It is the end of a day of spiritual rejuvenation that started with a much needed haircut near home, then the rest of the day to visit a National Park and relax. 

I finished the haircut around ten in the morning and started driving... I knew not where.  I got to the beltway and decided to turn West.  That gave me four options of National Parks within day trip range: 1.)  the C&O Canal following the Potomac River along the Maryland side,  2.) Great Falls Park on the Virginia side,  3.)  out further to Manassas National Battlefield Park, 4.) out much further to Shenandoah National Park.

The turnoffs for choices one and two seemed to skip by without notice; then I was continuing West on Interstate 66.  I stopped at the Welcome to Virginia roadside information center to gather brochures and ideas.  A number of pamphlets about Civil War sites in Virginia found their way into my hands.  I have hiked several in the past and found them to work two sides of spiritual well being.  They are generally a good way to commune with nature, and they cause contemplation on the dilemmas of the glories and horrors of war.

I took a Greenville Family Campground flyer.   I had no intentions of going there; I was just remembering that it was one of the very first places I took my young family camping back in the ‘70s.

I thought briefly about option three and finally settled on option four, Shenandoah National Park.  That was a risky choice, because the weather forecast had been for a rainy afternoon, and I had not packed any food or other typical hiking necessities.  In fact, I had not packed anything.  I keep a canteen of water in the car, and I had a sweatshirt and my Gortex jacket.  I had no hiking boots, just the tennis shoes on my feet.  So hiking in the mountains did not make sense.

But, I needed a mountain.  I had several stressful weeks of hard physical work and needed a mountain.  The TV, radio and newspapers have been full of news about current battlefields and the destitute innocent victims of today’s wars.  I did not need to visit a Civil War battlefield; I needed a mountain.

So I headed on toward Shenandoah.   A stop in Warrenton for lunch supplies oddly found me in a Dollar General Store buying packets of peanut butter and cheese crackers, and mini-cartons of orange drink in the kind of cardboard box with a tiny straw glued to the side.

There is a theory that those cartons of beverage can be used as a test to determine if someone is an alien from another planet.  You could hand one to the alleged alien and watch to see if they know how to drink from it without spilling on themseves.  You see, once they plunge the pointy end of the straw through the small foil circle on the top of the carton, any finger pressure at all on the sides of the carton will force liquid out the end of the straw, spilling on the suspect, proving that that person is a new visitor to Earth.  A normal human knows that you have to pick up the carton by the corners so that you don’t squeeze it.

I continued my drive up the mountain into the park.  At the entrance gate, I flashed my Golden Eagle Pass and turned down the park flyers.  I have all that stuff from many prior visits. 

I planned to eat lunch at Pinnacles Picnic Grounds.  One picnic table sits by itself with a splendid view of the valley.  But as I pulled into the nearest parking space, two backpackers were dropping their loads on that table to take a deserved rest.  So I skipped that table and found another without the view, one back in the woods, one with a slanted top.  The woods would break the cold wind and I would have privacy.

I broke the straw off the side of my carton of juice.  Holding the container by the corners, I plunged the straw through the foil circle.  This particular straw was deliberately bent, folding back on itself with pleated joints.  I guess that is so you can lie in bed and drink from it.

I set the carton down on the table.  The shock wave caused by the sudden contact, pushed up on the carton bottom.  Just as I let go, thinking all was good, juice started to flow out the open end of the straw, being siphoned out continuously because of the bend in the straw.  Juice ran down the slanted tabletop.  I was sitting on the on the downhill side.  Damn! I’m an alien.

After lunch, I continued south along Skyline Drive, stopping at the overlooks.  At this time of year, spring has already hit the valleys with flowering trees and yellow green leaves just poking out of the branches.  But up here, on the mountain, it is still winter.  The wind blows cold.

So, looking down into the coves from overlooks brings wonderful emotions.  The air, of course, is clean up here, so your olfactory senses are joyful at the discovery of new scents of the forest.  Your ears hear the call of a passing hawk.  Your eyes see the progression of new green growth coming up the mountain.  You can see what spots on the mountain produce an earlier spring.  They face the sun and are protected from the worst of the winds.  The green occurs higher up the mountain there.

There is no other place that shows the splendor of new life that begins in spring than on a mountain.  And even though I was up top, still in winter, I could see proof positive that spring was coming.  I needed a mountain.

The day was spent as a typical tourist, never straying more than a few hundred yards from the car.  I took lots of pictures.  I ate dinner in the splendid dining room at Skyland Lodge, with the Shenandoah Valley across the table from me.

After dinner, I spent half an hour at one overlook, sitting on a stone wall facing the setting sun behind partly cloudy skies.  A wool blanket doubled over and wrapped around my legs held off the chill of the wind and the cold stone wall.  I had the hood up on my jacket to keep my head warm.  The reward for my fortitude was a glorious sunset that was suddenly gone, leaving only the cold winter up here, and spring down in the valley I could no longer see.  I needed a mountain.

 

                        Bob Kuhns