In a little over an hour’s drive from my home is a wondrous place, the Shenandoah National Park. I love going there: suddenly out of the comfort of a closed airconditioned place, known and familiar, into an open space, mountains and gorges, birds and butterflies, and rows and rows of resplendent trees, glorious, shiny trees, decked in the fringes by the defiant yellow of Black-eyed Susans and the pure white of Saint Ann’s Laces. I love being uncomfortable, going up and down rough-hewn, unpaved tracks to see hills and waterfalls, and realizing how small, frail and insignificant I am in the cosmos.
I love it even more when I don’t have to drive there, for Audrey turns up in her clean, new-smelling car, with maps and catalogs, sunglasses and sun-blocks, snacks and water bottles, and says authoritatively, “Hop in.” She bears with my ill-organized, ill-prepared ways, drives all the circuitous way, and reaches the park without a single wrong turn.
This is Sunday, but we are early, and the park has few visitors. If Sunday means the day of the sun, it applies, because even at this early hour the day is bright, and the mountains bathed in the morning translucence. The park has a paved serpentine road, that winds up the mountains and winds down the other side. You can stop every few hundred yards at outlook spots, jutting out of the hills, where you can look around, relax, take photos.
This is Sunday, but we are early, and the park has few visitors. If Sunday means the day of the sun, it applies, because even at this early hour the day is bright, and the mountains bathed in the morning translucence. The park has a paved serpentine road, that winds up the mountains and winds down the other side. You can stop every few hundred yards at outlook spots, jutting out of the hills, where you can look around, relax, take photos.
It feels refreshing to step out of the car and breathe the cool mountain air. In no time I feel the difference in my breathing and realize that I am at an altitude of 4000 feet. Near my feet, beyond a stone ridge, there is the sheer fall of the hillside, thick with plants and the density of evergreens. Beyond that, you see the cloud-encircled green mountains. And beyond that too are the azure sunlit outline of the remote mountains.
The park came into being in 1935, though environmentalists, including a President, had tried to midwife it earlier. Its birth was an interesting model of official and private effort. Private donors gave land and money. The government lent its muscle, evicting people who occupied the grounds: residents were compensated, squatters were made to go. When I first visited the park in 1978, the last occupant was still holding on. Annie Shenk vacated the following year; she was 92 and died.
The park came into being in 1935, though environmentalists, including a President, had tried to midwife it earlier. Its birth was an interesting model of official and private effort. Private donors gave land and money. The government lent its muscle, evicting people who occupied the grounds: residents were compensated, squatters were made to go. When I first visited the park in 1978, the last occupant was still holding on. Annie Shenk vacated the following year; she was 92 and died.
Securing 300 square miles wasn’t easy, especially as it was spread over eight counties of Virginia, and the state government was to hand over the park eventually to a Federal agency. Fortuitously, the job creation program of President Roosevelt during depression years came of help. 100,000 people worked on creating the park, and particularly the hundred-mile long Skyline Drive, the winding road that snakes through the Blue Ridge mountains and makes their beauty accessible to us.
Curious as it may sound, I miss the geologist colleagues I had during my mining days when I come to the park. Particularly, I miss my Dutch friend, Henk van Veelen, who would look at a stone and start telling me its history. The crest of the mountain range in the park divides the drainage basins of Shenandoah, Potomac, James and Rappahanock rivers. Perhaps that is the reason I have never seen such beautiful rocks anywhere else. There are exquisite granitic rocks a billion years old, and volcanic, sedimentary and clastic rocks half that old. Covered with moss, washed by rain, they sit there with incredible majesty and make me marvel.
Curious as it may sound, I miss the geologist colleagues I had during my mining days when I come to the park. Particularly, I miss my Dutch friend, Henk van Veelen, who would look at a stone and start telling me its history. The crest of the mountain range in the park divides the drainage basins of Shenandoah, Potomac, James and Rappahanock rivers. Perhaps that is the reason I have never seen such beautiful rocks anywhere else. There are exquisite granitic rocks a billion years old, and volcanic, sedimentary and clastic rocks half that old. Covered with moss, washed by rain, they sit there with incredible majesty and make me marvel.
The park has a resort, lodges and some charming cabins, even a fishing retreat. What it has most of are trails. 500 miles of trails, leafy, picturesque trails that rise and drop and coil endlessly. You can keep walking, to the sound of the mountain breeze and the gentle, gurgling sound of the waterfalls. You could hike one to four miles to the waterfalls, but you don’t have to see them. You can hear them, seemingly all around you. You can walk silently and feel the peace surround you.
I wish you would come with me and walk alongside me in these mountains. Enough of cars and computers and comfort. Just bring yourself and step beside me. You don’t have to do anything, not even talk to me or look at me. I just want to sense you next to me. It is quite enough to know that you are there, with your indulgent smile and fragrant hair. As the dusk settles beyond the azure hills, I will long for the assurance of a benign presence.
I wish you would come with me and walk alongside me in these mountains. Enough of cars and computers and comfort. Just bring yourself and step beside me. You don’t have to do anything, not even talk to me or look at me. I just want to sense you next to me. It is quite enough to know that you are there, with your indulgent smile and fragrant hair. As the dusk settles beyond the azure hills, I will long for the assurance of a benign presence.
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