March 13, 2023

It was around 6:00 P.M., the sunlight was fading. The batter crouched, awaiting the pitch. It was outside. He swung at the second one, which was high and again outside. The third was in the dirt. He swung at the next one and connected with the dull clunk! of a metal bat on ball. It bounced sharply past the pitcher and through the infield. A runner on first advanced to second then to third as the center fielder chased the ball to the fence.

Fourteen nine- and ten-year-old boys showed up for practice. They didn’t have uniforms, those would come next month when the season started. This was their second practice together. Drills started in the infield, the coach tapping ground balls. Three boys took turns at each base, a couple at shortstop and between first and second, and one caught throws back to the coach.

This was Country Club Road park, a complex of kids’ baseball and soccer fields off Country Club Road on the fringes of the city. With some effort, the kids’ parents had found the place for the first practice. They sat on the uncomfortable metal bleachers along the third-base line, hunched forward, arms folded against the early evening chill.

The boys started practice horsing around, the coach got them focused. Most fielded the grounders cleanly, more or less, some were muffed or rolled to the outfield. The boy at third who caught the ball threw to the fielder at second, who pivoted and threw to first. Some of the throws were sharp, most were high, looping tosses that didn’t quite get there. These were nine-year-olds, after all, this was their introduction to baseball.

The coach was alone. I guessed he had an assistant who didn’t show up or was alternating with the coach at the twice-weekly practices. Maybe the guy leading the practice was the assistant. He called the players’ names as he knocked the balls toward them and, pointing with the bat, motioned them around their positions.

The kids all had gloves, cleats, batter’s helmets, and metal bats. I recalled faintly that kids in my hometown Little League decades ago wore sneakers, the league provided the helmets and the bats, which were wood. Now the boys are expected to be fully equipped. I wondered what ten-year-olds’ baseball cleats cost. Part of the investment, I guessed. Meanwhile, I’ve noticed on TV that many major league ballplayers are wearing ordinary running shoes.

The sunlight lasted after 6:00, highlighting the deep green of the outfield and the forest beyond the chain-link fence that enclosed the field. The boys playing outfield shaded their eyes with their hands, although several wore caps. The shadows slowly extended out from the infield. Around 6:30 someone switched on the field lights. The boys paid attention. They caught more ground balls, their throws were more accurate. The coach waved his bat like a baton, a conductor in front of his orchestra, moving them to one position, then another.

The parents in the bleachers, mostly moms, watched their sons engaged in the boys’ baseball ritual, chatting a bit about kids and sports. Kids and sports, I’m guessing, now is almost a compound noun. What kids aren’t in something? Soccer—in the fall more than a thousand boys and girls from ages four to 14 play on teams at our local YMCA. The basketball league, in season, has games every weekday evening and all day Saturday. Then football, gymnastics, swimming, softball, tennis. Then the newcomers, hockey, taekwondo, judo, golf. Kids’ sports cost money, the sign-up fees and the gear, the gloves, bats, rackets, shoes, helmets, the hockey sticks, helmets, pads. I’m leaving some things out.

One mother talked about kids’ football in her home town in Alabama. The coaches, she said, made the boys run until some of them threw up. “It’s awful,” she said. “and some of those kids are massive. At least here they play flag football.”

So it’s not all fun and games. I recall some of the fall soccer games, when a few parents shrieked at their kids and at the refs. Some of them, standing on the sidelines as their kids run around the field or sit on the bench, are replaying their own imaginary stardom.

But then the kids are having fun, most of them. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the boys (maybe the percentage is higher than that) we were watching won’t become major league ballplayers. “He’s not going to be the next Sammy Sosa [or other big-league star]. If he’s just an accountant, I’ll be happy,” the mom from Alabama said.

But then there’s the dream. Of these kids running around, throwing, catching, swinging at pitches over their heads or bouncing in front of the plate, some will return to play next year, their skills a bit more advanced. Then maybe the middle-school team. Then high school, where they face the prospect of not making the team, for some, their first real disappointment in life. Do they give up and get back to their schoolwork—or do they practice harder? They’ll hear the stories of high-school players who got to the minor leagues then were called up to the majors and became stars.

Still, as we shifted our positions on those hard-as-rock bleachers, feeling the evening weather close in, the parents relaxed in the moment. Except for the voices of the kids and the whack of the bats against balls, the place was mainly silent, peaceful, almost. Most of the pitches by the boy taking his turn on the mound went over the catcher’s head or through his legs to the backstop, as the batters swung wildly.

A few parents checked their watches. It was after seven, a school night. Some of these boys probably still had homework, most had not yet had dinner, then would need a bath before bed. They were elementary-schoolers, after all. But for that 90 minutes at that ballfield on the far outskirts of town, the world retreated a bit. For the kids, the tests and homework, the bells starting class, the lines in the lunchroom, were replaced by fun outdoors in late-day sunshine.

For the parents, too, practice was a few moments of light-hearted pleasure that suspended the daily parenting drill, the chores, the commuting, the bills, the job—the rest of life. It was, or it seemed, in this corner of this southeastern state, a bit of the “Boys of Summer” when, in their memories, on a warm, sun-drenched afternoon at some big ballpark, the shirt-sleeved crowd roared as their star homered, driving in runs, circling the bases. It’s baseball

March 6, 2023

The Belmont Bay community begins maybe a mile beyond a left-hand turn off Dawson Beach Road, a gritty commercial street in Woodbridge, east of U.S. 1 and the Virginia Railway Express depot. The place is more or less isolated from the auto repair shops and tiny bungalows of the Dawson Beach neighborhood by fields and scrub woods.

Ten days ago we sat on a bench and stared out past the marina and across the water. It was mid-afternoon, near 80F, the sky a hazy August blue. The sunlight shimmered on the glass-calm bay. A mile across the water, on a deep-green neck of land, two enormous homes perched near the shore. Beyond the row of sleek schooners, their sails tied and tucked, a couple of yachts tacked to the Potomac. I recalled my mother’s advice when I was a kid: “If you ever have money, buy a boat.”

Belmont Bay is a golf/waterfront/retirement village of giant single-family homes, townhomes, and condominiums, designed to mimic West End London or Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown. Apart from the golf course only a few near-invisible businesses, a doctor’s office, a yoga studio, that sort of thing, are allowed.

A few cars eased past the Harbor View East and Harbor View West condo towers. A half-dozen older folks strolled near our bench. The quiet seemed to create an eerie, almost surreal distance from the droning traffic warfare and the staccato workplace pace of the Washington Beltway.

This Northern Virginia trip had a point. Friends and the Massanutten Mountains are still there. In northwestern South Carolina, five hundred miles south, we packed and left at dawn.  

We glided past Mount Mitchell, the tallest peak east of the Mississippi, in the shadows of the eastern Great Smokies, to Erwin, Tennessee. The Choo-Choo Café had closed. Instead we got breakfast at the Dari-Ace off the Erwin exit, beneath the mountains ten miles south of Johnson City. We sat with seven local men at a U-shaped counter. The conversation hinted at driving trucks for TVA or local utilities, technical talk mixed with chitchat. TVA has a lot going on in East Tennessee. The bacon sizzled on the fryer. We finished our eggs and hit the road.

It was I-26 to I-81 to I-64 to Charlottesville. I missed the exit by seven miles. We backtracked then chugged through the local rush hour. Two hours later we reached the Lake Ridge cascade of subdivisions in Woodbridge in eastern Prince William County. The local streets still were choked.

It was a moment of strange events, the dueling Putin-Biden speeches, Biden’s incandescent visit to Kyiv four days before the war’s one-year mark. With Zelensky he walked ancient streets that now are missile targets.

We made it to our old church for the evening Ash Wednesday Mass. Downstairs, the bare sheetrock, the paint dust, the construction tape of the latest renovation signaled the obliteration of the place we knew. We looked around the once-again spruced-up church, full of strangers. It had been two years. I guessed everyone our age had followed us out of town.

The priest spoke about people who—he said—say they don’t want to act like the hypocrites who go to church. “I see a lot of hypocrites out there,” he said. “At least you’re showing up, making the effort.” The faces around me looked puzzled. It was a tortured point. I couldn’t recognize the hypocrites. We left early.

The memories were faint and a bit sad, summoning Thomas Wolfe’s moodiness when he picked the name for You Can’t Go Home Again, complied from the millions of words he left his publisher when he died at 38. So much the same, so much different, in clumsy, awkward ways.

We had visited Belmont Bay a couple of times years ago and once walked through a condo for sale. The pseudo-old-world architecture hinted at the idea of a soft landing near water, away from the Woodbridge dreck. “Upscale” was the word that we thought would spiffy up our lowbrow tastes. We knew we were not a fit. I never did buy the boat.

Looking out over the still water, the attraction of the place and others restricted by membership covenants or net worth dawned on us. What some old folks and eccentric younger ones want from this is a hideout within the fantasy of not being bothered. The wide stretch of water, not especially pretty, the gigantic brick and concrete structures, the narrow one-way streets between the retirement towers whisper, “This place is for well-off recluses.”

We learned that a good man passed last Saturday evening. Ed Kelleher, for 32 years an editor for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, was a much-loved newspaperman who had a half-dozen years on me. “He deeply cared about people,” said one of his colleagues. “His kindness and empathy were at the core of what made him a great journalist and co-worker.” He lived and wrote his stories in his hometown, close to people he loved.

We brought home new wisdom: no hiding out in fake places. The passing of a compassionate man and the tolling rush of time sharpens understanding: hold those you love close wherever you find adventure in existence, what you have left. The rough-edged neighborhood we left was a sensible place for a long time but whatever the landing place, discovery, passion, goodness still are possible to the end.

We unpacked. I walked out the kitchen door and looked at the yard. It was early evening, the sun was starting to sink beyond the roofs of neighbors’ homes. Nothing had changed: lawn furniture blown over in a storm, weeds spreading bright and green, a chunk of the back fence broken. I went back inside. Here, we’ll go on.   

February 27, 2023

The runners arriving at the Milford Gap aid station were exhausted, cold, bleary-eyed. Sarah, the station team lead, had prepared tasty, wood-fired pizza, they devoured it and guzzled water. It was a crystal-clear early morning, but really still the middle of the night. The stars and a quarter moon glowed in the mountain sky. We let the runners sit for a few minutes, checked their condition, then sent them north on the Massanutten Trail.

The team arrived at the station site mid-afternoon the previous day. Sarah picked up Stephanie, Mike, and Keith, all Milford Gap veterans, in Washington. She then stopped for me at a post office on Fort Valley Road, which runs through the eastern and western ridges of Virginia’s Massanutten range from Strasburg to Luray. We took a side road due east towards the ridge for maybe three miles. She found the trail intersection, pulled forward, and backed up the trail for a couple of hundred yards, nestling the car against the hillside on the passenger’s side. I shimmied out on the driver’s side.

We hauled the folding table, portable stove, utensils, food, water, and bottles of Sarah’s choice of wines a steep half-mile up the Milford Gap trail. Larry, a team member who lives nearby, had erected a canopy and cut a couple of cords of firewood. We set up, Mike got the fire going.

This was for the Reverse Ring, a strange, 71-mile trail run held the last weekend of February by the Virginia Happy Trails Running Club. Milford Gap is an obscure place among many obscure places in the George Washington National Forest along the orange-blazed Massanutten Trail. Sarah had established the Milford station at the site eight years ago, roughly equidistant from the 45-mile aid-station at Camp Roosevelt and the finish at Signal Knob mountain, the northernmost point in the Massanuttens.

About 15 runners started the race at 6:00 AM Saturday. Ten stepped back on the trail that evening at Roosevelt for the 12 miles to Milford. We waited. Hours passed, the temperature dropped into the thirties, maybe twenties. Sitting near the fire we could see our breath. Sarah cooked the pizzas on the hot coals and passed them around. It was my birthday, she handed me the first slices. “Happy birthday,” everyone said with a smile.

We talked about trailrunning, family, work, health, got to know each other better. I recalled my last Reverse Ring in 2018, when I arrived at Milford around 2:00 AM, out of water and close to dehydration. The team refueled me and pointed me at the trail. “Stay on orange,” Sarah said, or something like that. The trail forks just below the station, a wrong turn would take the runner on a dangerous down-mountain trek into oblivion. I stumbled but got the turn right and finished in daylight.

Back in the moment I looked up and down the trail and recognized the gradual dip from the north into the station, the slight bend to the south. I trekked south out of camp a few hundred yards, feeling the strain on my out-of-shape lungs and legs. The trail climbed gently and curled west, then east, just as I remembered it. The forest was silent. We still were hours from seeing runners.

Around 10:00 PM we saw the gleam of a headlamp in the darkness. Our first runner arrived in good shape. We fed and refueled him, he thanked us and trotted down the trail. Close to an hour passed, a second customer showed up. More time passed, we fed the fire and looked up the dark trail. Two more showed up and stayed longer.

The Reverse Ring wears on the human body. The cold, the rocks, the wilderness solitude, the relentless climbing can break the spirit. Sarah kept making her pizzas. We shivered, nodded, closed our eyes. Sketchy data showed up on Mike’s cellphone. Runners Kathleen, Barry and his pacer, and Marty still were out there.

We stared at the dark trail. A light appeared, veteran trailrunner Kathleen glided in. She ate a bit, refueled, closed her eyes for a moment, then rose and headed out. An hour passed, we saw two lights moving slowly and heard voices. Barry and his pacer strolled in and took seats. They visited a while, thanked us, and disappeared.

“Marty!” we called. Where’s Marty? I didn’t pick up on the reference. Around 3:30 AM he appeared out of the night, striding softly. He was an old friend whom I had known for years with the club, had run with many times, until we packed up and moved away. He grinned and sprawled in a chair. “Give my best to Sandy,” he whispered. We talked a bit. He didn’t want food, but took water and stumbled into the darkness.

Things rush back. My birthday, once again on Reverse Ring weekend, the fifth anniversary of my last day and night in this place: the immortal, unchanging rock-choked trail, the dark ridges, the bright sky, the night lights against the Shenandoahs in the distance.

The hardness of the Massanutten range in winter settles in the mind and the heart.  I turned away from staring into the forest. The team was breaking camp. We put out the fire, packed the gear, the lighting, the odds and ends. It was 4:00 AM. We snapped on our headlamps and slogged down the Milford trail.             

February 20, 2023

Our parish is pushing to build a columbarium, to be called “Columbarium Garden.”  It will consist of six structures on the parish grounds, each containing 84 “niches” for a total of 504. A niche would accommodate one or two urns containing “cremains” of license holders.

The church has asked interested parishioners to purchase a license by late March, $10,000 for the dual niche, $5,000 for the single, payable upfront in full. The church needs the commitments, and the cash, for 100 dual licenses or the equivalent of single and dual licenses in value to award a construction contract.

The parish announced three informational meetings a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t pay attention. Sandy wanted to go, thinking ahead, as usual. 

Who thinks about death? That is, how on this earth you’ll be disposed of. We’re all reminded to make a will and do the associated paperwork, the advanced medical directive and so on. Funeral directors and the administrative people at cemeteries think about the business side—death is their business. So do churches that want to set up columbarians.

So apart from the philosophical/spiritual and the business side, there’s the question, where to end up. Until just now I’d never thought about it, life itself is overwhelming. I’ve been to the columbarium at Arlington National Cemetery, where veterans rest. The niches come in a range of  sizes. You can get roomy ones for two or more urns, or singles the size of a dresser drawer.

My parents and younger brother all are buried in traditional graves in a Catholic cemetery in New Jersey, a short drive from where they lived for most of their lives. It’s a serene, beautiful place. We drove to Jersey in August and visited their graves. It had been five years. But most of the remaining family moved hundreds of miles away.

Sandy’s family has a plot in the cemetery in her hometown of Cowan, Tennessee, at the foot of the Cumberland Plateau. A few years ago we stopped at the cemetery, a quiet, lovely spot. Only her grandparents and a couple of long-departed aunts and uncles repose there. Her parents and older brother are in a veterans’ cemetery 100 miles away in Nashville.

I don’t see us going to the Jersey cemetery. Sandy’s siblings moved away years ago, they’re not interested in the Cowan gravesites. That leaves two sites unclaimed but paid for. How about Cowan, I asked, half-kidding. She didn’t care for the idea, not at all. No one would ever come to visit us, she said. My answer: we wouldn’t know that and wouldn’t care.

For some folks, cremation allows flexibility, no earthly real estate required. We released a cousin’s ashes into the surf in Florida, within seconds they disappeared into the waves, into immortality. Scattering ashes on private property generally requires the owner’s permission.

Traditional Catholic teaching used to oppose cremation, holding that the deceased body remains, spiritually, the temple of the soul, and should not be shaken from a box to fly off in the air on a mountaintop, into a lake, or your backyard. In recent years, the rules have been modified to allow cremation. Still, the cremated remains, like a body buried in a coffin, must have an intact physical resting place, not including your mantel.

We went to the third meeting and picked up the brochure. Probably fifty or sixty folks showed up. Like us, most were up there in years. A few forward-thinking fifty-somethings attended.

A volunteer made the pitch. The background, he said, is that the parish purchased some land adjacent to the church grounds to avoid it being occupied by a 7-11, a gas station, or a McDonald’s. Then the idea came up. Other Catholic churches around the city already have established columbariums. An “opportunity survey” got 132 positive responses. The church got the go-ahead from the diocesan HQ in Charleston and hired an architect.

The volunteer called on a local funeral director who briefed the process. State law requires a cremation authorization certificate. The family can have the traditional viewing of the deceased in a coffin followed by a Mass or other funeral service, followed by cremation and interring in the niche. A variation: the body is cremated first, the deceased attends the service in his or her urn prior to being interred.

The session had its moments. The volunteer stressed the somewhat elusive fact that the columbarian “opportunity” was being offered but not pushed. “We’re not saying, ‘wanna get cremated—we’ve got a spot for you,’” he said. “The niche is a permanent resting place for those who chose this option.”

The crowd had questions: What if you buy now then move away and change your mind, was one. “You write a letter, within 30 days the church may agree to refund the money, minus an administrative fee,” the volunteer said. If it doesn’t, you’re free to resell.

“So the church needs a million dollars by late March,” someone yelled. “That’s about right,” the volunteer said. He added that the church knows the 504 niches won’t be sold by March.

Lots of things come up for us, one being cost. The volunteer cited ballpark costs for other local columbarians, some were higher, others a tad lower. “We’re trying to thread the needle on cost,” he said. Then too, the $10,000/$5,000 is the current pricetag. Down the road it probably will be $12,000/$7,000. Like buying a car or renovating your kitchen. Everything goes up.

We saw some artist’s concepts. The columbarian will go in a pretty, wooded end of the property, with a small fountain in the center, an altar at one end, a nice walkway leading from the church. The six structures will be aligned, three on each side of a wide plaza-like space. There’s room for expansion, too.

The structures will be cut from high-grade Canadian granite. I thought of photos of German pillboxes at Normandy. Not much artistry needed for 84 niches.

Are we ready for this? Are we in this town for eternity? I’ve got another birthday this week, they’re piling up, along with medical care stretching out to the crack of doom, ha-ha. Looks that way, anyway.  What about the veterans’ cemetery over in Anderson? We could drive over. Just to look.

February 13, 2023

U.S. 11 curls southwest from Chesnee, in the remote north-central corner of South Carolina, through nearly empty country down to Lake Hartwell on the Georgia state line. It ends when the asphalt runs out at a red clay hill at the east side of an I-85 overpass.

The South Saluda River separates from the North and the Middle Saluda in the state’s northern tier and flows along Rte. 11, then turns south. At one point along the north side of the highway near Table Rock State Park the shoulder widens for parking. A cutout on the south side allows room for a half-dozen cars. Fishermen try for trout in the swift-flowing river that the state stocks a couple of times a year. In good weather all the spaces may be taken.

I had passed the spot many times, but until that afternoon never stopped. I parked at the cutout and walked into the woods, then through the underbrush to the river. A woman in a Carolina jacket stood next to the water waving a fishing rod, preparing to cast. I stopped and watched, she leaned forward and heaved her line a few feet into the current.

“Any luck?” I asked. She turned towards me. She had soft features, gentle, bright eyes, short gray hair. Her jacket descended below her waist to her faded blue jeans. I guessed she was around fifty.

“No, sir. My husband and I just got here. He’s downstream aways. We saw the state fisheries truck stop here to stock trout, so we said, ‘let’s try here.’ We’ve fished in lots of these creeks. I do it to relax. It relaxes me.” Her voice had the twangy lilt of the mint-julep South, Georgia or Alabama, instead of the Appalachian Southern accent I’m used to.

She reeled in and cast again, the bait flew off the hook and landed on the ground behind her.

“You lost your bait,” I said. The red salmon egg stood out against the dirt.

“I think I’ll try worms,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t really care if I catch anything. It relaxes me.” She lowered the rod and looked up the river in both directions.

“Good luck,” I called and turned away.

“Thank you, sir, have a wonderful day, sir.” She smiled and nodded.

I walked a couple of hundred yards down a trail that followed the river, but didn’t see anyone. I wondered if she was alone and mentioned the husband as a kind of security measure. In several places the underbrush had been stomped down to allow access to the water. I stepped onto the bank. The river flowed quickly, the surface smooth, rippling over snagged driftwood, the water so clear I could see the bottom, six or eight feet deep. I headed back to the road, but looked behind me. The woman stood on the bank, holding her rod stiffly in the air.

The parking area was empty. The spot was silent except for the occasional passing car. It was at that moment a kind of retreat, along a rural road through thick forest, a place of solitude in the middle of nowhere or close to it, at least 20 miles from the nearest town.

This strange place somehow detached me for a short while from the hardness of the rest of the world, from sadness and tragedy. Ukrainians are fighting a brutal war. The earthquake in Turkey and Syria has killed thousands. Biden in his State of the Union didn’t mention it. He squabbled with Republicans who hated everything he said except “stand up for seniors!”

The U.S 11 cutoff isn’t scenic or lovely. On the north side is a marker for the Wildcat Wayside Wilderness, one of those off-the-map recreation points for passersby looking for something to do in the middle of a long trip. Beyond the sign a trail rises steeply up the mountainside and turns into dark forest.

As I started along the trail a spell of late-winter warmth and humidity passed through. The trail weaved upward along a creek, bounded by heavy rocks. The trees were bare, the rush of the water echoed softly. The earth became moist and muddy.

The trail wound for a mile through thick growth to a high ledge below a drizzling waterfall, the water falling over massive boulders and cascading into the creek.  From the waterfall the trail circles back to the road. Usually in these places you see other explorers, young adults, old adults, children, searching for whatever nature offers. Today, no one.

It was mid-afternoon, but the sun already had faded behind heavy gray overcast. The woods had become gloomy and strange, the way the South, and Southerners, sometimes become gloomy and strange.

In the eerie half-light the place called to mind “Deliverance,” the James Dickey book and movie about raw savagery in mountain hillbilly Georgia, which is not far from Wildfire Wayside. The culture of a place will set in. It was a half-dozen nights ago that in the Capitol some members of Congress, one of them the woman from North Georgia, showed off their coarseness of mind by cursing at Biden.

I struggled with that thought. As I hoofed it down the trail I wondered about the woman at the river. What did she think when she heard me approach behind her? Did the fishing bring a sense of serenity and comfort or like me, the images of “Deliverance?” Was she, alone in the woods, a bit nervous?

Mysteries of humanity, of our state of being, rise and pursue us. In remote places, things seem to come together or break apart. The hard, rocky roughness of the woods brought to mind the people in the House Chamber who shouted and cursed during the Biden speech, unfolding the “Deliverance” metaphor in that distant dimension.  

Then I thought of the woman with her fishing rod, her soft bearing, her compassionate eyes, her delicate, musical accent. I inhaled the rich aroma of the woods as it grew dim in late afternoon, feeling the mildness of the late-winter Southern air, the emptiness of the place, which can be ominous or sublime. I stepped from the trail into the fading light.