By Winchester the land has changed, has taken on the open feel of the Bluegrass. It’s close in Mount Sterling, but not quite there.
So I felt myself exhale a little when we got to that point on our drive yesterday, savoring that feeling of home.
It’s a feeling I’ve been enjoying all day.
The moon was with me this morning as I drove to the airport, so early and so long ago now that it seems like another week.
And the moon was with me later, a pale disc as I zoomed down I-66 on my way to school.
The moon is with me still, in this photo (not a very good one, I’m sorry to say), growing ever brighter as I walked through a darkening campus on my way to class.
The moon will be full tomorrow … but it’s hard to see how it could be any fuller.
I have in my temporary possession a book called The Best of Brevity. It’s a compilation of short essays from the journal Brevity, which features flash nonfiction.
The genre of flash nonfiction is relatively new to me, although I write it everyday. It is the true-to-life equivalent of flash fiction. part of a trend — probably long since peaked if I’m catching onto it — toward the brief, the ephemeral, the transitory.
Let me add to this canon with what I’ve come to think of as flash gratitude.
Flash gratitude is the sudden, piercing awareness of life’s blessings. Stubbing one’s toe and thinking … at least I have a toe to stub. Or hearing the gentle purr of forced-air heat and giving thanks for the warm home I sit in as a result.
I had a moment of flash gratitude yesterday when I heard about fellow Virginians trapped for 18 to 20 hours on an impassable I-95. They were cold, hungry, frightened and, most likely, angry. They were bearing the brunt of the snow storm in a real and all-too-personal way.
Let this be a gratitude trigger, I told myself. Whenever life looks bleak and purposeless, I will conjure up those poor souls trapped in their Kias or Toyotas or Hondas or Fords, those poor shivering drivers and passengers, and my heart will nearly burst with joy that I am anywhere else but on a snow-packed, jack-knifed-tractor-filled I-95.
(This snow has its beauteous moments, too.)
I drove to Kentucky yesterday, following the new route through the mountains. For the first few hours, I took in the late-fall color on the gleaming hillsides. But by early afternoon, I had driven into the predicted cold front.
Dark clouds gathered above the huge windmills, and strong gusts sent leaves swirling and scudding across the highway. The rain started when I was at about 3,000 feet, lightly at first, then heavier by the time I reached the interstate.
It was not the bucolic drive I had in August, when I stopped to admire the mountain views. This was a no-nonsense-just-get-me-there kind of trip.
And it worked. I pulled into the driveway just as the last light was draining from the sky.
A spur-of-the-moment trip to Seattle (I can do these things now!) means that I’ll attend class tonight on Zoom rather than in person. While I’ve had plenty of experience with Zoom meetings the past year and a half (haven’t we all?!), I’ve been driving down to Georgetown for the real thing every Tuesday evening.
While this seemed slightly terrifying at the start — where will I park? will rush-hour traffic make the trip twice as long as it would be otherwise? — those concerns have largely faded. And the joy of being in a classroom again (even if only one other classmate is there with me, which has been the case the last few weeks) has more than compensated for them.
But tonight, we’ll all be on Zoom. We’ll be a class, a community, of the ether — as so many communities are these days.
(Sunset from the Car Barn Terrace, where I am not whiling away time before class tonight.)
The climb started as soon as I exited Interstate 81. The flat land became scarcer, the tree tunnels more abundant. My little car felt the difference but handled it better than I’d hoped.
The first stretch was road I’ve known and driven for years, Routes 33 and 55, which I wrote about years ago. But instead of chugging through Moorefield and Seneca Rocks, I cruised the top of the ridge along Highway 48, which I learned today is part of the Appalachian Development Highway System’s as yet incomplete Corridor H. (Sounds more like a UFO site than a federal roads project.)
Incomplete might be seen as a disadvantage, given the two-lane stretches in between the four, but not when it takes you to places like this, a pull-off viewing spot I almost missed since it had no sign or build-up. What I found were mountains beyond mountains, Queen Anne’s lace and bumblebees, the quiet of a land out of time.
In the waning days of summer, I sandwich in one more trip — this one back to Lexington for my high school reunion. It’s been 10 years since I’ve seen most of these folks and three years since I’ve been in my hometown, a record I don’t want to duplicate.
I’ve written about trips to Kentucky since I started this blog, describing the drive there and the drive home — even my old high school building makes a cameo appearance.
There’s a reason for this, of course. It’s because once you’ve grown up in a place like Lexington, it never leaves you. It’s why, even though I’ve lived in this dear house for decades, raised my children here and treasure it beyond measure … when I go to Lexington, I still say “going home.”
I remember when the driveway used to resemble a parking lot — five drivers and as many as four cars. Lately, there have just been two parked there, both gray sedans. And starting Friday, with one car in the shop, there’s just been one.
This might have seemed difficult in the past, a juggling act, but lately not so much. We often run errands separately, but those can be planned around each other. Appointments seldom overlap. Neither of us parks our car all day at a Metro lot.
Life is simpler in this respect, and it makes me wonder … could we do this permanently? I’d like to say yes, doing our bit for the carbon footprint and all, but I’ll have to say no.
In the suburbs, the car is autonomy, mastery and sometimes salvation. I’m thinking about the other day, when a walk I thought would be one hour was more than two, how glad I was to see my car parked beneath the trees, waiting to carry me home.
So as much as I’d like to be noble and economical, I’m hoping that the one-car weekend doesn’t become a one-car week.
It’s Saturday, time to get some food into the house. Apart from walks around the neighborhood, the last time I jumped in the car and drove away was … two weeks ago.
Even for Pandemic Speed this is glacial. No wonder I’ve been pacing the floors on Fort Lee Street. I thought it was to stretch my legs during long work sessions. But no! I think it’s been to re-enact a more primary urge: to leave, to step out, to move from one place to another.
While some people have been hunkering down like this for months, I’ve still been going out to the grocery store and on a few other errands most weeks. And I can say that while from a germ standpoint this practice may be debatable, from a mental health standpoint it is not.
Getting out is good for you. Which is why I plan to do it … soon.
(Sorry to say I will not be seeing this on my drive to the supermarket.)
It seldom happens around here — in fact, I can’t quite remember another time when it has — so I had to snap a photo. The event: an empty driveway without an empty house.
With one car in the shop, another on indefinite loan and the third (wonder of wonders!) actually parked n the garage … it stands to reason that the driveway would be empty.
And yet, an empty driveway is terra incognita. What is this vast expanse, warped and worn? What is this house devoid of parked vehicles?
Most of all, what is this emptiness as I back out of the garage on my way to an appointment? I paused, as I always do, calibrating how much I’d have to swerve to avoid the car that’s always parked west of the dogwood. But that car wasn’t there. My way was clear. It was a naked driveway.