Enchanted Forest By Susan Glick and Meg Dennison Special to The Washington Post Wednesday, August 12, 1998; Page D09

Light filters through the trees at Greenbelt Park, so close yet so far away. (National Park Service Photo)

The promised land is Greenbelt Park, a 1,100-acre tract inside the Beltway with the Baltimore-Washington Parkway running through it. As unlikely as it seems, Greenbelt Park is referred to in every guidebook I check as an oasis or a refuge. My previous single visit to this park doesn't dispute this. Weeks earlier, one crisp morning when the woods were just beginning to green, I had hiked the park's Blueberry Hiking Trail and never saw another soul.

When our date with wilderness arrives, it is unseasonably hot. Our plan to do the six-mile Perimeter Trail seems ambitious. I pack water and the park map. Meg hops in my car, dressed for serious hiking. Her backpack looks heavy.

It's hard to believe I would get so worked up about a walk in a park. I am doubtful that wilderness is just 15 highway minutes from my house. But I enjoy the effects of this idea in the days before the walk. I feel the silence of the last time I was in a remote woodland: There, deep in the January stillness of Vermont, the only sounds were the snapping of frozen twigs, my own breathing, and my clothes rubbing together.

Moments before Susan arrives, I throw stuff in a small backpack: water, apple, camera and a book, "A Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold.

Meg and I start down a path that we think connects to the Perimeter Trail. My friend is not enchanted with the surroundings. The nearby roadways are noisy, and here, right on the trail, are manhole covers. If the Perimeter Trail is marked, we can't find it.

We start on the Azalea Trail, near the picnic tables. Maybe we were talking too much, but we misread the map and walk in a circle. I study the map again. And again. Finally, we cross a road, fight our way through brambles, and reach what can only be the Perimeter Trail. If it's silence we're after, this was a bad idea: The park's perimeter runs beside the parkway.

I grab the map from Susan, turn it a couple of times, and point to the right fork, which sends us toward the center of the park and the Dogwood Trail. "This way," I command her.

Away from the park periphery, the woods get thick and the noise of traffic fades. We stop to rest on the trunk of a fallen tree. The day is windy and the forest is full of the sounds of creaking, squeaking wood. "I was taught never to go into the woods on days like this," I say. We watch the forest, half hoping that one of the pines will crash down before our eyes.

We move on, coming upon what we guess to be Still Creek. There's a bridge and we lean over it for a long time, watching skippers on the surface of the water. I talk about fishing with my son in Maryland. She tells me about fly fishing in Vermont, about casting her line across the waters of creeks a lot bigger than this one. We listen for peepers, but despite the heat, it's too early for frogs.

At the creek, I stare into the cold and sleepy water, thinking about the fly-fishing pole my husband gave me for a long-ago birthday. I tried to fish with a toddler a couple of times, but discovered that children really do change your life. (It's better to have your hands free around them.)

Listening quietly for peepers is silly, really. Around peepers you don't have to say, "Shhhh!!!" You can't imagine how startling it is in Vermont that first time they appear in spring. One night it's quiet, the next night their love songs blast out of the cattails through closed windows.

By now, I don't feel like charging through the woods anymore. Our pace has slowed, and I can hardly hear the traffic. I look down at the earth, but since it's early in the year, I have to squat to see anything. I'm wondering if the ferns have poked up fiddleheads, whose edible new tops are delicious sauteed with butter, or steamed and sprinkled with vinegar, but . . . it's also too early for fiddleheads.

I am disappointed, but not very. I am no longer eager about finding the wildness. I have found it, or something that stirs the same juices. When I examine the world at my feet, the plants and the little gurgling, sand-bottomed creek, I am unaware of the traffic, the manhole covers and the distant tops of apartment buildings. Later, I realize that experiencing the natural world, even this semi-urban wildness, is only a matter of focus.

Deeper in the woods, we come upon two benches facing each other across the trail. I lie down on one, Meg on the other, and we watch the trees, so high and straight, sway an impossible distance from side to side. We are alone, as we've been all along, in this moving, noisy forest.

After a while, we feel the footfalls of an intruder. A jogger stands before us, sweaty and wearing hardly any clothes. Incredibly, he asks us for directions. I pull out the map and show him the dotted lines that are the park trails. I have no idea where we are, haven't for hours. I point him in one direction; my friend offers the other. We watch him run off.

It's time to go, time to leave this refuge and return to our paper-messy desks and our what's-for-dinner-tonight-Mom lives. We got what we came for: some exercise, some solitude, and the chance to talk in whole paragraphs without being interrupted.

A few weeks later I e-mail Meg. "Let's go see if the peepers are there yet," I suggest. But our days are too busy for frogs or ferns. Our calendars are full of other things.

Getting There/Being There: From the southbound Beltway, take Exit 23 and follow signs to Route 193 east (Greenbelt/NASA); make a quick right from 193 (Greenbelt Road) into the park. (From the northbound Beltway, take Exit 22A to the Baltimore-Washington Parkway north to the first exit for Greenbelt Road/Route 193 west. The park is a half-mile down on your left.)Greenbelt Park is open year-round, operated by the National Park Service with four marked trails, three picnic areas and a 178-site, year-round campground ($13 nightly, no electrical hookups). Hikers use the park's wooded trails and park roads. The Perimeter Trail is also a bridle trail for horseback riding. Contact the park at 301-344-3948, http://www.nps.gov/gree.

Other Close-In Wild Walks: The following suggestions are not miles from civilization but it's still a good idea to hike with a map and a buddy and more water and time than you think you'll need.