September 25, 2023

I nursed a double expresso in the back room of a café in Notting Hill, one of London’s more eclectic, artsy neighborhoods. Sandy had cold chocolate. Outside, the crowds of tourists flowed by, gawking, browsing at the shops, aiming cell phone cameras.

My head buzzed from the caffeine, but also from the tourist grind. We followed directions for the London Underground to Buckingham Palace. There too, a massive crowd swelled, people pressed against the railing to get a glimpse of the place and the red-jacketed sentries of the King’s Guard walking their posts.

We had marched forward the previous day, transitioning from Galway to Dublin to London via three hours on long-distance rail, then urban taxi and low-rent commuter airline to a local train to a hotel in East London’s Stratford neighborhood. The area is the site of London’s 2012 Olympic stadium and a train and bus hub. Not much else.

The airport-to city train sped from Stansted airport through London’s rural outskirts of wide green meadows and forest, then breached the industrial and residential suburbs. We changed trains inside the city at Tottenham Hale, where the skyscrapers start to show.

London is a monster of a city apart from the tourist-magnet sites of palaces, the Tower Bridge, Parliament, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey. During the workweek the population swells from eight million to 12 million. It was, after all, the heart of an empire.

Notting Hill made our list of places to see in London. We guessed everyone in the crowd had seen the 1999 movie with Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant. The romance of the movie emerges, somehow, from the gentle eccentricity of the place: the well-kept, whitewashed rowhouses along Portobello Road, the cramped antique and clothing shops, confectioners, and booksellers, among others. Fans of the movie look for the fictional Travel Book Shop.

Getting there meant navigating the spiderweb of London’s Underground. We made the transfer from Green Park to Notting Hill Gate, patting ourselves on the back for that.

Our plan was to meet later that afternoon with Josh, daughter Laura’s friend, a brilliant artist and engineer, in the Hackney neighborhood, miles across the city. At the Notting Hill stop we lost the cellphone connectivity, meaning no navigation help. On a corner bench we fiddled futilely with the phones, then gave up and jumped in a cab. Thirty minutes later, stuck in traffic gridlock with the meter at 30 pounds (about $37.00), we paid and said so long to the driver.

At the nearest Underground station an employee patiently tracked our destination on her Ipad then explained that track repairs meant no train. “The bus is best,” she advised, and pointed to one across the street. We ran, but it pulled away. When the next bus arrived I had forgotten the stop. A kind fellow passenger helped. We got off near Hackney and hiked to 195 Mare Street.

Here we stepped off our tourist track. The address is the site of a brick house built in 1697, an enormous three-level structure in what then was a center for cultivation of exotic plants called the Loddiges Nursery. Over the centuries the place was owned by charitable and civic groups. A local family recently purchased it as a home and a gallery of local art, calling it simply “195 Mare Street.” Josh has shown several of his pieces at the gallery.

The family commissioned a Brazilian artist, Thiago Mazza, to create a three-story high mural on the wall of an adjacent building. The occasion was the unveiling. At around 6 PM local folks began arriving, artists and art lovers, old and young, longtime neighbors and newcomers. Josh circulated, greeting friends and fellow artists As South Carolina suburbs people, we didn’t quite fit this crowd. But we said hello and shook hands. It was unique, different. It was fun.

The mural was covered by a three-story black drape. The crowd edged forward. The owner talked about the mural as a celebration of “plant power,” in Hackney as long as 300 years ago, when it was a rural outpost of London. She introduced Mazza, who said a few words and thanked his assistants.

We learned how he created the mural over weeks of standing on a scaffold under the summer sun, repairing damage caused by heavy rains.

The black drape dropped away, the gorgeous colors leaped out at the crowd, who oohed and aahed and applauded. We stared in awe at the pastel beauty of the work, the intricate detail, the rich bold strokes that filled the length of the worn brick surface. The artist’s mastery of color and shading explode across the otherwise blandness of Mare Street, a place that first-time visitors like us would guess had seen better days.

We did our best to mingle. Josh introduced us to a friend, Sharon, who has supported his work, and to fellow artists. One of the hosts explained that artists have brought their work for display, open to the public, even while the new owners are renovating, essentially rebuilding the place. We joined the crowd of authentic art lovers greeting the artists and studying the art mounted on the unfinished walls.

Later we had dinner with Josh and Sharon in the glittering Hackney restaurant district. Tables everywhere were full of young people enjoying the throbbing party scene, London’s carefree weekend night, reminiscent of New York’s Greenwich Village or Tribeca. They guided us to the right bus, which poked along dark city streets, delivering us to the hotel way later than we’re used to being out.

We finished off the London stop Sunday with a hike through the white-shoe end of town: Russell Square, Piccadilly, Whitehall, St. James, Westminster.

The real world intruded suddenly on the dream world: Ukrainian refugees and supporters demonstrated along Horse Guards Road near the prime minister’s residence on Downing Street, reminding the Western allies of their moral obligation to stand against the Russian killers. A young Ukrainian girl sang a mournful, lovely ballad, her lilting tones lifting the spirits of her countrymen, and all who passed by.                  

September 23, 2023

Downtown Galway combines restaurants, bars, boutiques, still more bars. The attraction is Irish music in and around the Latin Quarter, and Guinness. The place is swimming in Guinness. Everyone standing in or near a bar is holding one. This was Wednesday.

The wind howled, the rain poured the afternoon we arrived, although the Irish sun beamed in a far corner of the sky. Stepping around the puddles and bending into the wind was the low point. Sandy and I had an overpriced dinner at the King’s Head in the Quarter, but didn’t stay for the music. We were looking at a long day.

The sun rose the next morning. We got a cab downtown then boarded the bus for the Cliffs of Moher ride, which includes a few other stops. The tourists, 98 percent Americans, an Indian, an Australian couple, and a half-dozen Swedes, piled on. The driver, John, pulled slowly out into city traffic then picked up speed. The city faded behind us—suburbs don’t exist in Ireland. Suddenly we were looking at deep-green pastures, lush meadows, cows, and sheep.

The first stop was Dungaire Castle, a 16th century fortress now reduced to a heavy stone tower and three walls, intended by the clan that built it for defensive purposes, but not known for a major role in local history. It’s outside Kinvarra along the two-lane highway, perched on a serene corner of Galway Bay. We walked through the gate and snapped a picture.

We plowed along through lovely country to Ballyvaughan, site of the Merriman Hotel, a fashionable place that now houses Ukrainian refugees. We made a sharp turn onto Corkscrew Hill, a sharp zigzagging climb to the Aillwee Cave, where, for nine euros, we could follow a guide on a half-mile hike through the narrow, dimly lit rock passageway. I bought the ticket and followed the guide, ducking at low points, and listened to his pitch on the geology of the place. It was discovered in 1940 by a local man who kept quiet about it for 33 years.

The guide talked about the mysterious drainage that created the cave. He pointed out the strange mineral-rich rock formations and the gushing waterfalls, and answered a few questions from science-minded tourists. Then we were done. I hurried along to the exit. It seemed an odd add-on to the Cliffs tour, but it’s there, so we did it.

The cliffs, nearly nine miles long, between 400 and 700 feet high, fronting the Atlantic, are spectacular. Five or six tour buses and dozens of private cars were parked below a steep path of a couple of hundred yards alongside a stone wall that borders the cliffs. Folks trudged slowly to the top, snapping pictures all the way. Since we got lucky on the weather we hung around, enjoying the crystal-clear sea air and staring at the breathtaking views out to the horizon, the surf crashing against the rocks far below.

We stopped for lunch a bit farther up the coast at the Fox Pub in Doolin. John pushed the local red beer, most of the group went along and ordered the beef stew or fish ‘n chips. Apart from cows and sheep, the tourism business is the only business in these parts. Our group took every seat in the place.

We tooled along winding roads in stretches barely wide enough for the bus and one compact car. A few times John careened onto the shoulder to avoid sideswipes. We stopped at the Burren, a bizarre, moonlike stretch of sharp rocks that extends to a steep drop into the steel-gray surf foaming against the shore. The wind roared. We didn’t stay long.

We were still miles from Galway. John, in his lyrical brogue, gave us history, local color, and his own political analysis. He talked about the famine walls, the miles of stone walls that crisscross fields and hills that English landlords forced their Irish tenants to build during the 1840s famine, trying to force them off their land. He blasted the government for permitting giant wind turbines to be built to sell power to Britain and France, spoiling the natural environment. We could see the turbines in the distance, a forest of spindly three-bladed sticks.

He pointed out an abandoned Catholic church, closed decades ago after revelations of abuses of children by Christian brothers. He added, though, he still takes his family to Mass.

The miles were wearing on all of us. But we couldn’t escape the mystical charm of this corner of the world. The highway for a hundred miles is a narrow two-lane road. The landscape across the meadows and hills is the rich green Ireland is famous for, homes are nestled in open space, no mindless subdivisions distort the loveliness of the exquisite blend of earth, sea, and sky. A few modest signs here and there advertise this B&B or that one, a bar, a restaurant. No billboards or traffic lights.

The rural Irish live in nature and are part of nature. We could feel it in the poignant music John played as he drove, the passion and humor in his stories, the greetings and smiles of the young women in their sharply pressed outfits who brought us lunch in Doolin.

We passed through Craggcorradane, Fanore, and Murrooghtoohy and back through Ballyvaughan. We also may have seen Liscannor, Kilshanny, Lisdoonvarna, and Ballyallaban, I’m not sure, they’re that small. John picked up speed as we closed again on Galway, we could see traffic increasing in the opposite direction, Galway’s rush hour.

He maneuvered through the city streets, still pointing out interesting things, famous hotels, ships in the harbor, then gave us the names of his favorite restaurants. He explained that Scotch whiskey became popular with American GIs stationed in Britain during World War II because the Irish government, trying to stay neutral, banned the sale of Irish whiskey to Americans. Jameson Black Barrel is the stuff to drink, he said.

We parked at the drop-off point. John asked us to do a review of the trip for the company’s website. We all shook hands, John patted us on the shoulder and waved goodbye. As we walked away, Sandy said he had mentioned, quietly, he was being laid off. The tour company owner had made a deal with friends to squeeze him out at the end of the month. He’ll be driving a school bus for the winter. I wondered: God’s will or the luck of the Irish? Maybe both.        

September 20, 2023

The sun burst from the overcast in Killarney, then faded. We rode around the 26,000-acre national park in a carriage pulled by a horse named Maggie and driven by a young guy, Damian McCarthy, who said he inherited the job from his father.

The park is wild and lovely, bounded on the north by a huge lake, Lough Leane, and inhabited by a unique species of diminutive red deer. We walked around the remains of Ross Castle, built in 1410, later site of a Catholic Irish defensive stand against Protestant British Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell’s marauding “Ironsides” troops during the Irish Confederation Wars of 1640-1650. Damian said he could trace his family’s roots back to those Irish defenders, a McCarthy was one of the Irish chieftains. We told him we were from South Carolina. He said, joking, “if you were English you’d be walking back.”

When the ride ended Damian and his mother gave us a lift to the hotel. They noticed Sandy’s cough.

She got hot soup for dinner. The cough, thanks to allergies, seven hours on a cold aircraft, and the Dublin rain and chill, got worse. Around 2 AM it was time to get help. We got dressed and trudged to the lobby. The night-desk guy gave us the number for a local clinic, SouthDoc. A nurse answered and asked a few questions. She gave my message to the on-duty doctor. Within minutes he called, advising that he couldn’t see Sandy without a negative covid test result. Oddly, we had brought one.

At 2:30 AM I administered my first covid test. It wasn’t pleasant for the patient, but it did turn out negative. A cab carried us through the deserted, rain-slicked streets to SouthDoc. The duty physician, Dr. Phillips, and his nurse were the only ones present. He did his exam, listened, and prescribed a few things. The nurse called another cab.

We already had paid for a bus tour called the “Ring of Kerry” that circles the southwestern corner of the country. Sandy said no way, since she had her meds she would stay in bed and get better. I stuck with the plan. The sky was overcast and threatening. The other riders were, like me, oldsters, all couples, the typical tourist pack. I had a seat to myself.

We pushed out, the tour narrated by a veteran guide with a local brogue, who pointed out interesting and beautiful sites and told stories, some poking fun at his accent and those of others. We stopped at a rural scenic point and filed out, joined a few minutes later by four or five other tour buses, all nearly identical. The crowd milled around. The place offered, for a charge of seven euros, an exhibit of “famine habitations,” mockups of the hovels the starving Irish lived in during the 1840s famine. I grimaced and passed.

After snapping a few photos of the hills I realized I couldn’t remember which bus was mine. I climbed aboard three before finally recognizing our driver. “Take a picture of the front of the bus so you’ll remember it,” a lady said.

We made four or five more stops and gawked at mountains, rugged pastures, and quaint little towns. We saw husky Irish sheep, many splashed with red paint markings by their owners. When we reached the coast near Dingle the gray sky closed in, fog shrouded the mountaintops and the sea. Finally we stopped at an inn overlooking a rocky beach for lunch. “It’s one-thirty, be back on the bus at two-twenty,” the guide warned.

It seemed a friendly rustic place, but the employees herded us to the cafeteria past stacks of souvenirs for sale, including green-tipped tin horns, earrings, postcards, shamrock coffee mugs, and Irish-green dog blankets. How many of those do they sell, I wondered.

The cafeteria line crawled forward as folks ordered shepherd’s pie and fish ‘n chips. I ordered a ham sandwich and checked my watch. It was one of those classic souvenir-stop/lunch/restroom/back-on-the-bus tourist routines. Folks gulped their lunches and ran for their seats.

 We passed through Annascaul, Killorglin, Sneem, Waterville, Caherdaniel, Cahersiveen, and others, tiny hamlets wedged against mountainsides above the sea, and tourist-seeking towns packed with bars and restaurants, real estate and lawyers’ offices. The bus stopped, here and there and we all jumped out to snap pictures until mid-afternoon, when the chilly rain fell in buckets.

Around 4 PM we turned north and entered the wilder south end of the National Park, where the forest is thick and jungle-like, moss-covered dead logs left where they fell in a tangle of rocky, vernal underbrush.  We passed through the Kissing Tunnel, when the guide urged couples to smooch, and along the spectacular “Ladies View” named because Queen Elizabeth’s ladies in waiting urged her to visit.

The rain spattered against the windshield, the guide finally gave up suggesting photo stops. The crowd got antsy, ready for their warm hotels. The driver picked up his speed, slowing on the narrow two-lane road for ongoing auto traffic (I wondered what are those cars doing here?)

We entered the busy main highway through Killarney, traffic whizzed by. The bus pulled over at a gas station. We piled out, thanking the driver and scattered. I guessed I was a mile from our hotel. I didn’t have the number for a taxi and started hoofing it. Halfway along, holding my jacket snug against the rain I heard a clop-clopping sound. A horse-drawn carriage ambled by, the sides protected by plastic curtains.

I looked up, it was Damian McCarthy, our yesterday’s driver, heading home. He looked around and waved, then pulled over to the left. That’s correct, the left, the way they drive over here. I ran and jumped in. It was an early day for him, what with the rain. We clopped forward. At the hotel I jumped down, he waved and cruised back into traffic.

September 18, 2023

O’Connell Street in central Dublin is the place to be. We found it a few blocks north of Parnell Square, lined with shops and restaurants and crowded, recalling the flaring streets of James Joyce’s Dublin. O’Connell crosses the sullen gray River Liffey and passes Trinity University campus, site of the library that houses the ancient Book of Kells.

That first morning the rain and chill drove us to an Insomnia coffee shop. In mid-September the Irish sky was gray and dark, cars and buses drove with headlights, pedestrians and cyclists were wrapped in parkas with hoods. We shivered in our summer jackets. By noon the rain slackened, the streets were packed with local people and tourists dodging the hop-on/hop-off buses, taxis, and trolleys.

The Ireland visit has always been waiting in the background for us, as it is for many with Irish connections. The original Walshes, I’ve heard, are of County Cork. Most of the family have made the trip, my parents finally in their later years. Daughter Marie spent a student year at University College Dublin.

Putting it off has to do with what we know. Ireland is famous for tranquil, rural countryside of lush, deep-green meadows, pretty towns and farms, spectacular seaside vistas below the rugged Cliffs of Moher, along with the magical folk yarns and mythology. All that is set off by the history, centuries of tragedy, privation, sectarian conflict, oppression, violence.

The tension between the Irish and their oppressors has ancient origins. Oxford scholar Paul Johnson, in his history of Ireland reveals that, centuries before the Protestant Reformation incited by Martin Luther in 1517, Pope Adrian IV in 1154 gave Henry II of England a papal bull to assert control over Ireland and its bishops, who tended to run their churches their own way. Henry hired Norman mercenaries who in 1167 entered Ireland. Henry then was “acknowledged as sovereign by all concerned, Norman and Irish, lay and ecclesiastical.”

In 1172 Pope Alexander III endorsed Henry’s actions, writing that, “how great are the enormities of vice with which the people of Ireland have been infected, and how they have departed from the fear of God and the established practice of the Christian faith …”

Johnson writes that the Reformation largely bypassed Ireland. Irish Catholic hatred of the English set into the deepest threads of the country’s history and culture. It simmered along with resentment of the indifference and greed of absentee Protestant English landlords towards the grotesquely poor Catholic tenants, who were bled white by taxes or thrown off their land, their homes burned if they couldn’t pay.

The primitive Irish economy exploded with the Great Famine of 1847, when blight devastated the potato crop. Starvation ravaged the country, causing the emigration of millions to Canada and the U.S. The Irish agony of the 1840s and early 1850s finally was answered by emergency relief by British churches and charities worldwide, from Europe to Russia and Latin America to the U.S. I was surprised to learn that private groups in South Carolina, along with some in Pennsylvania, were the largest American contributors.

Most of us, Irish-heritage or not, know something of the more recent nightmares centered on the conflict between Catholic republicans and Protestant unionists: the Irish Republican Army and Ulster Defense Association terrorism; the thousands of victims, men, women, children; the clumsy, brutal British interventions; the endless talks and broken truces; the Irish Civil War of 1922-1923. Then the “Troubles” of roughly the late 1960s through 1990s, and the still-fragile Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

Still, we went. The flight, helped by a 100-mile/hour tailwind, arrived early, at around 4 AM. We sat on the tarmac because the customs people didn’t start work until 5 AM. A friendly cab driver dropped us at a hotel north of O’Connell, but last night’s guests still were sleeping. We wandered up Dorset Street in wet dawn darkness and found Insomnia. A sweet Irish lady treated us to her musical brogue and made us sandwiches and poured coffee.

By noon the rest of the city had ventured out, shopping, visiting, drinking strong coffee, listening to music. Students demonstrated along O’Connell Street against Iranian government oppression. The crowd’s mood was mostly upbeat. A smiling Irish girl served us coffee and delicious “breads and spreads” at Bewley’s Cafe on fashionable Grafton Street. 

On Sunday morning the rain poured, we stepped out anyway and got to Mass at St. Theresa’s Church near Grafton. Afterward we walked through St. Stephen’s Green, the city’s largest park, a lovely place of ponds, birds, flowers, and trees, which hung heavy with rain. The air was soft and gentle. The Green offers dozens of memorials to well-known locals, including Constance Markievicz (1868-1927), daughter of Irish Arctic explorer Henry Gore Booth.

Gore Booth, fifth baronet of Sligo, provided assistance to starvation victims during the famine of 1878-1880, following the example of his father, Sir Robert Gore Booth. Markievicz helped found Na Fianna Eireann (Soldiers of Ireland) and the Irish Citizen Army. She fought in the Easter Rising of 1916, when the republicans tried to throw out the British, and St. Stephen’s became a battleground. She was sentenced to death, later commuted to life in prison.  In 1918 she was elected to Parliament while in prison and appointed Minister of Labor.

We got more coffee and sat for a while in a warm shop. To escape the dampness we browsed at Aran’s Sweater Market, piled high with heavy wool sweaters, caps, and jackets. A video showed the processing of wool from sheep to shelf. The place was packed with tourists demanding authentic Irish wool, lines at the register stretched the length of the store. Sandy bought a sweater, I got in line.

The air warmed a bit, but the rain kept coming, the tourists pulled up their hoods and tightened their scarves. We circled the block near the college and the Bank of Ireland, built without windows to avoid Britain’s “window tax,” and looked for a ride. So we missed the Little Museum of Dublin and the Museum of Literature. We missed most of the places on our list. But we felt a bit more Irish. We’ll be back.     

September 11, 2023

It was time to go back to the Massanutten Mountains, the roughneck sidekick of sleek Shenandoah National Park. The reason is the running of the Ring, the 71-mile slather of sharp rocks along two 40-mile-long ridges. The Ring, put on by the Virginia Happy Trails Running Club, is held on Labor Day weekend, when it’s hot. The Reverse Ring, the same event in the opposite direction, occurs in late February, when it’s cold.

Mountains may fill the human heart with peace and joy, awe and fear. The pale blue and ghostly white silhouettes on the horizon, nearby or at great distances, prompt thoughts and emotions with power to rip us from our everyday lives. They carry us to a vision of God’s majestic purpose, or paralyze us with foreboding and dread. Men and women struggle to climb and explore hard, unforgiving surfaces and turn them into monuments. They also die on them.  

In the East, the Appalachians is the broad label for the mountain spine that can be split north-south, with Virginia being the splitting point. Everyone has a name for their own: Maryland has the Catoctins, Pennsylvania the Alleghenies and Poconos, New Jersey, the Ramapos, New York, the Catskills and Adirondacks. Then there’s the Berkshires (Mass.), Greens (Vt.), Whites (N.H.), and Mahoosucs (Me.)

In Virginia all that becomes the near-unbroken Blue Ridge, which extends eventually into West Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, and west into the Great Smokies in North Carolina and Tennessee.

Shenandoah National Park, the glamorous nexus of the Blue Ridge, continues from just outside Front Royal roughly to a place called Rockfish Gap, a few miles west of Charlottesville. Shenandoah, forever a setting for postcard and calendar photos, welcomes you with picturesque, manicured trails, overlooks, picnic grounds, souvenir shops, restaurants, and campgrounds. On pretty summer weekends, it can be hard to find parking.

Ten miles west are the Massanuttens, mostly within the George Washington National Forest. The Ring starts at a gravel parking lot below Signal Knob Mountain, the race finish point, a 2,000-foot rise just west of Front Royal. The Massanutten Trail crosses Fort Valley Road (U.S. 678) and Passage Creek and enters a campground called Elizabeth Furnace, the site of a 19th-century stone blast furnace.

The trail is marked by orange “blazes” on treetrunks, many faded and hard to see, the only guidance for the event is “stay on orange.” Along with the orange blazes are blue ones that mark the Tuscarora Trail, which passes east-west. Orange and blue alternate for a while, as if the folks who applied them were trying to save paint. But the point is orange. Persevere, look for it, it’s there.

Beyond Elizabeth Furnace the trail zigzags through thick woods. It curls gently, then climbs to around 2,200 feet of elevation at a spot called High Peak. The rocks build up to an intersection with the Shawl Gap trail. The morning sun gleams over the eastern ridge and lights the forest. The trail rises and falls, then swings eastward to allow a spectacular view of the Shenandoah before turning west into forest for two miles.

Along this stretch a single hiker, a young woman, approached. She smiled as she passed and said she had left Camp Roosevelt, my finish point 25 miles south, a day earlier. She moved on, the forest was silent. I was alone, the others were well ahead. My one complete Ring was in 2016, with the Reverse the next two years. Time wears on the legs and lungs.

The trail slopes for maybe a mile then passes a junction with the pink-blazed Sherman Gap trail, a northwest-inclined downhill back to Elizabeth Furnace and Signal Knob. Orange crosses a stream at a forest clearing called Veach Gap, where the Veach trail picks up and offers another escape to Fort Valley Road. A rough shelter stands just off the trail, a rusted firepit shows the remains of many campfires.

The orange twists a bit then rises up a steep eastbound mile-long straightaway. It then levels out and turns sharply south, the ultimate direction. There the trails split as Tuscarora heads southeast across the South Fork of the Shenandoah River. The blue blazes disappear. Two miles farther along orange is Milford Gap, where volunteers offer water and good words.  Jill stepped forward and waved, and offered me cool water. I sat, we talked a bit. I moved on. The trail passes an intersection with a steep, purple-blazed descent to a place called Indian Grave.

In early afternoon the September sun rises higher, the deep-green panorama of the Shenandoah valley inspires wonder. The trail narrows between long knife-like granite slabs that threaten legs. Three miles farther on Jill and fellow volunteer Michelle caught me. We visited for a few minutes. They held out the prospect of dropping from the course, then left me with gatorade and snacks.

They and others no doubt wondered what I was doing there, sixteen years older than the next-oldest entrant. I wondered myself, although there really was no point. I thought of the chemo and radiation. But it was the Ring, after all, and the orange trail, and its transcendent, mystical, wild power. One morning five years ago, training for the Reverse Ring, I started on orange at Roosevelt and ran and fast-hiked 20 miles to the Indian Grave turnoff and back. I can’t recall how I then tapdanced easily up the climbs that now seem excruciating.

The next stretch seems interminable, the forest thins, the afternoon sun blazes. It’s possible to catch glimpses of farmland and the river far below, glimmering in the mottled light. Ahead, the route is a ragged rock carpet that rises, turns, descends. 

A modest milestone appears, an intersection with an eastbound blue-blazed trail, a sharp descent to a spot along the Shenandoah called Habron Gap. Three miles of orange remain to a junction with the yellow-blazed Stephens trail, which winds down the ridge to Roosevelt, roughly equal to the distance remaining on orange. The sun moved across the sky, the shadows grew longer.

A mile north of Stephens my cell phone beeped, the aid station volunteers expected me hours earlier. After a long day waiting at Roosevelt Sandy was worried. Volunteers Rande and Travis trekked up, we met at the Stephens intersection. Rande handed me gatorade. After twelve hours on orange, we set off at an easy trot down Stephens. Soon daylight faded. We lit headlamps, and finished.