weekday, it was as crowded as I’ve seen the most popular museums, Air and Space and the National Museum of American History.