My friend Susan takes me walking on the Blue Ridge Parkway
whenever I visit her in North Carolina – which isn’t often! She
lives so close to the Parkway land you could throw a stone from her cozy
dog-infested cottage onto one of the trails. Not that you’d want to be throwing
stones, of course - you might hit a deer.
The Parkway itself is a 469-mile road that wanders along the
ridge of the Appalachians through several states. Surrounding it is a total of
about 80,000 acres of storied land, full of historic sites and wild trails. I know
that I’ve explored only a little of it!
The little I have explored is near Susan’s house. Now, I’m a
little older and a little heavier than my sprightly friend, who habitually
hikes with a backpack full of rocks in order to maintain her condition. So when
Susan suggested we hike up the 5,964-foot Grandfather Mountain near her house I
said “Well, I might not make it to the top, but if you can put up with my slow
pace, I’ll try.”
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| Young black bear in the Blue Ridge mountains. Drawing by Jessica Valin |
Readers, I made it to the top. Susan turned out to have an
interesting psychology of motivation. It’s one I’ve encountered before in
India.
In 2000, when I went to volunteer at a community near the
city of Pune, I was entrusted with a mission from a friend in Burlington,
Vermont. She wanted me to track down an old friend of her father’s whom she’d
lost touch with.
So one day during my stay in India, the community’s driver,
Shankar, took me in the old jeep to track down this lady in Pune, a large city.
The address we had was, apparently, vague, because locating it proved to be a
challenge. Shankar kept stopping to ask the way and every time he asked, the
reply, with much smiling, positivity and nodding of heads was that our destination
was “just around the corner”.
After going around about 20 different corners, it began to dawn
on me that these well-meaning people may, or may not, have had some faint idea
of which way we needed to go, but they were much more interested in telling us
what they thought we wanted to hear – that we were close! They wanted to
encourage us.
And so Susan, who refused to sit down at all during the hike
- every time I sat down for a rest she stayed on her feet, rocky backpack and
all – kept telling me we were nearly there. Her encouraging “it’s just around the corner”
reassurances must have started around the 3,000 foot mark. By the time we
reached the top I’d rumbled her, but the strategy had worked, and we summited
to enjoy a beautiful view and feelings of accomplishment!
Oh, and back in India, the dear Hindu gods, after laughing
at our performance for two hours, finally took pity on Shankar and me. We
finally found a street with a name that looked like the one we wanted. I hopped
out of the old jeep to accost a playing child: “Do you know a person of this
name?” I asked. The answer was not mere encouragement, it was amazingly factual:
“Oh yes, that’s my auntie, she lives
here!”
.JPG)
This water, Gulf Stream, in Pomfret, Vermont, is no longer troubled, but it certainly was back in August 2011, when tropical Storm Irene ravaged the State. .JPG)
The Appalachian Trail is very accessible in this area, because it crosses several roads as it undulates up and down over the rocky tree-clad hills between Cloudland and the Chateauguay Wilderness - names to conjure with. 
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. . . the leaves will be changing and the Forest Festival will be in full swing. All the trees will be trying on dresses of red, gold and brown, and discarding any leaves they feel they can do without. The sun will be shining and maybe a soft rain falling to intensify the colors. Have you seen the desert after a rainfall? The shrubs appear clad in previously unknown shades of red, green and yellow.
. . . as I will be for three weeks. Please come visit me there. It's beautiful (understatement)..JPG)
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