There is a slight rise on one of my walking routes that allows for a tolerable if faraway view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. If the weather is clear and the humidity is low, those old hills rise ahead of me with promise and mystery.

They are puny when compared with the Rockies or Sierras or even with themselves if I were 3o miles west. But I treasure them just the same because they hold out to me a life beyond this one. When I see them as I did yesterday on my walk, I understand why tired, hungry people followed wagons more than two thousand miles across this land. It is the frontier. It is beguiling. It is, and always will be, a second chance.