Refuge

My forebears settled this place back when it was just frontier. Grandmother's side left Herefordshire on the banks of the Severn and came here to the banks of the Shenandoah. You wouldn't know it now but the trees of the Valley were old then; 'least those that weren't ashed by the natives. Now from the highway it's scrub and billboards; skin healing round debris from wounding blade.

Back then--the 1740s, if the family saga holds true--the Valley was still the Red Silk Road of the East, alternatively bringing Cherokee traders and Iroquois war parties from the Carolinas to the Susquehanna and back. It would bring my people through Pennsylvania, down the cow-paths to Staunton, then out to Chattanooga and North Georgia where they joined with Ulstermen and Flemings.

I used to go hunting and camping further down by Front Royal and Winchester as a kid, in the passes that opened Valley to Piedmont and Potomac. Riding east on 66 in the back of Dad's 4Runner among the duffel bags and bow cases and Tikkas, back to that Gray-and-Black that lies like scar tissue on Washington's periphery--those were times when I felt like I was going to die, like all my life I had been held underwater, drowning, and now thrust beneath the concrete waves again--like I could only breathe in early morning hills before Sun burned Mist. 

I have wondered what my ancestors thought when they came to this place, from cod-bewitched fishing villages on the Skaggerak and market towns in the Marches and daels among the Uplands. Was this an alien land to them or did they feel it too? I am inclined to say they did; every salt-caked path I have wandered in the Hebrides and every overlook I have set upon in Sognefjorden gave my brother and I that same shock, like our fathers back to Askr placed their hands on our shoulders and gazed out beside us. 

This is killing us. There will always be a place for cities, as cells to chain and harness Faust, batteries to propel us to the frontier. But we cannot live in the prison blocks; only fitfully sleep the night as we check our phones and glance at the CZ on the nightstand, waiting for what we all know is the end of this path. 

----

We left the apartment today at 0430, maybe two hours of sleep between passing out from drink and when we woke for showers. 

Jeans and boots and a wool sweater. 

Phone--front left 

Knife, chapstick, keys--front right

Wallet--back right

Copenhagen Wintergreen--back left

Water, granola, beer, and dog (the neighbor's) already in the hatch as I come down the steps. Normally we take my 4Runner--the battlewagon, I have them calling it--on trips, but today it's the roomie's ST, a storm-gray four-pot with a stick and summer tires so unsuited to the frost that it's almost a safety hazard.

We chase the wind upvalley, into the hills. Early do the spirits flee their haunts, but we're there to witness them. The Ford's chassis keeps it planted in the left lane as the 18-wheelers fly back to our right. Soon we stop for gas and cigs, and I drive until we hit Skyline. 

Roomie takes the wheel again and propels us around apexes with windows down so fast that I want to howl at Luna alongside dog. Neighbor laughs when I tell her this and we jam to Hendrix. Get out at the overlooks every once in a while and piss and take cellphone pics of the vistas and maybe smoke. Decide to save the beer for home--as I write this.

We get to one point, maybe a little further than halfway, just walk for a while. Neighbor and dog go off and play fetch. She looks cute when she does, olive parka and riding boots and the whole shebang. Roomie says as much.

He and I cross Skyline and climb to the peak--more a worn knob--and dip Cope in a clearing beside the summit. I try to whittle something--anything--but don't know how. 

Here I want to erect great stones like those on Mull to remind our descendants that we knew, too, just as our forebears did for us. Ignore the sky-scrapers, here are those that scrape the soul. I say as much; Roomie nods and peers at Luna from under bare maple branches. He knows too. We don't speak for a while, just ride the nicotine rush.

Eventually the neighbor has to come and get us. We don't really want to leave and neither does dog now that it's found us, here in the trees under the moon set in the dawn sky. Nobody says much and we head back to the ST. Make it home without incident.

It's the first warm day of the year in Virginia. Maybe 55 degrees when we pull in. Neighbor hugs us and heads off to friends; Roomie and I crack some cervazas on the deck, chill and talk history and cars. He goes off and plays Xbox, I go off and write this.

I am sane again, maybe for the first time in months.