Oh Shenandoah,
I long to hear you,
Away, you rolling river...
- Traditional song, American
Autumn in the Mid-Atlantic has a different contour than autumn in New Haven or Boston. Up north, the forests burst into flame overnight. I remember looking out from my dormitory window one morning and seeing the New Haven Green totally transformed, ablaze. I opened the window - the sunlight pouring in - and the wind swept down from the sky, catching me unprepared and chilling me to the bone. Here in the Mid-Atlantic, fall comes gradually. It builds and builds, and every weekend when you hop out of the car at the edge of the woods, you have to close your eyes to feel the air, how subtly it is lighter and cooler than the week previous. To hear the birds, how a few have come and a few have gone, their melody carrying just a hint of the great migration. The leaves change, in texture before color, and if you do not walk up to the trees, touch their bark, stand at their feet and stare straight up through the translucent veins in their canopy - you may not notice until the colors are all but gone.
Jane and I have been walking Maryland's woodlands for the past two months. We bought two pairs of hiking boots for $50 this past summer, and they have been worn their worth, gathering dirt from the Gunpowder and Patapsco riverbanks, the Billy Goat scramble in Great Falls Park, and the top of Sugarloaf Mountain in Frederick County. We have been preparing - physically, in steps and miles, and spiritually, in weekly communion with earth, water, and wood. Our preparation is complete just as the Mid-Atlantic autumn rises to its climax, on the weekend of Jane's birthday. We have two days to spend in that oldest and most venerable of American woodlands: The Blue Ridge Mountains and the Shenandoah River Valley.
It is Friday morning, and Jane and I depart Baltimore before dawn to brave the DC Beltway traffic. An hour later - a miracle by District circumnavigation standards - we are parked on Main Street in the small town of Warrenton, where we breakfast at the Great Harvest Bread Company with two coffees, a ham sandwich, and a entire loaf of peach bread covered in brown sugar. After verifying that the dog-walking shop across the street is not yet open for business, we take off again. The city behind us and our spirits lifting, we roar into the Virginia foothills with country radio blasting. We zip by farmhouse stands selling the season's harvest, apples by the bushel, homemade apple butters and jams. We pass roadside shacks with tall iron vents, chalkboard menus, and charcoal smokers out front. Pulled pork by the pound. The radio takes a break from its twang to run a funeral home advertisement, followed succinctly by a direct-to-consumer ad for Januvia.
Around 10 AM we pull off U.S. 211 at Thornton Gap, which crosses the Blue Ridge Mountains from the Piedmont into Shenandoah Valley. We stop to trade a small fee for a map and a park permit, and we are off again, winding along an old Indian hunting path through the mountains that has become one of the most famous drives in the country. We've reached a positively giddy state - Jane is singing with the radio now ("Dippin' our toes in the water/I don’t care if it gets any hotter/It’s you, me, rememberin' how to have fun..."), I'm staring awestruck at the waves of iridescent foliage that keeps coming and coming around every bend. A few minutes south of the Gap, Skyline Drive fulfills the first part of its moniker as we crest a ridge and reach a roadside turn-off. The Virginia Piedmont rolls away toward the ocean to our east, and the river valley is ever idyllic, far below us to our west. All around us is a sea of orange, running into the hazy blue of the distant mountains, a hint of something truly old and truly magical. Standing beside the car as the wind gusts blast us from below, I wonder how the earliest settlers must have felt, cresting that ridge, only to find the entire American continent staring them in the face.
We reach the trailhead to White Oak Canyon; the giddiness intensifies. We're twenty feet past the trailhead when Jane starts hopping about like a poorly weighted kangaroo. "The leaves, the leaves!" We can barely see the dirt path. It is as if we have never walked in the woods before. We descend the canyon with crunching footsteps, crossing streams, darting past tree trunks, clambering up and around boulders hurled down from the mountainside. At the White Oak Canyon Falls, we flatten ourselves on the rock and peer over the cliff edge, ever so carefully. We sit for awhile and have a difficult time hearing each other over the roar of the cataract.
After climbing the 3 miles back to the car, we are exhausted, famished, happy. We depart for the river valley to our west, where we will be staying in the town of Luray. We find a cafe and order sandwiches and soups. We browse a used bookstore and a local crafts and jewelry store. The place is abuzz with preparations for Halloween; a veritable Georgian manor at the edge of town is in the process of transforming into a haunted mansion. At the Luray Cavern Motel, we settle in for a nap before a tour of the caves. As I fall asleep, the carillon is pealing from the bell tower across the street, and the sunlight is filtering gently through our drawn window shades; for a moment, I am back in New Haven after all. Later that afternoon, after we tour the limestone caverns, we go down the street to the parking lot of Luray's tiny zoo, where Triple Crown BBQ is serving up a storm. Into our bodies we incorporate several pounds of brisket, ribs, pulled pork, and coleslaw, in preparation for the big day ahead.
The next morning, we are up before dawn. Into the hiking pack go our bottles and a bag full of water; peach bread, bars, and a bag of dried soybeans; first aid kit; rain gear; and camera. We drive back east, past Thornton Gap, and turn south through the countryside to reach the staging area for Old Rag Mountain. The world is blue, and the sun remains hidden beyond the mountains, but the lot is already half full, and we are among the crowd of pilgrims who follow the road up to the foot of the mountain. At the true trailhead a mile in, we turn uphill into the smoldering forest.
Some of the pilgrims lag behind as the forest unveils its true, terrible form: sinister flames suspended slantwise on the steep mountain slope. We pass children wearing flip-flops, families sharing a single water bottle carried by hand. We feel dread on their behalf. Jane and I keep a quick pace, but in truth we are being tested. Our walks in the coastal woodlands of Maryland may as well have been country club landscaping compared to this climb. We shed our thin windbreakers and tie them across our shoulders. Bare arms heaving, we wind up the switchbacks, scorning the beautiful, terrible leaves. We yearn for open air, for the rush of the landscape breaking away far below us. But for an entire hour, there is no rush, no jubilatory vista. We are walking into the mountain, and it is devouring us whole, an ancient granite beast with autumn teeth and a mighty maw.
Finally, the treeline breaks. I breathe a sigh of relief - not because we are out of the woods, so to speak; we are not - but in gratitude for the validation. Whenever you climb, you constantly fear for the next open view, which may show that you have climbed not very far at all. But we have climbed far, and the dirt path quickly disappears into a granite ledge that narrows into a series of boulders. Here we begin the single most famous rock scramble on the Atlantic seaboard: two miles on our hands and knees, ascending the spine of this primordial mountain, which rose from the sea floor one billion years ago to pierce the sky. Here it has since stood ever since, brought back to earth over eons by wind and weather, until it has finally become a mighty stone colossus, scalable by mere mortals. This is Old Rag Mountain.
Jane and I begin the climb, hoisting ourselves up ledges, between crevices, around and over cabin-sized boulders. We spot the next blue trail blaze across a wide swath of open air, and must somehow find our way toward it. Several times, one of us scouts ahead for the correct path up the rocks while the other re-hydrates. We have climbers around us, but they meander; some slip, fall, and curse. We become acutely aware of the mountain and ourselves - our wrists, ankles, and knees. We think in terms of slopes, angles, and mechanical loads; pain as a physiologic indicator of the latter. It is a matter of mindfulness; lose a limb or lose your way, and you will be stranded atop an exposed granite giant come nightfall.
Near the summit, we come across a great standing stone that I have no explanation for - a boulder, precariously perched on the mountaintop, the size of a townhouse, so ludicrously large and so high up that its geologic implications boggle the mind. Gathering our nerves, we leap across crevices that plunge down fifty feet or more; on the other side, we unwrap peanut butter bars with shaking hands and chat about the fine weather until we are mentally safe to proceed. A hawk takes off from its cliff-top eyrie. Jane takes the camera and photographs as it plunges from the mountainside, soaring over a golden ocean below. At the summit, we wander among the megaliths as the world drops away in every direction. The wind sweeps around us atop our mountain throne, and borne upon it is the cry of the forest and the song of the rolling blue hills - the sweet melody of the Mid-Atlantic, distilled. It is the anthem of the old country, and from the top of Old Rag, its sound is pure, breathtaking, and utterly, indescribably beautiful.
'Tis seven years
since last I saw you,
Away, you rolling river...
Oh Shenandoah,
I'm bound to leave you,
Away, I'm bound to go,
'Cross the wide Missouri.