After a frantic few weeks, I finally left Washington,
DC on Wednesday, May 22nd. Virginia’s Shenandoah
National Park and the Skyline Drive beckoned, and I spent
three nights at the Lewis Mountain Campground decompressing.
I began this message on Saturday night at the Roanoke
Mountain Campground on the Virginia leg of the Blue Ridge
Parkway (the parkway continues into North Carolina); I’m
sending it from a motel in Chester, South Carolina. Chester
is a small town and AOL offers no access numbers that
aren’t long-distance calls from here, so I’m
paying 10 cents per minute for access via an 800 number.
Considering that I’m still in the populous east,
I suspect that the 800 number and I are going to become
good friends. . . .
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Don’t Talk to Strange Men
Even before I left, I began to think about the ways
in which my trip would differ from Least Heat Moon’s
of 20-odd years ago. The most obvious difference is
gender, which seems to me to matter mainly in terms
of personal safety. I’ve got to be careful, and
I can’t just pull off the road for the night the
way he did. But I can’t be as careful as some
folks would like: One well-meaning friend advised me
not to talk to strange people, which would make the
book awfully boring, if not impossible! Interestingly
enough, I feel (on the basis of substantial experience)
that my possessions and my person are safer in campgrounds
than in motel
The
Traveling Techno Show
Another, perhaps bigger, difference is technology.
Although I’m scribbling in notebooks and carrying
a tape recorder the way Heat Moon did, my laptop computer
allows me to mine those notes while experiences are
still fresh in my mind, and my microcassette recorder
and tapes deliver excellent sound quality and take up
no space at all. In fact, I’m struck by what a
difference a quarter-century worth of miniaturization
makes: In addition to the laptop and recorder, I am
carrying one small Bubble Jet printer; one portable
CD player, which can play through my car’s sound
system or from battery power; my entire collection of
over 200 CDs (stripped of their cases and enclosed in
plastic sandwich bags, they take up less than a foot
of linear space); one cell phone; and one Palm Pilot.
Of course the laptop has a built-in modem and CD player.
This complete office/entertainment center takes up less
space in the car than my tent, camp chair, sleeping
bag, and foam pad.
Our respective chariots are strikingly different, too.
Ghost Dancing, Heat Moon’s aging van, had a dicey
fuel pump and the occasional bad attitude; Uli, my Passat,
is still under warranty and eager to please. It amazes
even me how much stuff I’ve managed to pack into
him, and he’s performing like a champ: Despite
that full load and mountain climbs that never seem to
end, he’s always got plenty of power and has averaged
over 30 MPG every day thus far.
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Random
Thoughts
While musing about my sloppy loading job, I passed Dismal
Hollow Road. A headline flashed before my eyes: “DC
Woman Dies in Dismal Hollow; Projectile Wine Bottle to
Blame, Say Police.” I spent Thursday afternoon sorting
and re-packing my stuff. Whatever I may have to fear,
it isn’t the Cabernet.
Shortly after getting onto the Skyline Drive, I passed
one of the ubiquitous signs warning of deer; one very
photogenic deer grazed next to it. It was such a kitschy
Kodak moment that I decided the National Park Service
must be salting the site for the tourist-taxpayers who
want their money’s worth. I considered a stakeout
and exposé, but decided that Geraldo Rivera was
better suited to it than I, so I leave it to him.
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The Cellular Blues
As I studied a map one afternoon in the campground,
the peaceful silence was broken by a woman calling for
help—her husband was having a seizure. The man
who had just walked past me ran to the camp store, and
I pulled out my cell phone, dialed 911, and got—Culpepper,
at least 80 circuitous miles to the east. After we established
the facts, the operator said she’d do her best
to get through to the right people.
Not five minutes later I heard sirens, a speedy wonder
even in those gentle old Eastern mountains. National
Park Service emergency medical technicians emerged from
two vehicles. Amidst bright sunshine, a sweet breeze,
and birdsong, I heard snatches: “strenuous hike,”
“check your blood pressure,” and “Have
you had one of these before?” (Of course the 40-ish
couple looked fit as fiddles.) Happily, no heroic measures
seemed to be necessary, but a half-hour or so later
the man and his wife were off to the nearest hospital,
which was NOT in Culpepper. (I later learned that he
was in no immediate danger; the seizure seemed to be
somehow related to the combination of exertion and his
multiple schlerosis.)
After they were whisked away I asked one of the EMTs
about the 911 snafu. “On top of the mountain,
you’d think my pager and our cell phones would
work, but no,” he said. “We’re right
at the juncture of several cells and you never know
which one’s going to work. Culpepper’s getting
used to it by now.” Memo to Luddites: Ain’t
technology grand?! Memo to techno planners and techno
capitalists: It would be even grander if it worked right.
. . .
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What’s
In a Name?
Even if you knew nothing of Virginia’s interesting—and
complicated—history and character, you’d
get some sense of it by looking at one small corner
of the southwestern part of the state, near the North
Carolina border. I wondered: Do the residents of Indian
Valley and King’s Fort ever clash? Do the good
people of Sylvatus and Ferrum consider themselves a
cut above their fellow Virginians a relative stone’s
throw away in Wool Wine and Blackberry? Do native sons
who have done well elsewhere have the self-esteem and
sense of humor to retire to Horse Pasture? And do the
ones who just don’t care anymore go to Figsboro?
Is the population of Bachelors Hall on the wane?
Hmm, Hmm, Good
I stopped for lunch at the Mountain Top Restaurant,
near the midway point of the 489-mile-long Blue Ridge
Parkway. The restaurant’s slightly worn look and
the substantial number of motorcycles and pickup trucks
in the parking lot gave me hope. The inside didn’t
disappoint: The walls were paneled in knotty pine (the
old-fashioned kind that’s real wood), and although
I didn’t see any calendars on the wall (Heat Moon’s
tip-off that a diner is likely to satisfy), there were
enough family photos and patriotic bric-a-brac to equal
at least five calendars, in my opinion.
I knew I was in tobacco country when I asked for the
smoking section and realized that it dwarfed the non-smoking
section; and if I hadn’t already known I was getting
into the real South, I would have when I tasted the
iced tea. It was fresh-brewed and strong, which I love,
and sickeningly sweet, which I hate. (No matter how
long I live south of the Mason-Dixon Line, I’ll
always be a tea Yankee.) The salad bar was no-nonsense
(no frou-frou designer greens here), but the local country
ham was divine.
After I finished stuffing myself and scribbling, I
introduced myself to the owner. Tommy
Phillips took over from his parents, who
took over from his grandparents, who established the
restaurant in 1934—no mean feat in the Depression-era
Appalachians, even with the public-works projects then
underway. When I asked about the public/private ownership
mix of land adjoining the parkway, Phillips grimaced
and said that “they [the federal government] snatch
onto any land they can get.” Judging by the number
of his kids and longtime staffers working there (one
waitress proudly characterized herself as a fixture),
it looks as if the Mountain Top Restaurant will last
for at least a few more generations, in spite of the
government, terrorists, and whatever else may come its
way.
And now I’m off to bed, so I don’t fall
asleep tomorrow at the wheel or in the middle of a conversation.
Stay tuned for next week’s installment. . . .
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