1999 October

There is a little mist this morning. At one point I think of many allegories when I see the road arch up, disappearing into a land of mist. Out of the top springs a gloriously colorful tress, vibrant in the sun. I wonder what message the universe is giving here? I approach. The mist clears a bit. The road does indeed take me to that glorious place. And descends from it further on as well.

Buying lunch materials, I forget that I need a new pen.

I have thoughts of breakfast when I reach Abermarle, but no place calls to me. I ride on. 13 has quite a bit of traffic, I have to concentrate. In my mind I trace my journey back a week (leaving Bridgewater), then a month (leaving Norrie Mansion).

In Concord I’m quite hungy and opt for the Pizza Hut lunch buffet. Greasy.

Talk to Mom and am lifted by her good spirits.

Riding again, the North Carolina air is my lover. She covers me in her satin kisses. She makes her kisses cold to see my smooth skin bristle into goosebumps. She kisses hot to make a bead of sweat appear. She takes the colors all around and blows them into me. I laugh and moan - it’s she that’s passing into me and out again.

For some reason I’m drawn to the Duke Power Energy Explorium. It’s full of propaganda. They have no tact. Their film presents us with Mark Twain in a white suit, singing the praises of powerful, friendly Duke Power from his riverboat. At one point he exclaims, “Hey, this isn’t a river, it’s a lake!” Many more insults to Samuel Clemens follow. I do find, however, a map with a nature preserve nearby. I go, and it’s a perfect campsite.

We all scurry around Doug’s cabin getting ready for the day. He offers me a bowl of cereal, which I accept. I am the only one who eats. A hasty but sincere goodbye, and they drive off. Nice to watch someone else go for once, I think.

I drink up the road, singing, “I want to be awash in you…” Hot and humid, I’m soon sweaty in shorts and T-shirt. I take some wrong turns, ride some extra miles. It matters to me not at all.

Dad is home! Always a comfort to talk to him. I mention some of the incredibly liberal, new-age hippie mystical sort of things people said at the party last night. Dad is confounded that they seem to reject so much good science. We guess at the reasons. Fear? Style? Ignorance? It will remain a mystery.

I pull into a closed Ranger station near Troy to eat. I notice I’ve felt good with less food than usual today.

There is a map posted at the station which leads me directly to a nice place to camp on National Forest land. There’s a field, but I choose woods for seclusion and to avoid dew. I notice I have a hole in the floor of my tent.

One last bowl of colon-blow, then Lis saw me off. I’m sure she was late again too, the sweetie.

Exploring, I found a trail into Umhearse State Park. Nice woods, streams, and a little lake. Never quite got out of earshot of major roads, though. Emerging in Cary, I felt my spirit of exploration cheering. Cary seemed sparse, with big roads and housing developments dotted by attractive little malls.

64 was easy riding - big road, good shoulder. I explored a bit around Jordan Lake, finding many very developed and currently unused facilities. Some were closed due to sewage problems, perhaps related to the hurricane.

Pittsboro is just like I expect, a working-class hippie town. The General Store Cafe is a big open coffeehouse. I enter the kitchen, give Doug a big hug, and am soon munching on a giant green chile burrito. I soon feel that long-lost green chile glow.

Doug’s had a tough day, but he has a massage scheduled to fix him up. I’m jealous when I meet Amy, the masseuse. She has cute freckles, and a smile that dances with her eyes. I notice she gives me her total attention when we talk. My female yummy receptors come on with a little glow.

When we go shopping, the receptors are further stimulated. The University of Northern Carolina campus is the same. I try not to go too gaga.

We drop groceries off at Doug’s mom’s house. She is a member of a community that collectively owns the surrounding land and has amazingly operated successfully for many years. They have a community dinner twice a week, meetings, and cooperative projects.

Sara Lyn, Doug’s community, is also rich in hippies, but not collectively owned. The residents are much more reclusive. Today a new neighbor has moved in and is having a neighborhood-wide housewarming party, a rare occurrence. There will be good music - a local bluesman is playing.

We arrive at Doug’s driveway, clearly signed, “HO CHI MINH TRAIL.” Doug has always had a contumacious sense of humor.

We interrupt Doug’s partner Yvonne on a ‘retreat day’ - a day of silence. She moves about the kitchen, ignoring us. I assume her retreat is over, and indeed it is. I introduce myself, dance around in her space, and ask lots of questions. She does her best to politely deflect my inquiries, and Doug works on distracting me. It works a little, but I’m too curious about her to ignore her. She gives up, sits down to talk with me, and I get the impression of her I was looking for. She would like to explore silence and meditative states to a greater degree, to the point where she can be absolutely unapproachable when she chooses. She eats nothing with added sugar. She seeks to avoid stimulus. Satisfied, I leave her in peace, just as two of Doug’s friends arrive for the party. I’m touched when, as we exit, she quietly tells Doug to invite me to stay longer if I’d like.

I don’t like Dave, the new neighbor. He seems seedy. But he’s very polite, and has made super-tasty spiced cider for the party. A nice looking woman with Indonesian-looking eyes is playing and singing. Slowly, I realize I am attracting people. Beautiful Carole, when she’s done singing, comes right over to me. I bask in her undivided attention. She mentions she has to retrieve something from her car, so I turn my attention to the music. But she starts talking to me again. This happens a few times, until I say, “Yes, of course, please go.” She breaks loose. I enjoy similar talks with several other women there. Some of them remark that I seem to be glowing. Maybe it’s just Southern manners, but they all kind of ask permission in some way before leaving. Strange, but enjoyable. I sleep with dreams of Cynthia, a girl I worked with in Chicago with eyes like Carole’s, embracing me. Yes, yes, the receptors were busy today.

Lisa’s boyfriend reported last night that he wouldn’t be back to go to the ballet with her tonight, so I agree to go in his place. I’ve never seen a ballet. Lis has to leave early today. I take the opportunity to indulge in some pure, raw LAZINESS. I make myself some colon-blow, surf the net, read, write, take a nap. BEAUTIFUL.

A bike ride is needed to get the heart beating again. I ride a few miles ot the grocery store, shop, snack, return, and make dinner for Lis. I have have candles lit and table set when she walks through the door. We eat and take off for the ballet. I’m impressed with Yahoo’s driving directions.

It’s not too highbrow, but I’m definitely the oddball here in my convertible pants and shirt. Lisa’s friends don’t know what the hell to make of me. I get wished happy birthday a few times.

The show is strange - four individual, disjoint performances. The first is Samuel Barber. There are two traditional and two modern dancers on the stage. They weave and oscillate like Man and Nature, Love and Desire, Mind and Heart. I like it very much. Next comes a series of Baroque and Renaissance dances which I hate. With no dynamics, they seem an endless, frivolous waste of the tremendous energy and talent of the dancers. Then comes a lukewarm Tchaikowsky Pas de Duex. It’s emotionless, despite the music, and very short. It has an awkward moment when the music climaxes and the dancers are just standing there. It fizzles. Last is a very dark, satirical, gaudy performance to Stravinsky. It’s facinating, but I can’t quite recover from the prior two dances. We leave feeling a little disappointed. A cup of coffee and some honest, warm conversation put things right. I sleep contented, feeling I’ve spoken my heart and come closer to Lis.

By morning I’m sure of it - my feelings for Lisa have changed. I was afraid I’d have to suppress my attraction to her and a little jealousy of her boyfriend, but no. I find myself truly appreciating her as a lovely person I know best through friendship. I wake from a good sleep, not affected at all by awareness of her in the other room.

She makes me a hot grain breakfast she affectionately refers to as “colon-blow”. She ditches work for the morning to chat with me.

After she’s left, I feel called to explore the area on foot. This is suburb/city-edge, entirely constructed for commuters and not walkers. I just walk into the trees and head northwest. I pass behind a computer store and into a cemetery. Without the trees, the sun is warm and bright. I walk half a mile to the other edge, through a thin line of trees to an undeveloped field of weeds. My socks begin their collection of stickers, twigs, and other bits of organic matter. I can hear a warehouse intercomm in the distance. Someday this field will probably be warehouse too. There’s a creek along the other side that has already collected some pieces of old PVC pipe. The manhole cover of a cistern of some kind pokes up.

There’s some more woods on the other side. They are home to a big, pretty orange spider. The hammer-whacking construction sounds of upscale homes being built comes from one side, voices on the warehouse PA from the other.

I feel a complete alien as I walk through construction sites, shipping areas, showrooms, and the intervening woods. If I come to a fence I climb over. As a sort of climax I stumble onto a great sea of mud and dirt where the forest has been cleared to build a housing project. I see firsthand how the drainages below are now clogged with mud and sediment - the beginning of the watershed contamination process. On a more positive note, I feel like a priveleged phantom drifting in the midst of humankind, busy building, building, building, as they have done from from the dawn of history.

Lisa knows someone in Winston-Salem she feels I should meet. We drive for a couple of hours to a dull-looking retirement home, out of which comes a striking, elegant, graceful woman, standing very straight in a long, deep blue coat. This is Shirley Deane. In the nearby Indian restaurant, she knows the names of all the staff. We sit down to a meal at which we eat a lot and she a little. I can’t begin to describe her stories. She played the accordian for a living in North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. She spent every cent of her money on a land rover and lived on faith from gig to gig. She describes wearing scanty outfits and performing for U.S. military personnel. At one point she wound up in an Ashram in the Himalayan foothills, where she studied Yoga for some time (4 years?). She worked at a shelter for Tibetan refugees after that. And now she is living in a lonely room across from McDonald’s and Burger King. She was so happy to see us. She implored me to come back with Dough and introduce her.

After dinner I helped her get her email working. We talked about her all the way home.

The predawn morning is quiet and still but for a few early fishing boats setting out. So much of this journey is simple bliss, what do I write about? The sun and the open road cajole me into extemporaneous song.

Beautiful World,
Give me your open road,
How can I ever know,
Your light or sorrow?
Beautiful World,
Love rains down in a flood,
I see the wind, the blood,
And I want to be awash in you.

Before I know it I’m in Oxford. The perfect coffeeshop presents itself for breakfast. The light seems so bright, I feel I’m seeing people’s secrets when I look at them. The boys on the sidewalk are shy under their afros and dredlocks, the girl at the counter likes me and is sad, the man in the ice cream shop faces hard times.

In the library I find Lisa has answered my email. I’m set! We arrange to meet at 5:30. Nothing to do but enjoy the road and the day till then. I ride a side road looop, where a trailer flies the confederate flag across from a tranquil field. The road is mine.

Falls Lake gives me my first sign of the flooding caused in this state by hurricane Floyd. Areas are closed and water levels are high.

Good to see Lis again! The old friendship is easily rekindled. She has news that hits me in the gut though - Andy Miller, who I talked with just before leaving Laramie, has been in a car wreck. He has serious pelvis, back, and head injuries, and is incommunicado at the hospital. I can almost feel the impact, my interaction with traffic has become so ingrained in my life.

I have fun with Lis. She still loves to be the center of attention like I remember but has certainly grown in her ability to be attentive. We talk a lot about our developing perspectives on God. She seems to have gone through many New Age revisions to the idealist Christian view she once expressed to me, developing a belief system based partly on experience and partly on pure appeal. It seems to do well for her. For myself, I seem to always go back to my experience as the entire basis for my religion. I trust it, and there appears to be enough wealth there to last a lifetime, if not more.

I enjoy the usual rush of pleasure that comes when I start off on a beautiful clear morning. It’s cold though, there’s heavy frost on the grass, and when I cross the river at Gladstone around 8:30 am there’s still ice floating in it. The only thing I notice I need for the cold is a new pair of glove liners.

I’m cruising south on 26 in a bright valley between two ridges when I see some dumptrucks coming. The foremost plays me a little ditty on the horn and I see big Wayne behind the wheel. Ha! At Appomattox Wayne pulls over and gives me one last round of directions. His workshirt has a patch on it that says “Bear”.

A good breakfast at Raymond’s “World Famous” Cafe.

As I recede from the mountains, my world seems to shrink. I’m always surrounded by a ring of nearby trees, even on hilltoops.

In Red House I get my first lecture on the Civil War. A shaggy guy introduces himself as “Robert, Bob, Bobby,” and keeps loudly repeating that I’d best not tell a lie in Red House. I try not to laugh - he just hung up a payphone saying he had a call on the other line. He calls Appomattox the “Surrender House,” and tells me to go back up there and learn a few things if I’m still wet behind the ears. He’s still shouting as I ride off.

Still no luck reaching Camella.

In Charlotte Courthouse I almost get online at the library, but their ISP is down. Just my luck. I brush up on my Civil War facts and try once again before taking off.

I almost go the wrong way in Chase City, then I go for miles to make Clarkesville by dark. There I find a most welcoming sight - a state park campground closed for the season. I have it all to myself, and take a lakefront site.

Linda gets up, makes coffee, and graciously allows me to photograph her in her bathrobe as I’ve forgotten to take any pictures here. I try putting some hot coffee in my insulated water bottle, and discover the extremely pleasant sensation of riding through the cold morning while taking sips of steaming hot coffee. The whole body tingles with delight, relishing the contrast.

I take a little rural road with no traffic into Waynesboro. Farms all the way, coffee all gone, it’s hard to find a concealed place to pee. I go in the open, hoping for the half-hour it seems to last that no one comes along the road. At one point a car approaches in the distance, but politely turns away without coming near.

The main problem on my mind is how to reach my friend Lisa in Raleigh without my address book. I try a few times to call Camella, but no luck.

In Waynesboro I eat breakfast at Weasel’s Kitchen. First menu I’ve seen with grits on it.

It’s an easy pass over the Blue Ridge. I see a string of Appalachian Trail hikers headed south. Making my way south along the foothills, I pass a ski area and lots of nice views. In Colleen I pass an ice cream stand. In an unusual display, I decide I don’t want it enough to really enjoy it. Wow. In Norwood, I’m unsure about what to do at an intersection. I turn right. The road seems to go too far east, but I stick with it.

On one of many small hills, my chain catches and I have to stop. A big guy in overalls on a tractor stops to talk to me. Wayne Mundy is bushhoggin’, which he has to translate for me as cutting the grass. He owns a big piece of land in this picturesque area. It has a great mineral water spring, he says, and offers me a drink. After parking the tractor down the road a bit, I follow him on foot up a wooded path. The spring is in an old, roofless house with names and dates from the 1800’s carved in it. Mineral deposits of orange and white crystals surround the cold, tasty water. Wayne asks if I ever camp in a spot like this without permission. I say yes, and ask him what he’d do if he found me on his property. “Hell, once I foun’ out what yew was doin’ I guess I’d let ya be. Long as yew wasn’t down here smokin’ dope or nuthin. I wouldn’t tolerate anything like that. But I spose I’d let yuh stay.” He then offers to let me camp on his land if I want to. It’s a little early, but I accept. He leads me to a nice bushhogged spot where I set up and read awhile.

After sundown he and his wife Denise come down and talk awhile. They’re nice folks.

I go to sleep surrounded by noisy deer.

I get up and make myself breakfast, as I was instructed. I have cereal, donuts, and a bagel with cream cheese. I feel a little awkward, mostly due to Robert who is too busy to really acknowledge my presence. I’m more at ease around Linda and Jonathan.

At Bridgewater College library I pore through old yearbooks and school papers looking for goods on Gustav Enss. I find he taught here as the sole German and Philosophy professor from 1947 to 1956. For two years he revived the German Club, then switched to become the debate team coach, leading Bridgewater College to win an unprecedented state championship. After two years of that, he seems to have given up extracurricular activities. Amy Enss is in some of the yearbooks as a German instructor. No mention of why they left. I think it was due to Gustav’s poor health.

Linda makes sure I have a couple of sandwiches for lunch. Robert finally finds a free minute and gives me a quick tour around town. We go by the house Fred remembers visiting the Enss family in, the North River, Dry River, and the retirement community. He seems pleased to be able to give me a brief history of the Church of the Brethren. They begin in Germany in 1708, with many similarities to Mennonites, differing on points like the importance of immersion in baptism. Not wanting their church named after one person in the founding group, they drew straws to choose the first to be baptised, and kept the proceedings secret.

Robert leaves soon after to give a series of sermons he’s been working on. I take Linda and Jonathan out for Chinese food. Jon takes off for a Halloween party, and Linda and I get into a quite animated conversation about growing up, school, history, and literature. Finally my eyes droop, and I head up to bed.

God, what a morning! At last, the Appalachians reveal themselves to me. In the frosty cold, my first view west reveals mottled orange and yellow hills, warmed on one side by a blanket of morning sun. The road sings to me, the cold air refreshing me, creating me anew every moment. Then I look east. The Piedmont below is filled with a sea of clouds, monadnocks poking up like islands from the waves. All two thousand feet below, while up here the bright sun blesses and bathes me.

I hear a noise as I peel off my jacket. Looking up I watch a big brown bear descend from a tree and run off. The noises continue, and looking again I count three cubs climbing down the same tree, one by one, and taking off after Mom.

The day’s initial spectacles fade as the sun climbs and the tourists arrive. There’s a convenient place to eat where I chat with a hiker from Maine. He tells me the top of Cadillac Mountain on Mt. Desert Island is the first spot to see the sun in the morning in the entire US.

The next 34 miles are pure play, up and down the hills. The high point near 4,000-ft Hawk’s Bill is over 3,600 feet. It’s a fast trip down into the valley. I’m thankful traffic is light on 33. I get a nasty flat tire, rear, and appreciate the help a passing motorist offers. He lets me use his pump and gives me good directions to Bridgewater.

I arrive about 6:30 pm to meet friends of the Stover family, Linda and Robert Alley, and share dinner with them. Fifteen-year-old Jonathan comes home from his soccer game. He is just like Camella’s brother Torrey: laid back, friendly, and unambitious. I watch a movie with him before sacking out.