Many places beckon us to return. We may not have traveled much or changed homes many times, yet there are locations and landscapes that we long to see again. Sometimes we do, even making multiple visits, if we are lucky.
Recently I returned to a place that I have visited more times than I can count. Here there is a trail through the woods and over crags, past cliffs, across a “saddle” where the land drops away on both sides and mountain magnolias bloom in May . . . it then ascends alongside blueberry and rhododendron, only to end at a humble spot where you turn around and retrace your steps. There is a second trail, too: this one over meadowed hills where brown and white cows graze, and you pass twisty old hawthorns, too much oriental bittersweet, outcrops glittering with mica. All of this is approached from a gracefully rambling road—the Parkway, which hugs our tamed and in places re-wilding Blue Ridge.
I went with an old friend. This too was a return. Years had passed since we walked the woods together, and though she had never trod these particular trails, she too is drawn to this place. So we were reminded of how our friendship flowered in the first place: among many other things, it is the shared delight of exploring landscape and place. Both of us are competent and joyful in noticing—being attentive to bird and plant, rock and wind.
Trees swayed and we leaned into gusts of mountain air. Ravens called. Smells from hay-scented fern and galax wafted over me, while ravens and vultures rode the air currents. Together we remembered the particularities of Table Mountain pine and big-tooth aspen and speculated on who had “poached” leaves from the extensive galax patch at our feet. Eventually, we paused for a humbling look down into the quiet and lonely creek valley where one historic cabin remains. I always pause for a long stare here.
Recently I returned to a place that I have visited more times than I can count. Here there is a trail through the woods and over crags, past cliffs, across a “saddle” where the land drops away on both sides and mountain magnolias bloom in May . . . it then ascends alongside blueberry and rhododendron, only to end at a humble spot where you turn around and retrace your steps. There is a second trail, too: this one over meadowed hills where brown and white cows graze, and you pass twisty old hawthorns, too much oriental bittersweet, outcrops glittering with mica. All of this is approached from a gracefully rambling road—the Parkway, which hugs our tamed and in places re-wilding Blue Ridge.
I went with an old friend. This too was a return. Years had passed since we walked the woods together, and though she had never trod these particular trails, she too is drawn to this place. So we were reminded of how our friendship flowered in the first place: among many other things, it is the shared delight of exploring landscape and place. Both of us are competent and joyful in noticing—being attentive to bird and plant, rock and wind.
Trees swayed and we leaned into gusts of mountain air. Ravens called. Smells from hay-scented fern and galax wafted over me, while ravens and vultures rode the air currents. Together we remembered the particularities of Table Mountain pine and big-tooth aspen and speculated on who had “poached” leaves from the extensive galax patch at our feet. Eventually, we paused for a humbling look down into the quiet and lonely creek valley where one historic cabin remains. I always pause for a long stare here.
On the meadow trail we spied a small falcon perched in a lone snag. Being the quiet walkers we are, we had a luxurious long time to move closer and study it with binoculars and camera. After some head-scratching we concluded it was a merlin (“pigeon hawk”)—a slender and powerful hunter, and a "rare transient and winter visitor from early September through April," according to Marcus Simpson’s Birds of the Blue Ridge Mountains. (Back at home, we learned that our sighting of a merlin was only the fourth ever documented for the Blue Ridge Parkway!)
I treasure this place in part because of my past visits, many of them in the company of loved ones. But it also speaks to me through the stories of those who once dwelled in this landscape. True, I don’t really know their stories, but I imagine into them: here someone grazed sheep and tended a garden plot; there men toiled cutting timber and building fences and cabins. . . . One lone interpretive sign tells that the man and woman in that valley cabin had 14 children, and that there were other families in other cabins too. These slopes were once nearly barren of trees. This place speaks to me because every time I visit, I open the door to curiosity, noting the sweet-faced cows, the rusty barbed wire and crumbling stile, the paths to nowhere, and stone walls built by the CCC.
We leave something in the places we occupy for a time, especially if we have truly attended to them. By that I mean we have taken in their singular loveliness and harshness, and we have acknowledged the many lives lived there before we came along, as well as the ones that will gather after we are gone. In a place that you treasure and have “touched” with your attention and regard, something remains so that when you return—having followed a strong inner leading—the place knows you. It effortlessly and wholly welcomes you back, much as a friend whom you have not seen in a very long time is glad for your return.
I treasure this place in part because of my past visits, many of them in the company of loved ones. But it also speaks to me through the stories of those who once dwelled in this landscape. True, I don’t really know their stories, but I imagine into them: here someone grazed sheep and tended a garden plot; there men toiled cutting timber and building fences and cabins. . . . One lone interpretive sign tells that the man and woman in that valley cabin had 14 children, and that there were other families in other cabins too. These slopes were once nearly barren of trees. This place speaks to me because every time I visit, I open the door to curiosity, noting the sweet-faced cows, the rusty barbed wire and crumbling stile, the paths to nowhere, and stone walls built by the CCC.
We leave something in the places we occupy for a time, especially if we have truly attended to them. By that I mean we have taken in their singular loveliness and harshness, and we have acknowledged the many lives lived there before we came along, as well as the ones that will gather after we are gone. In a place that you treasure and have “touched” with your attention and regard, something remains so that when you return—having followed a strong inner leading—the place knows you. It effortlessly and wholly welcomes you back, much as a friend whom you have not seen in a very long time is glad for your return.