O Shenandoah

I finished reading John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley literally ten minutes before my family left for a road trip to Virginia. If you haven’t read this magnificent and down-to-earth book before, I absolutely recommend it. Steinbeck packed up his trusty pick-up truck, brought his poodle, Charley, as co-pilot, and set out west across the country with one magnanimous purpose: to rediscover America. He preferred winding backroads and small-town main streets to the interstate, as do I, and his words rolled through my head as we drove through the farmlands of Pennsylvania:

“These great roads are wonderful for moving goods but not for inspection of a countryside. You are bound to the wheel and your eyes to the car ahead and to the rear-view mirror for the car behind and the side mirror for the car or truck about to pass, and at the same time you must read all the signs for fear you may miss some instructions or orders. No roadside stands selling squash juice, no antique stores, no farm products or factory outlets. When we get these thruways across the whole country, as we will and must, it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing.”

I am of the same mind, especially now. I have always loved adventuring to new places, getting off that beaten trail and discovering what’s around me. And now, as I venture into adult life, value peaceful time in nature more than ever. I want to get lost.

Something that Steinbeck and I differ on is writing during travel. He finds himself only able to write after a trip, when he’s had time to digest everything he’s seen and heard and process it fully. I, on the other hand, need to be in the moment to write, which means that I carry a small, trusty journal everywhere and that I can write down and remember all the details I see and hear.

So you’re welcome.

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We spent two days in Shenandoah National Park, driving along Skyline Drive, seeing bears (eight of them, if you wanted to know), and taking some amazing day hikes. It was an utterly glorious trip! Our first hike was down a slope, following the brook to Dark Hollow Falls. We were able to see it grow from stream to river to waterfall, and I was struck by the joyous dance that the river performed for us:

At the falls. Part of me is itching to take a photo. The river is a wild white horse charging down the steep slopes, and the sides of the ravine weep fine strings of pearls. I want to pay attention to everything. There are so many details to pay attention to. How do people tire of this? How can we think so arrogantly that we can capture this grandeur in a photo?

Later in the week, on top of Stony Man Mountain, I met two lovely and seasoned hikers who asked me what I was doing with my journal and pen. We got to talking and sharing adventures, and I mentioned how timeless it all felt—two Peregrine falcons wheeling in the sky, the clouds sewing shadowed patches into the quilt of the land (I wrote a poem about it). The woman I was talking to agreed with me. She’s hiked for decades and loves the peacefulness of the woods.

I talked to my mom about it more later, this peacefulness. I love being able to soak everything in, to walk at my leisure. I like that I don’t have to know where I’m going, but that I know the trail is taking me there, and that there will be a good view at the end.

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Nature is one of the places where I feel closest to God. It is so easy to look around and be reminded of his grandeur, of his majesty. It is so easy to be in awe of him when you are looking out over the vastness of the Blue Mountains, seeing the cars like ants crawling up the mountain roads. I think that the glory and indescribability of God is something that, in the American church, we forget more often than not.

Back in Big Meadow. This might be one of the prettiest places I’ve ever been. I’m sitting in the middle of an unassuming dirt trail and the land rolls out like a tapestry of bright singing green and deep shady green and patches of white wildflowers and blushing young blueberry bushes. The heat shimmers against the surrounding trees. The grass around me is bashful in the wind, their purple heads bowing.

Nature is also a place of peace for me, a reminder of God’s mercy, an echo of what is to come. That struck me as odd at first, because we think of the natural world as such a merciless and ruthless place, where the law of survival of the fittest governs the land. But we have lived in the land of the law too, haven’t we?

Can you imagine what it must feel like to be in the woods for weeks and weeks, under the cover of trees? Maybe you come across a stream or something but it’s just darker and you feel smaller. And then one day you stumble across this giant meadow. And you can see the sky and [the meadow] is full of blueberry bushes and you feel like a person again and not like some skulking thing of the trees? Can you imagine how that must feel?

That must be what heaven feels like.

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And just like that, my love of hiking was rekindled; there’s nothing like donning the ole hiking boots once again! And I felt that my spirit was revived too. It’s hard to think about resumes and drama when the sun is painting the forest floor and the very trees are singing and your muscles burn with the feeling of being alive, alive, alive.

There’s not much else I can say other than what I wrote as we drove down Skyline Drive for the last time and exited the park:

I’ve gotta come back someday, back to the unassuming trails and mountain flowers and glorious vistas.

You’ve got your claws in me, Shenandoah.

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Works Cited: Steinbeck, John. Travels with Charley. Penguin, 2001.