A park, a visit, and a movie

[Some of my readers may be expecting an RSCM Report. With God's grace, it should be forthcoming by the weekend. Before that, I have today's post and two more about other matters, which (to my mind) relate to what follows at RSCM.]

July 8: The Valley of Virginia

I roll up I-81 through the Virginia Highlands, the foothills again shrouded with morning mist, behind them the mountaintops blue in the distance. I had hoped to drive part of the day on the Blue Ridge Parkway which winds northeast along the ridgetops, but instead I spend three hours at the rest area near Roanoke after the long descent from Christiansburg into the Valley of Virginia. I sit at a picnic table and write my account of yesterday's visit with old friends. By the time I finish, it is three o'clock in the afternoon, a fine hot day of white cumulus and blue sky.

A road trip such as this is for me a spiritual retreat, and the writing is part of it. The Daily Office, the long silences, the solitude, the (mostly) simple food, sleeping in the car, the unfolding vista of Nature... these are my teachers and companions. It is for this that I once thought to become a truck driver so that I could be on the road all the time. But it is enough to be as it is, and I do bless the Lord for the Road, and for the coming Home at last.

As is my practice, I stop at Lexington for a brief visit to the burial places of my heroes Lee and Jackson, arriving at the Lee Chapel minutes before closing time. I buy a photograph of Lee taken a year before his death, dressed in tuxedo and bow tie as president of Washington College. It will go on my desk with my icons as a reminder of this man's diligence in his administrative work. The Episcopal Church nearby is closed for the day, but I walk out to the cemetery to Jackson's grave.

From there, I go up at last to the Parkway for the late afternoon and sunset, with a night this time in an old-fashioned motel at Buena Vista, the sort of motel where each room is an individual tiny cottage. It is run by a gentleman from the Fiji Islands, and does not appear to be prospering; one gets the impression that no one has slept in this room for a long time.

July 9-12: A drive, a backyard and a movie

On this day, I briefly stop at the Green Valley Book Fair and buy gifts for two of my co-workers, plus a book for myself. Then, it is up the mountain again; my plan is to drive the northern half of the Skyline Drive, through the Shenandoah National Park.

Yesterday, I had thought to enter the park late in the day and stay for the night in one of the campgrounds, but I thought "They will be full. It is July, right after the fourth, a holiday week." No, I could have easily stayed there instead of the motel; the campgrounds I saw were less than half full. "People don't camp out much anymore," I am told by one of the park rangers. Nor do they drive through the Park; there is almost no traffic. I hardly see two score of cars all day. I can remember visits over the years when there was heavy traffic in this park: long lines of cars, trucks with campers, motor homes.

This is perhaps the most beautiful part of the Appalachians. There are plenty of opportunities for hiking, camping, and fishing in the park, and if nothing else, simply the leisurely drive along the mountaintops. If any of my readers should visit this part of the country, I highly recommend taking a day (or better, two or three) for this. Here is a typical view from the road.

By evening, I am at my sister's house, in a Maryland suburb of Washington. It is as it has been for decades; almost every horizontal surface is covered with books, knick-knacks, plants, quilting supplies. The cabinets, the many bookcases all groaning under double-shelved books -- everything overflows. There are piles of books on the floor, to the point where one can hardly enter some of the rooms. In the front yard, the old white Mitsubishi van is filled with more books, boxes of them, blue tarps lashed over it all with clothesline ropes, the tires flat. It has been no more than a storage building for ten years and more, reminding me of the old rusting cars and trucks on cinder blocks in the hill country.

Those who have seen my office may be tempted to say "It runs in the family," and they would be right. Were I not married to a Midwestern woman of Dutch descent who likes everything to be tidy, I would be just like my sister. Living with a slovenly hillbilly was a huge adjustment for her after we got married; she has improved me somewhat.

But there is a glory to this old house of my sister's, bursting at the seams with decades of clutter. It is the back yard: a riotous profusion of wildflowers, ferns, vegetables, trees, birds. Whenever an empty bit of soil becomes available, my sister puts a plant in it.

I sit in their glass-walled back room and feel as if I am in a forest, on this quarter-acre suburban lot within earshot of the Beltway. Over the almost forty years that she has lived there, she has created a little paradise. The arrangement of the plants seems random, but she has considered patterns of sun and shade, shelter from wind and frost, companion-planting principles. The result is an unstudied naturalness and beauty.

She and her husband love science fiction and fantasy -- it is she that introduced me to Tolkien in my childhood, and it is she who cajoled my parents into letting the two of us stay up late to watch the original Star Trek episodes every week. We saw three science fiction movies during my visit, including the current Star Trek movie (disappointing). One of the three movies was excellent, the one that we watched at home on DVD: "The Hunger Games." It is in part a commentary on the manner in which a small number of wealthy and powerful people, living in the "Capitol," manipulate and exploit everyone else. The protagonists are from District 12, the coal-fields, where most people live on the edge of starvation. Here is an account of the Hunger Games universe.

I am a little surprised that such an explicit indictment of the "one percent" was allowed to enter the public sphere. The lords of public opinion doubtless presume that these books and movies will have their few minutes in the spotlight and then be buried under the torrent of trivia and filth that spews endlessly from the Media.

Having seen how some of my choristers reacted to the Hunger Games, I would not be so sure. My impression is that these books and movies have entered the ongoing corpus of young adult literature every bit as much as Harry Potter. For a long time to come, young folk will read these books, see these movies, and be formed by them. The result is unknowable.