The Ring

September 6, 2021

We are shaped by our memories, we all know it. And the 50-mile-long Massanutten range, two north-south fingers of high rock about 75 miles due west of Washington, D.C., has been for years a haunting presence for us. It was Labor Day weekend so it was time for the Ring, the annual muscle-wrenching slog on the 71-mile Massanutten Trail over the rocks through a lush wonderland called Fort Valley. I still shiver when I think of those freezing February nights on the trail along the eastern Massanutten ridge. I thought of all the reasons for not driving the 470 miles to show up. Then we climbed in the van and headed north.

Typically the trip means a mountain route, I-85 to Charlotte then I-77 to I-81 up the spine of Virginia.  But I-26 through Asheville and Tennessee now is a better choice. Just north of Asheville the interstate passes Mount Mitchell, highest point in the East at 6,600 feet. The Blue Ridge begins to bend into the majestic eastern ridge of the Great Smokies before Erwin, Tenn. Breathtaking country. Some eight hours of interstate through rolling Virginia pastureland and the blue-green Shenandoahs brings you to Signal Knob.

The Massanutten ends abruptly midway between Strasburg and Front Royal. The northernmost point is Signal Knob, a sheer outcropping that towers above the junction of Warren and Shenandoah Counties. The Massanutten Trail winds from a campground called Elizabeth Furnace in long switchbacks four miles to the summit across ancient shale and granite. From there, the climber can look out 60 or so miles west and north over the rich textured green of rural Northern Virginia and West Virginia.

We arrived Thursday to visit Virginia friends Mike and Pat, who settled some years ago at their farmhouse along the Shenandoah River, just below Signal Knob. On Friday Sandy and Pat drove to Mount Jackson to visit an ailing friend. Mike and I got out early and headed for the mountains to hike the Buzzard Rocks trail, which winds up to a perch lined with jagged shards of granite above Fort Valley Road. The trail is marked by white blazes, which lead to places that summon recollections of days and nights in those woods, when the trees were bare and the wind howled. We pressed upward over the granite until we could see across Fort Valley to Signal Knob, in its silent solemnity.

In the morning Sandy and I were there for the start of the Ring. Before dawn the sky showed pale blue, the coming day promised to be mild and bright. The veteran race managers called to the 44 runners, waved “Go,” and pointed into the dark forest at the orange-blazed Massanutten Trail. The volunteers cheered, the runners were gone. Three hours and 25 miles farther down the course we were at the first aid station, called Camp Roosevelt, a once-busy place built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps to provide work for unemployed Valley men, now a quiet campground.

The first competitors flowed slowly in. They ate, drank, collected themselves, and headed toward aid station 2, nine miles further on. A half-dozen said no. They thought about those hours on the ridge and the hard miles ahead and stepped down from the trail.

Those who persevered moved toward places with obscure names: Crisman Hollow, Moreland Gap, Edinburg, Woodstock Tower, Powell’s Fort. The finish, back to Signal Knob, still is a long way off. The trail, pocked with knife-sharp rocks, pulled them in afternoon heat through a swampy stretch called Duncan Hollow toward another stiff climb and the course halfway point.

I peered into the green darkness. Nothing had changed in the five years since I finished the course, the first of three finishes. I looked at the ground, the hard granite surface seemed to look back at me as it seemed to those five years ago, then four, then three, when I finished twice more, both times covering the course when it’s run in reverse as the “Reverse Ring” held in February. The 2018 finish was a thirty-minute time improvement followed by three days in the hospital with a strange, scary condition called rhabdomyolysis that stresses the kidneys. Afterward we thought: not a happy tradeoff.

The sun gleamed through the trees as the runners at the back of the field trotted off from Camp Roo. We volunteers puttered a bit, studied the runners’ recorded times, and talked about last year’s race and next year’s, the events ahead for this eccentric subculture of athletes. For some of them, a race called Grindstone, set in central Virginia mountains, is penciled in for mid-September. Grindstone is a different beast, it starts at 6:00 PM.

We won’t be around for that. The Ring gives us our dose of mountain mystery along with the bracing air and pure, crystal-clear spring water. Old friends showed up, still in Virginia, still climbing those wild peaks, working on their trail-running boasting rights, their fitness; some working through a mission central to their lives.

These hard mountains, for those who return here, may provide a sort of spiritual anchor, they have a way of stirring the mind, heart, and soul. Maybe the silence has something to do with it—that and the immense, intimidating distances, the loneliness of deep forest tempered by awareness of the serene presence of the Lord. It’s the Ring. It’s 71 miles. It’s the Massanutten Mountains:  forest, rocks, thickets, streams, zigzaging, disappearing trails, and those empowering, panoramic vistas. Then memories come, and remain.