On the second day of my getaway I wrote in the morning and explored in the afternoon. About 20 minutes from where I was bunking, there was an entrance to Shenandoah National Park’s Skyline Drive. I’d been there before — it’s less than 90 minutes from my house — but I hadn’t been there in years, so I was looking with fresh eyes … with, dare I say it, eyes of love?

Virginia is for lovers, you know, though it’s taken some of us a while to love the state in which we live. But this reluctant Virginian was swept off her feet yesterday. First of all, the weather was perfect. It was almost 60 degrees, clear and bright. There weren’t many people around, and those who were there drove slowly, seemingly as much in awe as I was.

I did a couple of quick hikes, but what grabbed me most were the views. Skyline Drive runs along the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains, so you don’t just have one vista, you have dozens. At some point I realized that if I didn’t stop pulling over at every overlook I would never get home.

I looked at the ridges, one behind another, as close to infinity as we are likely to have this side of heaven. In my head was that song from The Who: “I can see for miles and miles. I can see for miles and miles. I can see for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles.”

It reminded me of flying; there was the same above-it-all-ness, the sense of seeing more clearly because we can see farther. Real world problems didn’t go away, but for a few hours they seemed smaller and more manageable. They seemed miles away too.