May 31- June 5, 2009
We are walking on the edge of circles whose centers are always shifting and whose turning leave us in stillness.
Rocky Top Overlook

JJJ slept here June 21, 1995
This year the St John bicycle group, the Pannier People, opted for a new venue. The Blue Ridge Parkway has birthed the route of umpteen trips of varying scope, but this year we agreed to go north. The Skyline Drive is an obvious choice as it extends from the Parkway near Waynesboro, VA, slicing through the Shenandoah National Park, and ends 105 miles north near Front Royal. Also of tremendous advantage, one of this year’s peddlers grew up in the area and graciously made all the necessary camping arrangements and led us into and through the two-lane wilderness.
The group of 10 converged from an distance of Columbia, SC to Philadelphia for departure directly after Sunday liturgy at Good Shepherd Lutheran in downtown Waynesboro.

Our leader, John HoffMeister Eckhart, aka ‘Moses’ seen here on the right is an unparalleled scholar of theology and as unassuming as a school bus driver. Whenever a need large or small arose, from tweaking my gear shifter to retrieving rider and broken bike ten miles from the trip’s end, he was always a step ahead. Those Israelites would have had a lot better luck getting to Canaan with John than that other guy.
The first day we peddled about 30 miles to Loft Mt. campground.

The ride was waterless and warm, mostly up hill it seemed,

but the ample shade and breeze at the numerous vistas helped me nurse my two hand-helds of water to a near draw with pleasant exhaustion.
Others pitched tents of sundry style, but I’m still exploring the qualities, limits and joys of tarp-dom.

After watering well, I got in a 3 mile run circling and looping through the campground, then cooked a pot of Kashi 7-grain for next breakfast and just snacked for evening meal. Everyone was tired and turned in with sundown or sooner.
A bright, crisp, mountaintop morning brought us to life just after sunrise. Everyone hit the road without much loitering except me. It was almost 7:30 before I headed down the steep campground road for the main route.

Ed, once again sported his vibrant tights for the cool morning, though he resisted the tempting comfort of the assisted living shoes he donned last year. As it turned out, he was the only one to see a bobcat that morning in pink tights. Ed’s somewhat brilliant novelty this year was to have a map of the Skyline cut into his own hair, depicting all the mountain gaps and overlooks. Pastor Frank is seen here quiet proud of and showing off the accomplishment on his first outing with hair clippers. It just shows you what can happen when talent and intelligence collide head-on.

The day’s 60-mile ride was bisected appropriately by a lunch stop at Big Meadows. Several of us whetted our appetites on sardines and Triscuits outside the camp store and grill as we waited on a quorum to roll in. Big Meadows is the premiere stop on the Drive -best food and facilities all around –even has a lodge and taproom which we’ll visit on the return. A dozen or so AT hikers were also resupplying here while we regrouped. Several of us enjoyed the grill’s Wild Turkey wrap polished off with blackberry cobbler and ice cream. The afternoon would have been a perfect one to waste on a full belly gazing over the large field of grass and fern, the does and frolicsome fawns. But, we had 30 miles to make into our next camp at Matthew’s Arm, and though the ride would not be too taxing, 2pm was as late as I dared to linger.
The afternoon ride had some fast and impressive downhill and overlooks. Almost equally impressive was the pair of young ladies on racing bikes pedaling up the mountain at about the same speed I was drifting down. As we were setting up for the evening at Matthew’s Arm, a few noticed a bear or two lurking in underbrush. We were especially careful to hang our food sacks and police the ground for bear-tempting treats. I kept a stout stick of firewood at hand under my tarp in case I awoke to something licking sardine sauce out of my beard. Thankfully the night was no more eventful than the constant bombarding of Gypsy Moth caterpillar poop pinging away on the tarp.
Not long after daybreak, I elected to do an early run and started walking up through the campground to warm-up. At the top of the hill, I came upon a trail and sign. I believe it said Overall Run Falls 2.0 miles, I knew it would be a tough climb back, but I decided to go with it. A broad generous fire road turned into a slightly overgrown and twisty, tight single-track. There were lots of blind curves. It was the last place I would have wanted to have a fender-bender with an ill-tempered momma bear stalled in the middle of the trail while scolding a pair of misbehaving cubs. Fortunately, I have better luck than my imagination warrants. The trail descended steeper and steeper. It turned into steps and final played out into a bare stone overlook. In the gorge, a fair-sized creek was twisting through a break in the rocks and spilling into an occluded basin about 100’ below. Midway, a large, bronze face-rock divided the falls left and right into brilliant sheaths of watery white hair. I felt I’d stumbled into a counsel of mountain elders –a people of stone from a time before the spirit became living flesh.
I climbed 2 miles out of the gorge with only a few places flat enough to run. I topped the hill and continued my jog down into camp. Just before making camp, about 25 yards over on the hill, was a young bear. He was maybe a year or two. By his slightly skewed posture it appeared he was taking a bear-whizz. He craned his neck around as far as it would stretch and watched me with fixed attention as I passed. My only other bear sighting occurred June 21, 1995 on a hot, hot Wednesday late afternoon at Brown’s Gap about 65 miles south of this spot. I was sitting beside the Drive playing a tune on a recorder when I heard a ponderous trundle in the brush behind me. About 25 yards into the woods was a large brown bear. It was arcing a path along the hill behind me. It eventually disappeared and when out of earshot, I double-timed it up the road. I had strapped onto my make-shift backpack several trays of day-old apple strudel and a large bunch of bananas from the town in the valley below. If this were the source of the bear’s interest, I wanted to put in some miles before crashing for the night. I never saw it again.
Moses stayed behind to help me adjust my chain. It had started to slip off into the spokes frequently when shifting to the lowest gear. After a few tries we hit on a fairly good tension if I shifted cautiously. He had arranged to meet a minister friend 20 miles away in Front Royal for lunch, so we had plenty of time. We stopped at several overlooks and talked about some scambling paths up some of the rockier crags he had done in years past. We were drifting down the road and he pointed out another young bear on the bank above the ditch. It was already trying to get out of sight, but I gave my bearhorn a little squeeze and scared the poor fellar. I felt kind of bad about that afterwards.
Following a hold on for all its worth 6-mile descent into Front Royal, we ate at a Subway and made our way around the north end of the south ridge of the Massenuttens and turned left up the valley through the hayfield heat of the afternoon. It looked like the 21st century and fair slice of the 20th hadn’t made to this beauty spot, which didn’t bother me at all. We were expected at a church camp for dinner, the evening, and breakfast. Once there, we took a dip in the lake before dinner which made me feel somewhat human again.
Several hours after dark, a thunderstorm hit and cooled things down to comfortable. I had time to squeeze in a 5 mile run before breakfast and we headed south up the mountain past FDR’s very first CCC facility.

From the top down into the Shenandoah Valley, it was another white-knuckle descent -crossing the river a few miles from Luray. The climb had burned through my breakfast like a field of dried broom sedge. Luckily, Uncle Buc’s on Main St. was still scrambling eggs. I had mine with a trout fillet, fried potatoes, and a biscuit. It was 4 miles out of town before the climbing proper began, then it was another 4 miles up to the Skyline, then it was another 10 miles of climb to the high point of… well you get the picture – a 40 mile day with several climbs.
]The second breakfast worked it’s magic and I made it to within a mile of the Skyline before I took a break for a bandana bath in a roadside spring.
Our evening rendez-vous was once again Big Meadows, this time from the north. We climbed without any real rush until some thunderheads began to bruise the sky here and there above the valley on both sides of the mountain. I stopped to swap my kilt for some running shorts as the rain was beginning to look certain. In the end we successfully dodged the rain as several of us rolled into Big Meadows together and gathered in the grill. But as the last two riders made it to through the doors, the sky opened –rain, hail, 50+ mph wind. There was a lull and it started again. This time, the lady in charge of the place came from her office and announced the county had been issued a tornado warning. It seems a funnel cloud or a microburst took out a trailer a few miles down the north side of the mountain in Stanley, but we saw no serious action on top. Tornadoes are very rare in the Virginia valleys and unheard of on mountaintops. I wasn’t too concerned but listened carefully anyways. The storm blew itself out in an hour or so. More high wind and rain was given for later in the night. Half of us, including me, elected to rent a couple of rooms, and the other half headed for the campground. After a couple of stouts at the taproom I turned in.
The weather was calm all night. I ran a couple miles down the road and back, enjoyed the luxury of a hot shower and hot breakfast the next morning. The fog was plenty thick and there was some talk that bicycles were being restricted from travel until it lifted. But someone said we had been given clearance to go and so we did. It was only a 30-mile day back to Loft Mt. The drizzle was generally light and no one had any close calls with the very sparse traffic, all of which seemed to be park work crews. I took several pictures and enjoyed the change in weather for the most part.
Bowman's Root

Shrouded Forest

Tulip Popular

[I]Sedum[/I] species

I call it Goat's Beard
]Different biking styles

I knew there was a laundry to dry out the dampness, so I didn’t fret much.
Years earlier, I had made it through here on foot, just on the front edge of the mother of all rainstorms for the Shenandoah National Park. In late June of 1995, specifically, the morning after I had seen the bear, the sky opened. I had slept along the highway, not knowing it was particularly illegal to do so along the Skyline. And the next morning a steady rain began to fall. I was walking the road and I joined up with some AT hikers doing the same. We were drowned after an hour or so and headed down to a ranger station where they said we could wait out the rain and maybe dry out a bit. The rain never let up. I talked to a ranger and told him I was from Abingdon. He said he knew one person from Abingdon. Frank, a Lutheran pastor, who was my pastor in fact at the time, the same one who now had taken to clipping maps into the hair of willing geographers though I believe he is yet to derive income from any such coiffure.
The ranger was very hospitable and offered to drive the soggy lot of us to the nearest trailhead not far from a shelter. I’m nearly hypothermic saved only by a heavy vinyl rain suit that held some heat. The shelter is packed, also a plus, and the lot of us wait out another day of rain –June 23, 1995, my 16 wedding anniversary. The clouds parted on Saturday and we all head north. At Swift Run Gap everyone but me continues on the AT. I head down the highway eastward off the mountain on toward D.C.
I told this story to John. It turns out his brother was a park ranger in those days and he and his brother were friends of the ranger who picked up the others and myself. He called up former ranger, Sean Greene, whose name I’d long forgotten and told him we were staying at Loft Mt. He arrived before dark, with a fresh strawberry pie. Yes, it was raining. He had difficulty in remembering me and I him of course, but we both remembered the storm of ’95.
(Sean is standing beside me, Moses is next)
The next day it rained us all the way back to the cars in Waynesboro. We had completed a 240 mile loop from a sunny Sunday afternoon to the following wet Friday. I had also completed a different sort of “wheels within wheels” revolution.

JJJ




























