Blue Trail: A Confluence of WaterWays at Georgetown University

WaterWalk: Where Is Water?

By Gretchen Ernster Henderson (Spring 2024)

Reorient yourself to a body of water. Find a stream, ocean, or even a drinking fountain to sip a source. Water is all around us and within us: the lifeblood of our planet. Water can be easy to overlook unless we face scarcity, a desert or absence of presence. Consider water in your midst: what flows to your attention?

WaterWalks are designed to reattune to water. Some blue trails are curated around a location; others offer a guided template for you to co-create with your community. Both approaches involve making a loop journey through 13 water stops, where the first and last stop are the same location (coming together as a “confluence”). Consider this exercise as 13 ways of listening with water.

WaterWalk at Georgetown University

WaterStop #1: Headwaters (Lauinger Library). Start your blue trail in Georgetown University's Library at the duo of Dear Body of Water exhibitions (one in Special Collections and another in the Community Gallery). Libraries are confluences of centuries, geographies, languages, and ideas. The etymology of “library” links “books” with tree “bark”; pages are referred to as “leaves”; organic matters infuse all libraries (including digitally, as data centers require abundant water). Libraries are rooted in replenishing ways of knowing to ask deeper questions. Exercise: Find a window facing the Potomac River to follow the flow toward the Chesapeake Bay. Imagine beyond the horizon in both directions. Can you trace this watershed’s reach from the Atlantic Ocean back to headwaters in the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia, gathering waters from the hills of Maryland and Virginia? Consider the age of this river: how long has the Potomac flowed? (Image below: Detail of 1608 Smith Map showing the Patawomeck River. Wikimedia Commons.)

WaterStop #2: Indigenous (Outdoors). Reorient your perspective to the Potomac River by imagining waterways for Indigenous communities. At the time of colonial contact, Native villages populated shores around the Chesapeake region as the ancestral homelands of the Piscataway, Anacostank, Pamunkey, and other peoples. Imagine the river accruing more colonial-settler ferry landings, farms, plantations of enslaved African Americans, towns and buildings and bridges as populations resettled around what became the U.S. capital. The Potomac River has been used by humans as link and divider, as bridge and boundary, a liquid Mason-Dixon Line. The present Key Bridge replaced an earlier Aqueduct Bridge: a bridge for carrying water over water. Exercise: Outside Lauinger Library, touch the living soil, and ask: What and who was here before what is here now? (Image below: Potomac River Great Falls, MD, December 2016.)

WaterStop #3: Architectural (Healy Hall). In the main quadrangle, you cannot see the Potomac River, blocked by Lauinger Library (built in 1970) adjacent to Healy Hall (completed in 1889). Imagine an ancestral landscape when the University was founded a century earlier in 1789. Re-view more recently planted vegetation; discern existing water sources for trees, flowers, and lawn. Observe buildings for watermarks (gutters, drainpipes, downspouts) that support faculty, students, and staff. Exercise: Inside Healy Hall, find a restroom on the first floor. Notice water at work: flush the toilet, and wash your hands. How would this or any educational experience change with water scarcity? (Image below: Healy Hall, Georgetown University, November 2014.)

WaterStop #4: Spiritual (Dahlgren Chapel). Behind Healy Hall, Dahlgren Quadrangle is surrounded by some of the oldest buildings on campus. Enter the Chapel (built in 1893) and locate the font. Water plays a spiritual role across most world religions, including forms of baptism, ablution, purification, ritual washing, and other sacred engagements, also flowing into spiritual stories of floods and deluges. Consider complex histories of religion on this campus, including Georgetown’s 272: the number of enslaved African Americans who were sold downriver to the Deep South early in the University’s history, as well as their ancestors who were forcibly taken from Africa into slavery on ships that crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Exercise: Whose ancestral waters do you carry inside of you? Does water have memory, and how does water hold stories, histories, and potential futures? (Image below: Dahlgren Chapel, Georgetown University, December 2014.)

WaterStop #5: Celestial (Heyden Observatory & Gardens). Walk to the Observatory and observe signs of water: in gardens, playing fields, buildings, ponds. Georgetown’s Observatory is the third oldest college observatory in the country, constructed around 1844 under direction of Father James Curley, SJ, a professor of astronomy who kept weather logs for 50 years. A half-century earlier, DC’s boundary was charted in part by a free Black astronomer-surveyor named Benjamin Banneker. Traces of ancient oceans have been found on other planets. Exercise: Pay attention to today’s weather. How do shifting weathers, seasons, and climate affect your sense of place? The Observatory’s gardens contribute to green trails growing across campus. Extend this WaterWalk through gardens en route to WaterStop #6. (Image below: Hayden Observatory, Georgetown University, October 2017.)

WaterStop #6: Scientific (Rachel Carson marker @ Reservoir Road). At the intersection of Reservoir Road and Glover-Archbold Park, a marker recognizes biologist Rachel Carson. Her book, Silent Spring (1962), warned about humanity’s oversized imprint on a more-than-human world, particularly dangers of DDT. Carson walked these woods when she lived in Silver Spring, MD, and advocated a sense of wonder in nature. Glover-Archbold Park is crossed by roads named for water including Canal Road (Chesapeake & Ohio Canal) and Reservoir Road (Georgetown Reservoir). Exercise: What was your earliest memory of nature evoking wonder, and when do you recall worrying about the environment? Extend this WaterWalk by continuing on Reservoir Road to Georgetown Reservoir, part of DC’s first public water system (constructed between 1853-63) that continues today. (Image below: Rachel Carson marker, March 2024.)

WaterStop #7: Engineered (Foundry Branch). Enter the north trail into Glover-Archbold Park: 183 acres of woods that contain trails and a tributary of the Potomac River called Foundry Branch. The stream is named for a Foundry founded by Henry Foxhall that served the antebellum city. In the 20^th century, Glover-Archbold Park was created by two namesake philanthropists who felt it was important for the public to have access to green space and is part of the Rock Creek National Park System. Exercise: How are natural spaces stewarded by culture? Extend this WaterWalk by following trails along Foundry Branch toward one of Glover Park’s community gardens, whose origins begin as World War II “Victory Gardens.” (Image below: Trail along Foundry Branch, Glover-Archold Park, March 2024.)

WaterStop #8: Cultural (Dumbarton Oaks Museum): Follow Reservoir Road toward the city to the Dumbarton Oaks Museum. Once the home of Robert and Mildred Bliss, the museum (free) now includes a library, garden, and research institute as part of Harvard University. Highlight collections include Byzantine and Pre-Columbian art, Garden and Landscape Studies. Consider many ways that water shapes the history of art: as medium, as matter, as subject or representation, foreground or background, form or function, even beyond visual domains to other senses. This stop offers access to a restroom and drinking fountain. Exercise: Search for 3 objects in the Museum related to water. Also check out the DC Water Atlas. Extend your WaterWalk by visiting adjoining Gardens (separate admission) that include fountains, a swimming pool, and more water features. This and the next WaterStop might be cross-referenced as Botanical. (Image below: Dumbarton Oaks Garden, April 2015).

WaterStop #9: Aesthetic (Dumbarton Oaks Park Conservancy): Behind Dumbarton Oaks Museum and Garden lies a 27-acre park designed by Beatrix Farrand, noted as America’s first female landscape architect. The park became public in 1940, managed by the National Park Service that, in 2010, joined with the Dumbarton Oaks Park Conservancy to help restore the park’s deterioration. A notable feature of Farrand’s design is a series of dams and waterfalls. Exercise: Slow the pace of your walk on the creekside trail along the waterfalls. Can you hear how Farrand calibrated different pitches in the cascades, essentially retuning visitors’ ears to listen to the shifting voice of water? (Image below: Dumbarton Oaks Conservancy, March 2024).

WaterStop #10: Geologic (Chesapeake & Ohio Canal): Walk toward the Potomac River, noticing the natural declination of terrain. DC’s founders located the capital city at the Fall Line of the Potomac River, where the river descends from Virginia Piedmont to the Coastal Plain of marshes and tidal flats. Between 1828-1950, the C&O Canal was built to transport people, products, and natural resources but was never completed, superseded by railroads. From its start (29^th Street), the canal follows over 184 miles to Cumberland, MD, joining the Great Allegheny Passage to Pittsburgh, PA (intersecting another WaterWay: Fallingwater). Exercise: Imagine folding mountain ranges like the Appalachians high as the Himalayas, or the Chesapeake Bay imprinted by a meteor, and all other geologic forces that have shaped the Eastern seaboard. How does water flow across human-made boundaries? How does water connect humans across watersheds? Extend this WaterWalk by hiking or biking up to Great Falls, or take a seasonal barge boat. (Image below: C&O Canal, March 2024).

WaterStop #11: Economic (Georgetown Waterfront): By the river harbor, Flood Gates (built in the 1980s) can rise to protect businesses, residencies, and embassies during floods. Upstream from the river’s edge, the Georgetown skyline hosts renovated brick mills and factories of industry and shipping that grew around this waterway, where boats could navigate from the Atlantic Ocean. Downstream, the Watergate lies in view of a water gate that regulates at flood tide. Exercise: Consider layers of economics, politics, and other human forces that have shaped this region. Reconsider your perspective of the river close to its banks in comparison to where this WaterWalk started at a distance: in Lauinger Library. How does your perspective of this waterway change at a distance and up close? Notice 3 things that you didn’t notice from afar. (Image below: Georgetown Flood Gates, March 2024.)

WaterStop #12: Recreational (Key Bridge Boathouse): Depending on the season, you may observe people on the river in kayaks or paddleboards, water taxis or yachts, crew shells or barges. Summer fountains invite children to splash and cool off from swampy humidity. A winter ice rink invites iceskating. Boathouses dot the river’s edge; fishermen cast lines. Downstream by the Tidal Basin, near the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers, is DC's Municipal Fish Market. Paths invite runners and bikers to follow these waterways, which increasingly flood from rising sea levels, also swallowing islands of the Chesapeake Bay. Exercise: Since humans are also bodies of water, consider evolutionary processes that formed the human species and oceanic origins. Reconsider the centuries of peoples who have lived along these shores. How has your experience of this region been shaped by this waterway, and how would you like to interact with tributaries of the Potomac in the future? Extend this WaterWalk by kayaking or boating on the water. (Image below: Key Bridge Boathouse, April 2021.)

WaterStop #13: Confluence (Lauinger Library). Return to Georgetown's Library. In Special Collections, consider waterways that flow through: Rare Books, Archives, and Art. How have authors, artists, teachers, students, curators, and others represented water and ways of knowing and being with water over history? Where does water flow outside the frame, in the background, seemingly absent yet still present? Exercise: Find 3 texts and/or objects related to water. Reflect on this overall WaterWalk: Even when you do not see or hear water, how might you reorient to pay attention to water and tend to waterways? Water is underground, in the atmosphere, in our bodies. Having returned to this "confluence" where our first and last WaterStops flow together, do you feel the same way about water? How might you continue to renew your ways of “seeing” and being with water to steward the lifeblood of our world?

These are only a few WaterStops around the nation’s capital. Where can you find water? Would you like to co-create your own WaterWalk to grow intersectional WaterStories?

Photographs in this webpage were taken by G.E.H. between 2014-2024.

Maps

This WaterWalk can be made in abridged or longer versions. Below are a few variations. Spend an hour or make a day of getting to know waterways flowing around Georgetown.

A downloadable & printable version of this Georgetown WaterWalk will be available for Earth Day 2025, when an exhibition on Dear Body of Water will open in Lauinger Library.

DOWNLOAD & MAKE A WATERWALK ZINE!

Materials:

• PAPER: 1 sheet of printer paper (works best 11x17).
• PRINTER (ideally color).
• SCISSORS (one cut).
• HANDS (eight folds).

Instructions:

• Print back-to-back (works best in color and 11x17).
• Fold as 8-fold chapbook (see illustration below) with single cut (scissors).
• Start at Lauinger Library and go from there! Adaptation is welcome.

READ ONLINE BELOW

ALSO: MAKE YOUR OWN WATERWALK ANYWHERE!

Dear Body of Water Exhibitions

At Lauinger Library, check out 3 special WaterStops as Headwaters!

• 5th Floor: Visit the Booth Family Center for Special Collections exhibit on Dear Body of Water.
• 4th Floor: Visit the Community exhibition on Dear Body of Water.
• 3rd Floor: Visit the shelf of circulating library books curated around Dear Body of Water.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Beth Marhanka, Head of Outreach and Education at Georgetown University's Lauinger Library (who oversaw this collaboration), and to students involved in curating the 4th Floor Community Exhibition including: Elyza Bruce '25 (whose artwork animates the zines and posters) along with Madeleine Callender '26 and members of Georgetown Renewable Energy and Environmental Network (GREEN), Katie Merrill '27 and Heidi Pan '27. Thanks also to Art Curator LuLen Walker and other Curators and Archivists in the Booth Family Center for Special Collections for curating the 5th floor Special Collections Exhibition, along with Professor Negar Nahidian and her students who helped to design additional posters to raise water-consciousness on campus.

Land Acknowledgement (from the Association of Research Libraries): The United States capital is surrounded by just over a dozen tribal nations that thrive along the Anacostia and Potomac River watersheds and in the Chesapeake Bay area and the states of Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware. Washington, DC, sits on the ancestral lands of the Nacotchtank (or Anacostans), and neighbors the ancestral lands of the Piscataway and Pamunkey peoples. The District of Columbia shares borders with Maryland and Virginia, and connects with lands along the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers. These river systems and current national parks are where the Piscataway, Pamunkey, the Nentego (Nanichoke), Mattaponi, Chickahominy, Monacan, and the Powhatan cultures thrived. (More here).

Resources

• Potomac River Conservancy
• DC Water Atlas
• NASA's Scientific Visualization shows the Potomac Watershed as part of the larger Chesapeake Bay Watershed:

Chesapeake Bay Watershed. Nasa Scientific Visualization Studio (2008).

WATERSHED

Potomac River—Chesapeake Bay—Atlantic Ocean