The Low Country

There was one point in yesterday's drive when the GPS inexplicably sent us off on a 17-mile detour, presumably because of a traffic jam ahead.

Whether or not this was necessary — or a wild goose chase — may never be known. But though it had already been a long trip and I was more than ready to be done with it, I tried to take in the surroundings, to feel the flatness of the land and the nearness of the water.

It was only then, during that brief sojourn away from the buzz and roar of I-95, that I felt I was truly in the low country.

An Adventure

Today, to avoid traffic, I plan to drive 20 or 30 miles out of my way, to etch a trail up and over rather than down and across. To take a country road rather than an interstate. It sounds crazy, which is why I'm calling it an adventure.  

I wonder if anyone has studied the miles people drive to avoid sitting on highways. If not, I propose the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area as a prime location for research. With two states plus the District of Columbia, one river and too few bridges (once you're out of the city), our neck of the woods is filled with idling cars and fuming motorists.  

Tell us, please, what we can do about it ... apart from having "adventures," of course.   

(Evening rush hour on I-66)                                                                                                                                               

A Sunset, An Intersection

Asheville is a small city with big scenery,  including a road called Town Mountain Drive. I drove it by accident the other day on the way to see the sunset, which was stunning. 

The road was a different matter, winding up and up and up, mildly terrifying in spots, especially for the cars on the outside, but an adventure just the same.

I read later that Town Mountain Drive connects directly with the Blue Ridge Parkway, so this morning (back in Virginia) I looked up the two roads on a map. And sure enough, they intersect, at the exact same spot where we parked for our hike, Craven Gap.

Many Worlds

Yesterday there was a drive and some errands that reminded me how many worlds exist inside this one world we call home. 

There was a body shop with country music blaring and an American flag flying and a mechanic named JJ who pronounced the bill — "that will be nine thousand dollars" — before grinning and saying he was just kidding. 

There was a hole-in-the-wall eatery with goat meat and fou-fou and a woman wearing a colorful West African print in bright yellow. 

And in between these places were parkways of green, the home of our first president, and the Potomac River flashing bright outside the car window, its bridges arching gracefully over the waves.

It's a big world out there. How good it is to be reminded of it. 

A Pedestrian at Heart

I pulled up at the light, heart pounding. I'd missed the turn-off for Rock Creek Parkway and now was in some sort of endless correction loop, counting the one-two-three-four-five-six — sixth! — exit of the roundabout, which would take me, after more twists and turns, to the parkway entrance.

As I waited at the light, I stared longingly at the pedestrians. They were mostly young (this was a university area), bopping along with backpacks tossed carelessly across their shoulders, chatting as they crossed at the light. How I longed to be one of them! 

Instead, I waited for the light to turn green, then put the car in first and made my way (eventually, after a hair-raising U-turn) onto the parkway. Yes, I reached my destination ... but at a price.

I'll always be a pedestrian at heart. 

(Hoofing it through an urban center.)

Exposed

Walking early today because it will be too hot to tromp around later, I took a different route out my front door, turning right at the corner instead of left. Then, at the next corner, choosing a path that runs along a four-lane road. 

It's one of my semi-regular walks, but I hadn't taken it in a while, so I noticed how pine boughs crowd the sidewalk, how fast cars speed along beside the path, how close together are road and sidewalk. 

How exposed I suddenly felt! For after all, what is a mere walker when confronted with tons of speeding steel? 

(I realize I don't take too many photos of cars on highways. I'm much more likely to snap bucolic shots like the one above.)

  

Back in the Bluegrass

By Winchester the land has changed, has taken on the open feel of the Bluegrass. It's close in Mount Sterling, but not quite there. 

So I felt myself exhale a little when we got to that point on our drive yesterday, savoring that feeling of home.

It's a feeling I've been enjoying all day. 

The Moon

The moon was with me this morning as I drove to the airport, so early and so long ago now that it seems like another week. 

And the moon was with me later, a pale disc as I zoomed down I-66 on my way to school.

The moon is with me still, in this photo (not a very good one, I'm sorry to say), growing ever brighter as I walked through a darkening campus on my way to class.

The moon will be full tomorrow ... but it's hard to see how it could be any fuller.

Flash Gratitude

I have in my temporary possession a book called The Best of Brevity. It's a compilation of short essays from the journal Brevity, which features flash nonfiction. 

The genre of flash nonfiction is relatively new to me, although I write it everyday. It is the true-to-life equivalent of flash fiction. part of a trend — probably long since peaked if I'm catching onto it — toward the brief, the ephemeral, the transitory. 

Let me add to this canon with what I've come to think of as flash gratitude. 

Flash gratitude is the sudden, piercing awareness of life's blessings. Stubbing one's toe and thinking ... at least I have a toe to stub. Or hearing the gentle purr of forced-air heat and giving thanks for the warm home I sit in as a result. 

I had a moment of flash gratitude yesterday when I heard about fellow Virginians trapped for 18 to 20 hours on an impassable I-95. They were cold, hungry, frightened and, most likely, angry. They were bearing the brunt of the snow storm in a real and all-too-personal way. 

Let this be a gratitude trigger, I told myself. Whenever life looks bleak and purposeless, I will conjure up those poor souls trapped in their Kias or Toyotas or Hondas or Fords, those poor shivering drivers and passengers, and my heart will nearly burst with joy that I am anywhere else but on a snow-packed, jack-knifed-tractor-filled I-95. 

(This snow has its beauteous moments, too.)

In Kentucky

I drove to Kentucky yesterday, following the new route through the mountains. For the first few hours, I took in the late-fall color on the gleaming hillsides. But by early afternoon, I had driven into the predicted cold front. 

Dark clouds gathered above the huge windmills, and strong gusts sent leaves swirling and scudding across the highway. The rain started when I was at about 3,000 feet, lightly at first, then heavier by the time I reached the interstate. 

It was not the bucolic drive I had in August, when I stopped to admire the mountain views. This was a no-nonsense-just-get-me-there kind of trip. 

And it worked. I pulled into the driveway just as the last light was draining from the sky. 

Community of the Ether

A spur-of-the-moment trip to Seattle (I can do these things now!) means that I'll attend class tonight on Zoom rather than in person. While I've had plenty of experience with Zoom meetings the past year and a half (haven't we all?!), I've been driving down to Georgetown for the real thing every Tuesday evening. 

While this seemed slightly terrifying at the start — where will I park? will rush-hour traffic make the trip twice as long as it would be otherwise? — those concerns have largely faded. And the joy of being in a classroom again (even if only one other classmate is there with me, which has been the case the last few weeks) has more than compensated for them.

But tonight, we'll all be on Zoom. We'll be a class, a community, of the ether — as so many communities are these days. 

(Sunset from the Car Barn Terrace, where I am not whiling away time before class tonight.)

Corridor H

The climb started as soon as I exited Interstate 81. The flat land became scarcer, the tree tunnels more abundant. My little car felt the difference but handled it better than I'd hoped. 

The first stretch was road I've known and driven for years, Routes 33 and 55, which I wrote about years ago. But instead of chugging through Moorefield and Seneca Rocks, I cruised the top of the ridge along Highway 48, which I learned today is part of the Appalachian Development Highway System's as yet incomplete Corridor H. (Sounds more like a UFO site than a federal roads project.) 

Incomplete might be seen as a disadvantage, given the two-lane stretches in between the four, but not when it takes you to places like this, a pull-off viewing spot I almost missed since it had no sign or build-up. What I found were mountains beyond mountains, Queen Anne's lace and bumblebees, the quiet of a land out of time.

Going Home

In the waning days of summer, I sandwich in one more trip — this one back to Lexington for my high school reunion. It's been 10 years since I've seen most of these folks and three years since I've been in my hometown, a record I don't want to duplicate. 

I've written about trips to Kentucky since I started this blog, describing the drive there and the drive home — even my old high school building makes a cameo appearance. 

There's a reason for this, of course. It's because once you've grown up in a place like Lexington, it never leaves you. It's why, even though I've lived in this dear house for decades, raised my children here and treasure it beyond measure ... when I go to Lexington, I still say "going home." 

One-Car Weekend

I remember when the driveway used to resemble a parking lot — five drivers and as many as four cars. Lately, there have just been two parked there, both gray sedans. And starting Friday, with one car in the shop, there's just been one. 

This might have seemed difficult in the past, a juggling act, but lately not so much. We  often run errands separately, but those can be planned around each other. Appointments seldom overlap. Neither of us parks our car all day at a Metro lot.

Life is simpler in this respect, and it makes me wonder ... could we do this permanently? I'd like to say yes, doing our bit for the carbon footprint and all, but I'll have to say no. 

In the suburbs, the car is autonomy, mastery and sometimes salvation. I'm thinking about the other day, when a walk I thought would be one hour was more than two, how glad I was to see my car parked beneath the trees, waiting to carry me home.

So as much as I'd like to be noble and economical, I'm hoping that the one-car weekend doesn't become a one-car week. 

Getting Out

It's Saturday, time to get some food into the house. Apart from walks around the neighborhood, the last time I jumped in the car and drove away was ... two weeks ago. 

Even for Pandemic Speed this is glacial. No wonder I've been pacing the floors on Fort Lee Street. I thought it was to stretch my legs during long work sessions. But no! I think it's been to re-enact a more primary urge: to leave, to step out, to move from one place to another.

While some people have been hunkering down like this for months, I've still been going out to the grocery store and on a few other errands most weeks. And I can say that while from a germ standpoint this practice may be debatable, from a mental health standpoint it is not. 

Getting out is good for you. Which is why I plan to do it ... soon.

(Sorry to say I will not be seeing this on my drive to the supermarket.) 

Naked Driveway

It seldom happens around here — in fact, I can't quite remember another time when it has — so I had to snap a photo. The event: an empty driveway without an empty house. 

With one car in the shop, another on indefinite loan and the third (wonder of wonders!) actually parked n the garage ... it stands to reason that the driveway would be empty. 

And yet, an empty driveway is terra incognita. What is this vast expanse, warped and worn? What is this house devoid of parked vehicles? 

Most of all, what is this emptiness as I back out of the garage on my way to an appointment? I paused, as I always do, calibrating how much I'd have to swerve to avoid the car that's always parked west of the dogwood. But that car wasn't there. My way was clear. It was a naked driveway. 

Vienna Waits For You

Yesterday, for the first time since March 12, I drove to the Vienna Metro Station. Though assured that the money I'd had taken from my paycheck would remain on the flex account charge card past year's end, I wasn't going to test it out. I needed the funds from the credit card to be on the Metro card — and drove there to make the transfer.

It was my first trip to Vienna Metro in nine months, and I relished the old twists and turns of the drive there: Fox Mill to Vale to Hunter Mill to Chain Bridge to Old Courthouse to Sutton and on to the station. 

The lighting was all wrong, of course. I usually did this leg of the commute in darkness or early morning shadows. And the traffic was much lighter, as it is most everywhere most all of the time.

But once there, it was not at all like the Vienna Metro Station I know.  I found myself improbably alone, like the survivor of a nuclear apocalypse. There were no cabs idling, no buskers singing, no harried commuters rushing to and fro. The place was as lonesome as a schoolyard in summer.

Here was a place I knew like the back of my hand. Here was a round-trip I took most work days in my former life. It was a place and a practice that changed abruptly last spring. And I doubt it will ever be the same. 

Metronomic

Today I was idling at an intersection, turn signal on, when I noticed how the tick-tick of the signal was in perfect sync with the meter of the Bach on the radio. I enjoyed the music even more with the pulse of 4/4 time reinforced in the car.  

My days of musical study are long since over, but I still find myself tapping out beats. If it's not convenient to nod my head or tap my fingers, I move my toes quietly inside my shoes, as we were taught to do long ago in orchestra class. 

What strikes me then, and still seems true now, is how we live in rhythms of our own making and how music merely makes us aware of that lovely fact. It's the rhythm of life — and it's ours for the tapping. 

Change of Heart

When driving west on Interstate 66 last Monday, I thought about how many times I made that drive, countless trips from Virginia to Kentucky — all the thoughts I had, the fears I was fighting.

In later years, the trips were often in response to a health crisis for Mom or Dad, so I sought distractions wherever I could find them. The scenery out my window was embroidered with worry. But when I looked to the mountains,  I found relief.

It was that way this week, too. All of which is to say how much a change of scene can mean a change of heart.

Speeding Along

There are fewer cars on the road than this time three months ago — but more on the road than this time last week. And many of the automobiles out there are apparently speeding.

Not to condone these scofflaws but I can understand the lure of empty pavement. It's such a departure from our normal state of affairs (see above).

I found myself putting the pedal to the metal a few weeks ago when driving down an almost empty Dulles Toll Road. But I slowed down after I spotted this sign:

"Speeding tickets available ahead."

At least the police had a sense of humor about it.