Friday, May 30, passed dark
The phone rang.
"Are you ready to go?"
"Hey, Beth. What’s up? How was Aruba."
"It was great. Dan and I had soooo much fun. I ran a 5k while there and did OK, second female.
"Congratulations. That’s fantastic."
"My aunt had some health problems and we had to hop a flight a day early to get her state-side for treatment. You’re still going to the May Mountain Marathon aren’t you?"
"Of course, I’ll pick you up bright and early Sunday morning."
"JJ, the run is tomorrow. You know, like -May 31."
Well, she was right.
I knew it was the last day of May. But unfortunately, and much to my dismay, even in leap years, May only has 31 days.
May has been a great month, even if a bit short. Perfect weather. Flowers bursting spontaneously into orgies of fragrant chromatic delight. From my front door to the local ridgelines the flower season has been superb. I took four weeks off from running starting the day after the Promise Land 50K as an extended recovery period to heal and recharge. Four weeks is a long time in running terms, and as soon as my soreness had subsided, running withdrawal set in. You know the signs: sleeplessness, weight-gain, visiting running stores to try on shoes you don’t need, going to 5k races just to watch, drinking from water bottles at the dinner table. Psychologically, it was a challenge to be that inactive. So when my friend Ed Davis began to encourage me to join his group’s (something like 20th) annual bicycling and camping trip along the Blue Ridge Parkway at the end of my self-imposed hiatus, I was hyperactive putty in his hand of disregard for strict rules and penchant for two-wheeled frivolity. Since I’m not a road biker, there were tires to change, panniers to purchase, food, clothing and shelter to distill toward the essential goal of weightlessness.
We left Abingdon on Sunday May 25. I biked into town to join the crew at the VA Creeper Trail head about 11am. The cast consisted of Ed, the geographer, Larry, an expert bike brake mechanic and lawyer, Charlie, our health food consultant, Dennis our accountant, and John, an amateur film director, lawyer.
L2R: Charlie, Larry, John, JJJ, Ed, Dennis
My former priest Frank, and Kent, an ex-Marine artist-type would join us later, to add some color. As is custom, the group rides to a Lutheran Church on the other side of Whitetop Mt as the first stop. This year proper permissions had been obtained, so breaking and entering was unnecessary. Soon after we arrived, his daughter dropped off Frank at the church. I was out running, and caught a glimpse of her just as she was getting on the highway but didn’t recognize her. I hadn’t seen her or Frank for about 7 years.
Until the next morning, I thought I would be a shoe-in for the most original attire award. Then, for the coolness of morning, Ed stretched on his hot pink tights with periwinkle polka dots, a perfect foil to the assisted-living style shoes he purchased just for the trip.
I had been out-JJ-ed. Never underestimate what a man writing a book on collard greens will think of next. A few miles after an early lunchtime gorge at a buffet in W. Jefferson NC, the day had heated up. A few of us choose to take a dip in the S. Fork of the New River. The others artfully avoided the prodigious poison ivy that lined the path and trees down the embankment. My descent was captured on film at least. Cooled, we followed the others to Glendale Springs on the Parkway and made a pilgramage to the Church of the Frescoes. I’ll spare you the diatribe of what I think about Western religious art, however the frescoes are beautiful and I intuitively agree with Dostoyevsky’s statement, "Beauty will save the world". Beauty can sooth substantial all cognitive dissonance. I’ll say no more. While the crew napped on the lawn of a gift and crafts shop,
I took a leisurely 3 mile stroll off the ridge into the valley back across the S. Fork, only my second run of May. After dinner we, peddled a few miles before scouting out a clandestine campsite.
Camp Clandestine
My hammock failed. I weigh under two hundred and I thought the hammock rating exceeded that, but without warning a sudden rip bombed my butt to the ground. Ouch. I just slept on the leaves in my sleeping bag.
The Parkway is an excellent venue for bicycling on pavement.
There is only light 45mph traffic that can generally be heard well in advance. The ridgeline grades are long and slow upward or fast and harrowing descents, but the term our group found most appropriate was irenic. Flaming orange azaleas
and purple rhododendron punctuated the seemingly endless asphalt sentence from the boundaries of lush deciduous green or sparkling metamorphic cliffs. The Parkway is a graphic novel, profuse with languid, steamy passages.
On Wednesday morning, we left Julian Price Park after an evening of foreshadowing showers. We stopped on Grandfather Mt at a cairn built in memory of a friend who would have been bantering along with us no doubt, had he not fallen to a brain tumor ten years ago. We meet up with Kent and dined at Famous Louise’s along US221 in Linville Falls before remounting our mechanical steeds in torrential drizzle.
I seldom consider all the possible ways I could lose my life on my little adventures. Like perhaps, I might let my back bike tire slip off the pavement and then veer out of control into the path a pickup truck whose brakes are being seized as if by cardiac arrest. Or in a thunderstorm careering 3 miles down the serpentine Chestoa Mt as the back brakes scrape louder and louder, more and more despondent to the rider’s white knuckled chagrin, I might come to some unpredictable and untimely end. I try not to think of those types of things. I try.
By evening a cool, thick mountain fog had upstaged the warm May rain and we sheltered through the night beneath the back porch of a gift shop.
About 4 am I was waken to a quartet of barn owls barking out a primal fugue with impromptu strands of antiphonal counterpoint. I was wet, cold, sleepy, and mesmerized.
As Kent had prophesized in the face of my doubt, the weather would clear and our final assent would be in glorious May pulchritude. The foot of Mt Mitchell rested some twenty miles beyond us, and though my eyes had been numbed by beauty all along the way, I was unprepared. On first sight, the term Mt Mitchell, struck me as some surveyor’s crude malapropos. San Michele would have been my choice. The heart and soul of Beauty lies in the feminine. Nothing of the term "Mt Mitchell" envokes silky clouds of negligé drifting on silent breezes brushing through dark conifer sanctums. To some it might have been tempting to race the last two miles up her gynous slope, but I lingered with purpose on a slight knowing dread that this moment could not be contained or recreated.
As soon as a meal and camp were established, I set out on foot, alone. I walked a hard trail toward the summit, but took to the road to run a half-mile with climatic lack of breath. As the road ended, I took the final trail to the top into a dark and tangled balsam woods, soft, and sweetly pungent. I was in a moment glad to hobble time, if not execute it once for all.
Afterwards, I ran. Too much time has passed since I felt like a runner but I know it will come back in the doing.
Our passage back to Abingdon had arrived and the next morning after watching sunrise
we made the 2.5 hour trek by van that had taken five days by bike. In town my friends dropped me off and I biked the last 8 miles home. In what remained of Friday, I could recovery and on Saturday too. Or so I thought, until well passed dark.
Then the phone rang.
To be continued.
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