October 20, 2025

Ten kids, both boys and girls, went through their warm-up runs up and down the gym floor. They lined up to jump on a foot-high platform, then pulled on their fencing jackets and masks and picked up their foils.

They sat on the floor and watched as Coach demonstrated the “number 6 parry,” the maneuver for the day. He waved his foil in a circle then lunged forward as if to stick an opponent. Then he called a couple of the kids up to try it. They stood ten feet apart, left hands behind their backs, raised their foils, advanced, and lunged at each other. The foils made a sharp tinny noise as they clashed.

We were not exactly watching Tyrone Power and Basil Rathbone in The Mark of Zorro (1935) or Errol Flynn in Captain Blood (1935) or The Sea Hawk (1940). Well, not right away, the kids looked to be pre-teen at most. Our grandson Patrick, who was clashing foils with the rest, is about to turn nine.

Fencing wasn’t a kids’ sport when I was a kid, nor when our kids were growing up. We had baseball, football, and basketball. Soccer arrived later, two of our girls played. Now there’s softball, tennis, flag football, golf, lacrosse, rugby. Some schools offer archery. And, I just learned, fencing.

Fencing, a popular sport worldwide, evolved from man-to-man combat with swords. I read that competitive fencing emerged in Italy in the 16th century when Filippo Dardi started a school for fencing at the University of Bologna. Early fencing training focused on military skills. In 1763, a man named Dominico Angelo opened a fencing school in London to teach swordsmanship to wealthy young men to train them for dueling. He also stressed the fitness benefits of footwork and lunging.

In 1891 a group of hobbyist fencers set up the Amateur Fencing League of America or AFLA in New York. In 1896 fencing became an Olympic sport. A fencing club was established in England in 1902, and another in France in 1906. In 1940 the U.S Olympic Committee named the AFLA the national governing body for fencing in the U.S.

The Olympic competitors use the foil, a lightweight weapon with a small handguard to protect the fingers; the epee, a heavier instrument with a larger handguard; and the saber, a larger cutting and thrusting weapon. Foils target only the torso. The epee can be used to touch the arms and legs, and sabers are used to attack the entire body.

Fencers wear form-fitting jackets, underarm protectors, mesh masks, and gloves for the fencing hand. Girls and women wear chest protectors.

The kids I watched at Foothills Fencing Academy used foils. This was Fencing 102, they already had finished Fencing 101, the basics. The students sat on the floor in their jackets while the coach demonstrated the thrusting and lunging I had seen years ago in The Three Musketeers.

Older folks have seen or at least heard of the classic “swashbuckler” movies starring the greats, Douglas Fairbanks, Flynn, Rathbone, Power, and others. Less ancient films would be Pirates of the Caribbean and remakes of The Three Musketeers and Robin Hood.

Swordfighting isn’t seen much in the movies these days. Actors (and some actresses) who showed off dueling skills in films are now mostly forgotten. Robert Shaw, the menacing boat captain in Steven Spielberg’s 1975 blockbuster Jaws, was a swashbuckler in The Buccaneers, a British TV series in the 1950s.

My awareness of fencing has been limited pretty much to the movies and snippets from the Olympics. I recall a possibly apocryphal story about the last battle of the notorious pirate Edward Teach, also known Blackbeard, in the long-ago year of 1718. The colonial governor of Virginia sent a contingent of Royal Navy sailors after him. They boarded Blackbeard’s ship and attacked his crew of pirates armed with lightweight, whiplike rapiers.

The pirates wielded heavy cutlasses and slashed away at the sailors, who parried and lunged with their light weapons. When a pirate shifted his ten-pound cutlass from one tired hand to the other, the sailor he was dueling lunged and killed him with his epee-like rapier, which proved to be the superior weapon. The battle was the end for Blackbeard and his men.

That sort of oddball anecdote is pretty remote from Fencing 102. But then the kids lunged and parried, just like the sailors, just like Flynn and Fairbanks.

You may have missed fencing in the 2024 Olympics in Paris, but of course it’s on the internet. The competition was intense, with the athletes showing amazing speed, footwork, and grace. As partisan crowds cheered, Oh Sanguk of South Korea defeated Tunisia’s Fares Ferjani 15-11 in saber for the gold, leaving Ferjani with the silver. Luigi Samele of Italy won bronze.

Fencing for kids, and not just for kids, is light-years removed from historical trivia. Foothills holds classes five days a week, including sessions with the foil, epee, and saber. Student fencers can get private lessons and attend fencing camp. They can move on to more intensive classes and competition.

Fencing academies are teaching kids in big cities and small towns nationwide. The fencing club at a local high school is staging a meet next week. South Carolina Junior Olympic Qualifiers is next month. Events are going on for juniors, cadets, and veterans, including combined teams.

In a few weeks Patrick and probably lots of his fencing classmates will be playing basketball in the YMCA league. They’ll have to get to practices and games, on top of homework. Some will drift away from fencing. They’ll still be able to lunge and parry and yell “En Garde!” But then, maybe some will be inspired to persevere, put in the hours and years of training to excel. Korea’s Oh Sanguk should watch out.

October 13, 2025

An uncle suddenly passed, the last of six siblings. Ed McVey, at 88, outlived his last-departed sister by a decade, my mother, the eldest of the six, by nearly two decades, his youngest brother by 23 years. The obituary, created by his three daughters, my cousins, was appropriately beautiful.

Not long ago, Ed was playing golf in California sunshine. But a few months back he said, “It’s tough getting old.”

In the past year we’ve lost six, siblings, in-laws, cousins, all in their seventies or eighties. In nine months we probably drove two thousand miles to funerals and farewells. Then too, the farther you look back, the higher the numbers. There were more older folks, always closer to the end.

Then there are the heartrending tragedies, the young and middle-aged taken suddenly, who should have stayed much longer. An eighteen-year-old nephew, Rusty Hager, died in a motorcycle accident on Christmas Eve 2001. Ten years ago my brother Bob died at 59 after fighting hyper-aggressive cancer for six months.

We feel, even physically, the intensity of loss. Then the hospitals, the funeral homes, the churches, the institutions that deal with mortality, offer their procedures and rituals that for a moment distract from the pain: the viewings, the services, the eulogies. The rituals enable grief and support it. Things must be done, words spoken, bills paid.

The individual, the parent, child, brother, sister, in his or her uniqueness, then emerges. He or she creates or contributes to indelible moments in the life of the family in certain times and places. Death creates history. We look back at his or her place in our lives, how we or others were affected or changed.

Ed McVey grew up in the New York borough of Queens. He married Sue, a Long Island girl. This was around 1960. Within a week of the wedding, saying nothing to anyone, they packed up and moved to California. Ed didn’t have a job. They settled around Los Angeles. In time they figured things out. Three girls were born.

Over the decades he moved forward in his career in finance. He became a senior vice president at Franklin Templeton and, his daughters write, “lived with energy and joy.” He kept in touch with the East Coast family, he would call, we would call. My brother, sisters, and I all visited. In 2006 Sandy and I and our kids flew out for the wedding of Ed’s and Sue’s youngest daughter Holly.

Sue passed in 2011. I flew out for the funeral and offered a eulogy at the Mass.

Ed was a man of deep faith, who earned a degree in philosophy and studied at divinity school. He always had stories, of growing up in New York in the ‘40s and ‘50s, one of six kids of a single mother; later he told stories of the girls’ adventures, work experiences, the places they lived. He traveled often to Ireland and obtained dual citizenship.

Another Ed, Ed Kelleher, the father of a friend, passed a couple of years ago. I didn’t know him but learned something of the tenor of his remarkable life. He also was father to three daughters, and grandfather to six grandchildren.

Ed served in the Air Force and Air National Guard and for a while worked for the Pacific Daily News on Guam. For 32 years he was an editor for The Richmond News Leader and later The Richmond Times-Dispatch, and wrote probably thousands of opinion columns and news stories. After retiring he wrote stories for the award-winning newsletter of the Richmond Road Runners Club.

He went through difficult cancer therapies before passing at 79. On his obituary site a co-worker wrote: “he was a joy to work with.” Editor and Publisher, a trade journal, reported that “colleagues … remember a man who had an uncanny ability to focus on what mattered most at the moment, while never losing sight of everything else he had to do in the intense, deadline-driven world of a daily newspaper.”

He was a writer, but also created stories that always will be precious to his girls and others who knew him.

The so-called “Anna Karenina” principle about families lingers in the background of all of our lives. It’s the Tolstoy sentence, the first line of his massive classic: “All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

The happiness or unhappiness of families is revealed in the lives of individual family members, parents and children, in-laws, aunts and uncles. The past year of loss brought us to that inevitable next stage, recalling the broad themes of lives through intimate details.

Sister-in-law Kay passed last December. Forty-five years ago I sat with her in a hospital cafeteria late on the night of the birth of our first daughter. Sandy was being prepped for delivery. Kay had just had her first child. We talked. It was a brief but a calming moment.

The years flew by. We moved away, we saw Kay maybe once a year. Twenty-two years later, on Christmas Eve 2001 we struggled with the agony of Rusty’s death, pain that still returns at Christmas. Kay became ill in early December, we jumped in the car. We arrived 45 minutes after she passed. Others who were there said she whispered, “I’m going to be with Rusty.”  

Such anecdotes are in their own way both intimate and eloquent. Families preserve and treasure them, and place them, maybe unconsciously, in the hierarchy of family history.

The stories of the two Eds echo infinitely in the histories of their families who, with all of those they touched in their lives, preserve them forever. We all are destined for our place in the memories of those we love, who love us. We look back at the lives of those now gone and see their place in our own lives in both joy and pain. We learn from them, and move forward.  

October 6, 2025

The two men sat in the truck, outfitted in their chest-high waders, watching the southern Idaho weather. The Teton River flowed silently and swiftly a few yards away. They heard thunder cracking and saw flickers of lightening. Dark clouds massed overhead, raindrops plunked on the windshield. A thunderstorm is bad news for wading and waving a fly rod. They waited.

A half-hour passed. The clouds moved east, the rain slackened to a drizzle. They climbed from the truck and moved to the bank, stepped into the river and leaned forward against the current. They eased into thigh-deep water, felt a cold rush, then moved slowly forward.

The younger man was the veteran. He had fished this spot, called Horseshoe Bridge, a dozen times, and others along the Teton. He had fished many rivers around the West, in Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, California, New Mexico. He had fished in Yellowstone, sometimes hiking six miles to isolated spots where bears wandered. He had the tools, the rods, the cold-weather clothing, the knowledge. He tied his own flies, dry for surface fishing, wet for below surface.

The older man had never fished with a fly rod. He had fished as a boy with his father, mostly saltwater, back East. As a teenager he had done some bait fishing. Fifteen years ago he had taken his son on a fishing trip to Canada, an unforgettable experience. He had taken his young grandsons fishing once or twice, with no luck. Now they played sports and did other things.

For this outing he listened and watched for thirty minutes as the younger man coached him on dry land, demonstrating the fly-casting motion. “You use the weight of the line to carry the fly,” the young man explained. He missed a dozen tries before finally making a few short casts.

At a quarter-mile upstream the two men paused. Here the river was bounded by thick brush and woodland on the east bank, a broad pasture on the western side. A few cows grazed the pasture. The Grand Teton range, tinted pale gold in faint sunlight, rose to the east.

“We may see a moose,” the younger man said. “There are a few in these woods who have lost their fear of humans. They come through the brush for water.”  

He stared across the river. “The fish rise to the surface for bugs. You can see the little circles they make.” He stood still, casting his eyes upriver. The older man squinted in the same direction. He saw only the ripples in the current.

The younger man pointed out over the water. “There’s a fish, did you see it? Look over at that stretch of eroded bank. There’s a couple of bushes just to the left. Fish are breaking the surface. They’re feeding. Let’s try here.”

He opened his fly case and selected a bug and tied it to the leader on the older man’s line, using a clinch knot, and clipped the ends. “We’ll try dry flies. This is called a Parachute Adams. Fish rise for it.” He tied a similar fly to his own leader and moved a couple of hundred feet farther upstream. The older man played some line from his reel with his left hand, raised his right arm, and flicked his wrist to cast. The line dropped into the water about five feet from the rod’s tip. He frowned.

He recalled the younger man’s coaching: wave, or “mend” the line forward, drift, then cast again. Unlike bait fishing from a bank or boat, when the fisherman can toss his hook and wait, fly fishing is continuous movement. The young man had warned, “A bug in the water doesn’t make a wake.”

He lifted his rod, pulling the line back, and cast again. The wet line flew out maybe eight or ten feet. He mended, waving the rod tip up and down and let the fly drift with the current for a moment. No fish rose for it. He pulled the line in and cast again, mended, drifted, and cast. He developed a rhythm, sending the fly a few feet farther with each cast.

The younger man yelled, “Got one!” The older man turned and watched as his partner expertly played the fish. As it broke the surface the younger man raised his rod tip, pulled his net from his backpack and scooped up the fish. The older man waded over to look. The fish, about 12 inches long, flapped in the net. “It’s a brown trout,” the young man said. “See the speckle pattern?” With a quick motion he released the fish.

A few moments later he yelled again, and reeled in another brown trout. Again he released it.

“Let’s try a wet fly,” he said. He removed the dry fly from the older man’s line and replaced it with a Flashback Pheasant Tail. “This imitates a nymph that lives near the bottom. We’ll cast downstream and let the current take the line. It’s easier, less maneuvering the rod.”

He moved back upstream. The older man faced downstream, flicked his wrist and cast the wet fly at a 45-degree angle to the current. The line plunked on the surface and disappeared. He mended with an up-and-down motion, then let the line drift. He cast again. As he lifted the rod he felt a sharp tug. The rod tip bent. He felt it again. He raised the tip, feeling drag. “I’ve got one!” he yelled.

He reeled, still feeling weight on the line. Then nothing. The rod tip went slack. He kept reeling until he saw the fly. No fish. Whatever had tugged on his fly had shaken free. Smart fish, he thought.

The clouds moved back overhead, rain sprinkled the river surface. On the far bank a cow climbed down the bank and drank. He stared at the fishermen then wandered off. The older man focused on getting his casts right, wrist at shoulder height, quick motion forward, mend, let the line drift, cast again. He felt no bites, but it didn’t matter. The silence of the place, the swift-flowing water, the majestic Tetons mattered. The time with the younger man mattered.

The older man felt the serenity, the rhythm of the afternoon, cast, mend, drift, cast. The line drifted through the ripples. He pulled it back and cast again, then again. Why had he waited so long to try this? Why had he waited so long to do other things? You barely notice time passing, years passing, he thought. Make the best of it. All we can do, he told himself.

The sky grew dark, evening gathered. A gentle breeze rose. The older man watched the ripples and eddies take his line. He felt confident about his casting, now sending his line high and far, nearly to the center of the river.

The younger man called, “Let me know when you’re ready. I can do this all day.” The surface of the river had darkened, reflecting the sky. The older man felt comfortable tossing the fly out, even if the fish weren’t fooled. It didn’t matter. He looked up at the younger man. “I guess we’re done for today.” The young man nodded and pulled in his line. They turned and moved downstream.  

September 29, 2025

The 60 or so miles from the Idaho Falls airport to Alta is flat, mostly pasture and brush. The Grand Tetons rise to the east. We chugged into Driggs, Idaho, center of the Teton Valley, on the local highway, U.S. 33, which becomes the main street. Then it’s six miles across the state line on winding gravel roads to Kathleen’s and Steve’s place.

Kathleen, our youngest, and Steve got married in May. They love mountains, forests, trails, ski slopes, crystal-clear trout streams. They’re OK with the three or four feet of snow and stretches of subzero cold they get here. The payback is the soaring Teton peaks, the glowing stands of aspens, the crisp air of high altitudes, the overwhelming presence of nature.

After getting to their place in Alta we walked a bit with Charlie, their Great Pyrenees/Plott Hound mix, along the pastures. A couple of gorgeous jet-black horses, curious, trotted over to the fence and stared serenely at Charlie, who stared back. They seemed to know each other. Kathleen patted their noses.

Sandy and I drove past Driggs a dozen years ago, a road trip from Breckenridge, Colo., to Ennis, Mont. You see the sign, blink, and you’re past it. It’s a business junction for the area potato farmers, but also a gateway to the Tetons and the Targhee ski resort on the Wyoming side. Kathleen and Steve can see the ski trails from their east-facing deck.

The majestic Tetons overpower the valley. Long hills rise to the mountains covered in aspen, now golden at their fall foliage peak. The stunning beauty of the place has in recent years brought in an affluent crowd, skiers and well-off nature lovers and retirees who bought farm properties, inflating prices on both the Wyoming and Idaho sides. Medium housing costs are above a half-million.

Driggs is a business town, heavy equipment and construction mostly, warehouses, small machine shops. There isn’t much else for miles across the flat plains to the mountain ridges that surround Teton Valley. The Tetons and the ski resort are the draw that keeps the town lively even through the deep winters.

Downtown is busy, traffic backs up on weekday mornings. Main Street has the Teton Center, which combines city hall and a Seniors Center with a museum that offers brochures on the local attractions, skiing, hiking, fishing, camping. Driggs has a natural foods store, a dozen restaurants, a chic coffee shop called “Wydaho,” a small hospital where Katheen, an R.N., works.

We walked through a farmer’s market, booths set up along Main Street selling vegetables and fruit but also the eclectic mix of stuff found at upscale farmer’s markets, locally made jewelry, artwork, casual clothing. I didn’t see the mass-manufactured teeshirts with Bible verses or the scented candles from China offered at last week’s Cowan, Tenn., festival.

For the fun of it we had lunch at the Seniors Center, free for Sandy and me, underage Kathleen and Steve paid six bucks. The big room was filled with oldsters socializing. We picked up sandwiches and sat with a couple of guys, Steve, originally from Houston, and Michael, who wore a “garlicologist” shirt. He and his wife sold home-grown garlic at the farmer’s market.

Michael said he was from Connecticut. His odyssey to Driggs was the usual kind, worked here and there, moved around, finally looked for peace and quiet. “Just about everyone you meet here is from someplace else,” he said, grinning.

Everyone was in a good mood, as seniors usually are; we stayed for five games of bingo. A cheerful guy, Jack, called the numbers as the ladies at the dozen tables chatted. He cracked jokes when they asked him to repeat himself. The winners were thrilled, we came up empty.

Amid the friendliness, no mistake: this is a tiny spot, a blip on the vast map of the Mountain West. On the Wyoming side, Alta is an unincorporated place, a tiny school, fire station, and library, but no stores, no sidewalks. Just east of the last homestead is Bureau of Land Management wilderness and the Targhee National Forest, which stretches up to the sheer walls of the Tetons.

It’s wild country. Steve told me of a near-meeting with an adult black bear, he guessed 300 pounds, on a trail. He carries bear spray on hikes, it’s more effective in a confrontation than a firearm, he says. A large bear hit with multiple .357 Magnum rounds will keep moving, but the hot pepper spray stings the bear’s eyes and nose, turning it away. “You spray in a back-and-forth pattern from the ground and move up,” he explained.

Sightings of bears, deer, elk, and moose are a regular experience at their place on the fringe of the BLM land. A few homes are scattered in the area, but no human light breaks the night blackness. Around 4 A.M. I stepped outside, the sky burst with glorious starlight. I remembered I was far from home. 

Kathleen had planned a horseback-riding outing. We drove south into the plains to a ranch, mounted up and, after some coaching, trotted off on a hilly forest trail. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been on a horse.

My horse, Norman, bucked along behind the leader, Braden. He picked up speed on the steep stretches, as if enjoying himself. I yanked the reins. “He’s got the trail memorized,” Braden yelled back. I leaned forward in my cowboy moment. At the hilltop Braden paused and pointed. “There’s Victor,” he said. The town of Victor lay a few miles south, a half-dozen streets breaking the prairie.

Autumn had settled in, the aspens shedding, the ground carpeted in their gold. At dawn the sun glowed over the Tetons through the pure Rocky Mountain air. No sound broke the peace of this remote spot. The locals knew winter soon would close in. Steve had stacked a half-cord of firewood, fuel for the wood stove, on the deck. “We’ll need at least another cord,” he said.

I admired the hardiness of the local folks, getting ready for the rough season. We’ll get out of Alta before the blizzards start and endure our sixth meek Southern winter. But this is a rugged, beautiful place. We’ll come back. That is the hope.   

September 22, 2025

The corruption that passes for national leadership didn’t exactly chase us, but we were relieved to leave town. We plodded along U.S. 76 through Georgia places we’ve visited before. We pushed into the southwest corner of North Carolina between Murphy and Wolf Creek, near the Tennessee state line and just past an unincorporated place called Hothouse.

We looked for a destination far from the headlines about the strangling of the First Amendment, although you never escape. We had talked about the Cowan, Tenn., Fall Heritage Festival. It’s been held for years in Sandy’s hometown, which the rest of the year is one main street, an austere network of residential neighborhoods, a few stores. There’s a railroad museum. Freight trains pass through a dozen times each day.

In 90 minutes we crossed the Chattooga River into Georgia and pulled over in Clayton. We wanted breakfast. The Clayton Café wasn’t open, a passerby directed us a mile south to the Rusty Bike, done up floor to ceiling in biker gear, photos of James Dean, other biker heroes. A poster advertises “Harley Country,” another highlights Sturgis, America’s South Dakota biker paradise. The servers were all young women, the patrons all the seventies-plus set.

Staying on 76 we passed through Hiawassee, which abuts Lake Chatuge, and Young Harris, site of Young Harris College, and into North Carolina. Crossing into Tennessee we cruised by the gorgeous Ocoee River. Beyond Cleveland is I-24 through Chattanooga, then 45 miles to Monteagle Mountain and Sewanee, site of the stately Gothic campus of the University of the South.

I recalled then that it had been an even 50 years ago this month since I first visited these parts. I arrived in Nashville in July ’75 for my first post-Marine Corps job. My boss then was renting a house in Sewanee and in September invited me down for a weekend.

We descended six miles down the north side of the mountain to Cowan, passing Sandy’s old neighborhood. There’s always a bit of a pang, although her only family remaining are at peace in the cemetery. Festival traffic already was crawling up Main Street.

The highlight here is the Franklin House, an island of grace amidst the wounded and struggling local businesses. Rachel, the owner, is an artist in multiple media, oil, watercolor, acrylic, others. She bought the old bed and breakfast, renovated it and in time created a piazza, filled with her rich, dreamlike creations, flourishes of color, mood, fantasy. A grand piano stands in the lobby.

The festival, a “celebration of life in the foothills of the Cumberland Plateau” opened Friday evening. Vendors had deployed dozens of booths along the tracks, offering the usual: quilts, scented candles and soaps, hoodies bearing Christian slogans and Bible verses, burnt-wood engravings. We passed racks of preserved fruit and vegetables, knockoff purses.

I noticed a new one, “galvanized creations,” which are engravings of various things, like smiling faces and the Tennessee “Power T,” cut from tin sheets. Among the rows of tees was one bearing the warning, “Sometimes I have to tell myself it’s not worth the jail time.”

As darkness gathered the bands tuned up, including a rock group that played encores of “Stop Dragging My Heart Around.”

The food booths advertised smashburgers and hoagies, funnel cakes, felafels, sandwiches. We pressed on past the “ultimate fudge,” shaved ice, freeze-dried snacks, and frozen chocolate dipped cheesecake, a slice of cheesecake coated in chocolate syrup and impaled on a stick.      

The next morning, Saturday, was warm. We tramped nearly a mile to the cemetery to get photos of the headstone marking the grave of Sandy’s cousin, who was interred there a couple of years ago, although she lived most of her life in Michigan. We searched without luck for the grandparents’ graves, scrutinizing hundreds of headstones.

We were the only visitors, the place was in its normal state, silence. The cemetery’s rich green merged with the cultivated fields that reach miles to the dark silhouette of the Cumberland Plateau, which extends northeast to the Blue Ridge and southwest into Alabama. We gave up on the search and hoofed it slowly back to town.

We seemed to step back in time. Sandy, her eye always sharp for a familiar face and some not so familiar, recognized a former high-school classmate on the sidewalk near the festival. They chatted, replaying the decades. Then she met a former sister-in-law, her older brother’s ex-wife, who now works at the bed and breakfast.

The town seemed to be grinding toward a grim future, like many out-of-the-way Southern places. Some homes along the side streets were well-kept, but sat alongside others overgrown with weeds, their windows cracked, porches piled with broken furniture, lawn tools, bicycles, and other junk. A faded “Trump 2020” sign hung in one ramshackle place. The street asphalt had been patched and instead of getting new paving, was patched again.

It grew unseasonably hot, high 80s. The festival crowd was back, picking over the merchandise but, it appeared, not buying much. In my prejudiced observation, they went through the motions, mentally budgeting some festival spending as they sensed the onset of the Trump Recession. These were small-town and rural folks in an economically hard-hit place.

We drove back up the mountain to Sewanee and across the campus to the iconic 50-foot-high whitewashed cross that overlooks the valley, to the northern reaches of Franklin and Grundy counties. A few others sat on grass, enjoying the view and the late-afternoon cooling. I had been there dozens of times, but still felt the sublime tranquility of the place.

We stopped at Lake Cheston a mile or so from the main campus, where Sandy swam as a teenager. I walked the woodland lake trail, taking in the silence. A few students splashed in the water, a young guy reeled in a small bass and tossed it back.

I looked for the house I stayed at all those 50 years ago, now hidden behind forest canopy and new campus buildings, most likely now owned by some professor. Fifty years. The world is a different place. But then life moves on, peace will return. These rushed days were our retreat. We headed back to Franklin House for one more quiet night.