Airstreamin: Back to the Parkway's South end

at 6000 feet

weathered silver

Linville Falls Park

Back to the Painted Mountains

10/15/10

It is here. Finally. The colors we have been chasing for months have come.

We left Bethune, South Carolina and a tearful Dottie four days ago. JoAnn looks a lot like her mother so say her Uncle Jack in Bethesda and her mother’s friend Dottie in Bethune. Since JoAnn’s mother, Mary, passed away a year ago seeing JoAnn was a shock to Jack & Dottie. JoAnn survived her visit to her childhood home in fair if somewhat somber spirit. You can go home again.... kind of.

The last last two days, with full hook ups, were up at Fletcher Lake Resort, North Carolina. Hooking up to tv for the first time in two months we were reminded why we did not miss it. It’s just so much flagellation. In 30 minutes you are bored and tired at the same time! We also spent those two days visiting Asheville craft shops and the Wedge brewery for some very smooth and creamy lagers and too many peanuts. Also we tried getting used to the fast drop in temperatures dipping down to 30’s at night. So this is why snow birders run for the South in flocks. Fortunately we are scheduled for Savannah then Florida in a few weeks. We just may stay in Florida for the winter ourselves.

Walk to Linville Falls

But to the main event at hand, we pressed on with our return to the Southern end of the Blue Ridge Parkway. According to the National Park Service peak Appalachian colors will be October 17th to the 23rd. Pretty specific but they have the data. Today is the 15th. Somehow you suspect nature will have its own clock. After moving up the Parkway for a hundred miles or so we will leapfrog to the West and US 81 then north up the Shenandoah Valley to the beginning of the Skyline Drive at Front Royal, Virginia. Then we can leisurely cruise at 35 mph south down the twisting ridge line at the “peak” of color visiting a few of the campgrounds we stayed at a just few weeks ago.

So, today we headed for the Folk Arts Center on the Parkway east of Asheville for art works of very high quality. A budget strainer. As we gained elevation the colors of fall also began to gain intensity while flying cloud shadows dipped and crested in the valleys and on the hills.

Suddenly, where the newly paved black and striped yellow two lane road entered into a tunnel of hardwood trees whose sunny canopy branched a hundred feet above with filtered and dappling light, a great wind came rushing up a hidden canyon and swayed the trees ahead and around us with a massive swirling gusting. Trees moving like tossing ocean waves shook off thousands of golden yellow leaves as we drove into this animated tableau. With the sunlight bright upon the scene an almost violent blizzard of yellow and red leaves swirled, twisted, and danced in the air, skittered across the road, peppered our cab and crystalized all around us with an effervescent rain of jewels contained within this arboreal cathedral almost blurring the surrounding forest. The motions, sight, and sounds, stopped our hearts and caught our breaths in our throats. Have we entered some other worldly realm? JoAnn cupped her hands to her face in utter disbelief and we knew this moment was a magical confluence of all that is beautiful on earth. We were stunned all the more so because after continuing to move through it for several moments it tapered away as if our presence, our reactions, meant nothing, that this was the natural course of nature witnessed by only those with some celestial privilege or timing.

It was the motion of so many elements at once, the suddenness, the randomness of each leaf yet the logic of each wave’s form, the luminescent golden sparkle and envelopment. It was how it’s current carried us along. We were given that moment that comes before the final surrender.

I know this borders on the overtly sentimental and maudlin but my meager words leave me helpless to describe what we felt, what we will never forget. For many miles afterward we tried to hold on to the magic in our mind’s eye and asked,

Did we just see that? Did that just happen to us?

I desist now lest I go too far away and never come back.