April 20, 2026

Three men stepped onto the Foothills Trail, which runs across the northern tier of South Carolina, to trek the last 20 miles to the western terminus at Oconee State Park. From a point near the state fish hatchery, they moved easily west to the Chattooga River. The trail follows the river for a while, then turns south to the park.

The northwestern Georgia-South Carolina border region is rugged wilderness. Through it the Chattooga flows, the boundary between the two states. Giant boulders lodged in the riverbed create explosive stretches of white water. The river domain is a designated national scenic area. Only hikers, canoeists, and rafters pass through.

Thick forests extend away from the river for miles on both sides, the foliage now is full and brilliant. Near the riverbank, at the end of a winding, steep gravel road the hatchery breeds fingerling trout for stocking the state’s rivers and lakes. Five years ago Sandy and I stopped there the day before our anniversary and looked at the long troughs filled with racing fish. We drove on to Lake Hartwell.

The Foothills winds across gentle and rolling terrain for four miles, then turns rough and rooty as it nears the river. The thunder of the Chattooga rapids breaks the forest silence. Remote is the word for this near-empty corner of this small state better known for beaches. It is a place to come to.

This stretch of wild country isn’t unique in its lyrical presentation. It recalls others, near-unknown, near-accidents of nature that lift the outsider to something like joy. I thought of the Sequatchie Valley in Tennessee, south of Crossville, and the deep woods and craggy hills around Errol at the northern tip of New Hampshire. They are patches of quiet that almost no outsider passes through.

Things rush back. The poetry of one magical place echoes in others.

Halfway between Nashville and Knoxville, the valley descends sharply from the Cumberland Plateau. On the eastern side, the plateau faces a long northeast-southeast cliff called Walden Ridge. From Pikeville, midway through the valley, U.S. 30 runs east to Dayton, site of the 1925 Monkey Trial.

Over maybe 20 years we drove many times through the valley to visit Sandy’s aunt and uncle, who farmed 130 acres five miles outside Pikeville. She had spent stretches of summer there for years, helping her aunt in the garden, snapping beans, gathering eggs, and so forth. When working the farm became too hard the couple sold it and moved to town. We kept visiting until they passed.

We went back to Pikeville a couple of years ago and rented a house for a few days to visit Fall Creek Falls State Park, ten miles up on the Plateau. We parked, I hiked down the twisting, rocky path to the falls, where Fall Creek cascades 250 feet from a steep cliff.

Our Pikeville rental was near Sandy’s aunt’s and uncle’s former home. We walked up the street, a neighbor called out to her. They visited for a while.

It’s been 18 months since we went up to Errol. The idea was to see the Great Northern Woods, which begins beyond the old factory town of Berlin on N.H.16. The narrow road is bounded by the Androscoggin River, which undulates south from Umbagog Lake, then turns east into Maine. North of Berlin we passed a sign for the 13-mile woods, gorgeous dark-pine country along the fast-moving river.  We saw a dozen “Watch for Moose” signs.

Errol, population about 300, is a spot on the road between Colebrook, 20 miles west on the Vermont line, and Umbagog Lake, about two miles from Maine. Colebrook, with a couple of restaurants and an IGA grocery, is a busy little place.

On Sunday we got to Mass at the mission chapel. We saw what we could in a couple of days. Between Errol and Colebrook is the spectacular Dixville Notch, a cut in the mountains also known as the first place votes are cast in presidential elections, usually something like 16 to 14 favoring Republicans. We hiked woodland trails amidst the brilliant fall foliage.

The next day we drove three hours back to Manchester for a flight home to clean up our Hurricane Helene damage.

The Foothills men started just after dawn, moving easily as the trail rose then descended. The woods grew thicker, tangled with Helene’s blowdowns. They followed a rocky spur to the Kings Crossing waterfall to take photos, then pushed on across the roughening country. The dull thunder of the rapids grew.

The trail meandered along the rushing picture-perfect river for a while, then rose in steep switchbacks. The men looked down at glistening white water sluicing through the ridges that tower hundreds of feet on the Carolina and Georgia sides. The weaving trail led them away from the river. The forest went silent.

They climbed then descended beyond the 11-mile point and picked up their pace along soft, level trail, then stopped to recharge at 13 miles, sprawling on the pine needles. They headed east then south across a rural highway. The trail softened for a humid slog, then led them the final four miles to the 20-mile finish. They breathed deeply, felt the peace of their surroundings, then packed and headed for home.

These are special places, maybe for odd reasons. We all keep a storehouse of places like these, not unique, not National Parks or famous birthplaces. It may be the isolation of quiet communities or the vastness of wild, remote spaces, that convey the consolation of loneliness or companionship for a brief flight from the world’s dreck. Some landmark, some striking impression, locks them in mystery and memory. They draw us from our world for a while, offering some understanding of peace, of redemption.

April 13, 2026

I walked out the front door and saw the tree. I thought I saw the future.

It’s not exactly a tree, really just a three-foot-long stalk anchored in a 12-inch plastic planter. It sat where I had left it near the garage nearly five months ago, in late November. Through the bleak winter I walked past it without seeing it. Now a dozen green leaves fluttered along its full length. It was alive.

A week before Thanksgiving I registered for the “Turkey Trot” run around downtown streets. The race was sponsored by a non-profit, TreesUpstate, that encourages tree planting and cultivation and green-space development. It donated free trees to the runners. I took one and tossed it in the van.

Trees, along with front lawns, are part of the suburban mystique. Families who venture from crowded cities seeking space, safety, and good schools in commuter subdivisions hope also for the traditional tree-lined street. They hope for gentle shade in spring and summer, for the cheerful, vibrant colors of fall.

Climate dictates. In the desert Southwest local drought-resistant species, cacti and other things, may be all homeowners expect. But in most of the country the suburban vision is shade-abundant oaks, maples, sycamores, and others, creating a sense of lush, verdant comfort and beauty.

Trees weren’t always important. The history of America’s migration to the suburbs dates from the end of World War II and the wildfire spread of so-called Levittowns, started by New York builder Levitt & Sons. Their homes were built to cookie-cutter designs, Cape Cods or modest ranches, stamped out inside of a week.

In those years builders bulldozed forests and fields to make room for construction. Many if not most of the Levittown-type neighborhoods went up in sterile treeless spaces. The developers sold mostly to young couples, who used the husband’s veterans benefits to afford the home.  

My parents were among them. When I was three or four they made the life-changing decision to move to Ridgewood, N.J., from a small New York City apartment. The neighborhood I grew up in fit the pattern, boxy Cape Cods, postage-stamp yards. The selling price was around $10,000. This was 1953.

The subdivision was, and I think still is, called “Ridgewood Lawns.” I recall, my memory helped along by old photos, the front yards were dirt. It was up to the new owner to plant grass. The developer put in thin maple saplings along the sidewalk. Seven decades later those saplings are fully grown monsters, providing the classic tree-shaded look for the enjoyment of the current residents, who likely were not born in 1953.  

Our Nashville and Virginia yards had big trees. While we lived in those places we thought of the landscaping as the abiding, unchanging background to our personal space. But over the years we recognized that time has no anchor. Before we were born those trees didn’t exist. Now the giant trees that shaded the front lawn and backyard of our Nashville house are long gone. Trees grow, they die, people cut them down.

Our lot here is bordered on one side by a large hedgerow, but no trees shade our small square front yard. The across-the-street neighbor has a small tree. Up and down the block you see one or two, a yard a few doors away has several. The look is largely bare. In the summer the sun beats down, I wait until evening to cut the grass.

Occasionally we would talk about having a nice shade tree in the yard. It was one of those ideas that would pop up then be crowded out by something else. Now I looked at my three-foot-high stalk. The new leaves were a bright, healthy green. We could do this.

We called the local utility service that will mark underground utility lines. In Virginia years ago I had tried to excavate for something and cut the buried Verizon line with my shovel. We did without the service until the company sent a guy to repair it a week later. A charge was added to our bill.

Within days, technicians from AT&T, Spectrum, and Duke Power showed up and spraypainted red, orange, and yellow streaks across the lawn to mark their lines, some curving from front to back. The discovery was unnerving, a lot of power runs under our patch. Still, it seemed there would be room for the tree.

Then it rained, one day, two, three. The painted lines washed away. I peered at the lawn, trying to reconstruct them from memory. I called again. Again the techs showed up and painted the lawn. I found a spot I thought was safely away from the lines and dug nervously into the concrete-like Carolina clay.

My back ached as I shoveled. Six inches, eight inches, ten inches. I breathed deeply. A white pickup marked Greer CPW pulled up at the curb. A fellow in a hardhat and yellow vest got out. I leaned on my shovel. The back of his shirt had a label: “Detection Validation.”

“Hi, I’m with Public Works,” he said. “I’m here to check the line marking. We want to be sure it’s been done right.” He fetched his detection device and spray gun from the truck and stared at the ground. He followed the painted lines up and down the yard, his device beeping. He walked close to my hole.

“Whoa, this guy’s a little off,” he said. He was three feet away from my digging. He painted a new line. “This is fiber optic,” he said. He looked at the hole. “You’re okay,” he said. “Glad you called us. Have a good day!” He stowed his gear and drove off. I stuck the tree in the hole, filled it in, watered, and added some mulch. I wondered about the roots reaching the fiber optic.

The next day, anyway, the leaves were still green. We imagine it towering, full, and luxuriant. That will not be for us. It may not survive. But maybe it will. Ten or twenty years from now a future owner, perhaps a young family, will enjoy it.

April 6, 2026

The priest knelt and washed the feet of twelve men seated at the altar, a rite performed at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper at thousands of churches on Thursday of Holy Week. When the Mass ended he left the church in silence. Acolytes removed the altar cloths. Some people filed out, others remained on their knees. The Triduum began.

Last week news reached home about U.S. and Israeli bombs and missiles hitting civilian homes and schools. Two generations of senior Iranian officials, murderous barbarians while alive, now are dead, although someone apparently is in charge over there, still launching missiles and drones. U.S. forces shipped in ammo from South Korea.

U.S. government tough-guy talk risked garbling the Easter message. A couple of thousand civilians are dead in Iran and Lebanon. Trump’s bizarre statements about the war and indifference to the human cost insult the foundation of religious faith, even while church pews were packed and the Pope repeated his call for peace.

All faiths, Christian and non-Christian, acknowledge human history as a path inclined between suffering and redemption, a war between good and evil, heaven and hell. We know this from the primary sources, the Old and New Testaments, the Torah, the Qur’an, the Vedas and Bagavad Gita, the dukkhas of Buddhism.

Now at Easter, Christians confront the scandal of the Resurrection, or to the skeptics, “resurrection.” The scandal is unbelief, if the scope of gratuitous suffering unleashed by the Trump war gives new energy to cynics.

Christ’s rising from the dead on Easter morning, reported in all the Gospels, in Paul’s epistles, and in Acts of the Apostles, is the bedrock of Christianity. But the Gospels emerged from a spoken tradition passed down over many years in many languages. Academics who study Scripture believe Mark was actually written around 70 A.D., Matthew and Luke in the 80s, and John around 90 or 95. All decades after Christ.

Stories change over time. Bart Ehrman, distinguished professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, once a committed “fundamentalist” Christian who accepted the inerrancy of the Bible, makes the point that Jesus’ followers who claimed he rose from the dead may well have believed that he rose from the dead. After all he was supposed to be the Messiah.

Erhman, talking to The New York Times’ Ross Douthat, says that in the time of Christ the Jews believed the Messiah would be a revolutionary leader who would create a new kingdom on earth. Getting arrested, humiliated, beaten, and dying on the cross proved that Jesus was not that leader. They said he would rise from the dead and, Erhman says, kept saying it.

The professor has an example: he once was giving a lecture when he saw his father in the third row. His father had died 15 years earlier. He thought he saw his father. In the same way, he says, Christ’s followers who claimed to see him for 40 days after the Resurrection actually had a vision or a dream that they saw him. After all, people simply do not rise from the dead. In the same way, a man does not walk on water or perform the other miracles Jesus is said to perform.

But the Resurrection accounts, Douthat adds, don’t say anything like, “Now we proclaim Christ risen.” So there is always doubt, doubt that the Resurrection happened, that a man walked on water or gave sight to the blind. Doubt, always.

But not a case of mistaken identity. History shows us that the Resurrection in following years created a creed based on Christ’s message to “love your neighbor” that spread from Jerusalem to Judea, Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, North Africa, Rome, Spain. Eventually it altered history.

Erhman says he’s an “odd duck. I’m an agnostic, I’m an atheist, a Christian atheist and I’m a New Testament scholar, which is weird.”

He is an odd duck. He cites the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 25-37). A lawyer asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus answers, “A man … is attacked by bandits and left seriously wounded. A priest walks past him, then a Levite, neither help the man. Then a Samaritan traveling by was moved to pity at the sight. He binds the man’s wounds and takes him to an inn to be cared for.”

Jesus asks, “Who was the man’s neighbor?” The lawyer answers, “The one who treated him with compassion.” Jesus says, “Go and do the same.”

Erhman adds, “This was Jesus’ teaching, and I subscribe to that idea. What bothers me is that so many Christians … don’t follow his most basic teaching.” Later he adds, “I don’t believe in God. I absolutely don’t believe in God or any supernatural powers. But I do think the teachings of Jesus are something I want to replicate in my life as much as I can.”

Through Holy Week we worked at chores, yard work, other things. When the van wouldn’t start at the state park, a young ranger showed up with jumper cables. She explained she had never jumpstarted a car. She guessed at attaching the cables and tried three times, no luck. I was set to call a tow truck when she said, “Let’s try one more time.” It started.

That day a veteran trail hiker here in town received a cancer diagnosis.

We paid attention to the querulous hunt through ancient texts for nits in this parable or that one. Then we witnessed the poetic power of the Easter message, the beginning of faith. We heard again the story of the empty tomb, which in time transformed the world.

March 30, 2026

It occurred to me about 8:45 last Saturday morning that I did not belong at Black Rock. The crowd waiting for the 9:00 start were mostly twenties, thirties, forties, in light wicking shirts or summer running gear. I was in my thermal jacket and leggings, wool cap, and gloves.

Thick forest surrounded us at the end of Fisher Road in Sylva, North Carolina. I felt a chill. Cold is my experience at Black Rock over the past six years. The winterlike air penetrated my thermals, gloves, and cap. I thought of the temperature dropping at altitude, icicles hanging from rocks.

We were in the middle of the Plott Balsam Mountains, which stretch west from Asheville. The Black Rock idea, called “Assault on Black Rock” by race director Brian Barwatt, a local guy, is to “run, hike, or crawl” three and one-half rocky miles up the West Fork Trail from the start at 3,000 feet of elevation to the summit, at 5,800 feet on the third Saturday in March. Then reverse and fly down the East Fork Trail, completing a seven-mile loop.

The rest of the field all looked like trail-running veterans like me but in a better mood. Many were with friends, chatting and laughing.  I knew I would be solo on the course. I felt a familiar kind of darkness. I breathed a short prayer.

Sandy was with me, she took a quick photo. We said hello to a few folks. One old guy asked my age. He said he had a year on me. I had noticed on the list of entrants a few sixties-plus people.

The pack gathered near Brian. He stood on a rock giving a pre-race briefing, which I couldn’t hear, never heard him in the last five years. I guessed he’d talk about the trail markers, red for up, yellow for down, and buckles for anyone who finished in under ninety minutes. The first runner who finished under an hour would get a $400 prize. So far it’s never happened.

At 9:00 AM we set off, the pack flowing past the gate onto West Fork, which starts with a northbound straightaway. A few folks hung back, then passed me. I moved deliberately, watching the trail but casting my eyes forward. The trail disappears into misty forest.

In 2021 the old Virginia neighborhood running group, called the THuGs, gathered in Waynesville for a reunion, our first Black Rock. Brian asked folks to estimate their finish times and start in waves, slowest first, then mid-level, fast, and fastest. I started with Kevin and Bruce in the first wave in near-darkness. We got only a dim look at the slope. Kevin and Bruce moved ahead of me. A mile along, the others, first Chris, then Paul and Kirk raced by.

It was in the thirties, but I guessed temps would rise with the sun. Instead the cold dogged me, near the summit my legs locked up. I rode down with the EMTs. A month later, in gentler weather, I returned with a friend and finished the course. The ThuGs reunited for Black Rock the following year, we all did well. I finished in just over three hours.

Sandy and I returned in 2023, I was on my own. The pack flowed ahead, I stayed with a couple of people for a mile, passed them, they passed me. We talked a bit and exchanged photos. In ‘24 I recruited two friends, Todd and Elise, athletic, fast people who could have flown over the course. Instead they stayed with me on a hard day. I slogged, fighting a cough and cold. We finished well behind the pack.

The three of us did better last year, the weather worked out, we ran and hiked as a team, took a breather on the summit, and raced across the finish in about four hours. We got a nice lunch in Waynesville. We talked about the race, family news, the future.

I hoped for a repeat now, as I waited for the start, my sixth Black Rock. I had trained by hiking a couple of steep trails in the past two weeks. I knew it wasn’t enough.

As I moved up the first quarter-mile I recalled my birthday nearly a month earlier. Another year, more payback of strength to nature. Since 2020 fast hiking or jogging sets off radiation-induced bronchiectasis, my lungs heave with the labor of breathing. But there it is. Black Rock is a “granny gear” hike, one foot forward, then the other. The trail turned west for a couple of level hundred yards, then whipped around to the east and climbed.  And climbed.

I picked up my pace then eased back, sucking air, gulping water from my hydration pack. The switchbacks grew sharper, steeper. Just past the one-mile point I passed a road guard sitting in her ATV. I overheard her speak into her radio: “Runner passing.” Not exactly a runner.

I moved on, a creaking human machine. The thought occurred, why? I had signed up when registration opened, as I had the previous five years. When you look at these things there’s a sense that you better get in before the event fills up. Then you get in and guess you’re ready, after years of trail races. Or there’s plenty of time to get some training in. Failing that, granny gear, short strides, one foot forward, then the other. The whole point is, get it done.

At three miles the trail levels out for a quarter-mile then rounds a bend to the intersection with East Fork. Three teenagers sat trailside handing out bottled water. I waved I was okay. “Stay on red, follow yellow down,” one yelled. I moved forward over soft, level trail, jogging, then running. I thought about the single-track. Runners were flashing past on the way home. “Looking strong,” I muttered. “You too,” they yelled.

At the cut in underbrush that opens to the single-track, three EMTs sat in their ATV shooting the breeze, waving at runners descending from the summit. “Up there, one-third of a mile to the top,” one said to me, pointing at the mountain. I didn’t mention I’m a five-timer on this.

The single-track is barely visible, straight up over stumps, gnarled roots, tangled vines, rocks, pits, relentlessly up through the bush. I lunged and grabbed for roots and hanging branches. I paused, took water. A few folks descended around me. “Looking strong,” I kept saying.

Then I was alone. The slope eased a bit, the summit now in view beyond house-sized rocks. The trail winds over, under, around the rock walls and stubby snakelike trees. Foot-long icicles hung in the crevices. I paused at the base of the summit, a massive block of granite, then pulled myself up and crawled onto the surface.

Now the sun shone warmly through a gentle breeze. I sat up, closed my eyes for five minutes, took a couple of photos, then launched from the granite. I landed feet first, wobbled, then headed for Fisher Road.

March 23, 2026

Five years have passed since we moved into our place. Five years today, March 23. We closed on the house Feb. 26, 2021. It poured rain that day, we signed everything, went to lunch to mark the occasion, then headed back to our apartment. It then had been three weeks since I finished a month of radiation therapy, three months since the rib-cage operation.

The next day we started loading the boxes we had crammed in the apartment into the van. We hauled them the six miles to the house and piled them in the garage.  The grandsons, Noah and Patrick, greeted us with signs and smiles.

It was then and still is the right place: Greer, South Carolina, one level, so no stairs, gas heat, the front yard bordered by mature greenery, no landscaping needed. The second and third bedrooms are small, closet space is limited, but the garage doubles as storage. It’s just the two of us.

The house had been empty for five years since the previous owner, an elderly widow, moved to a nursing home. We never met her, her nephew dealt with us on the sale. The house was sold to help pay her living expenses.

The place had a strange feel to it. When we tried to set up the internet and couldn’t get the connection, the provider told us there had been no online account since 2013. The lady had dropped the service and lived her remaining time there with neither internet nor email.

The widow’s furniture remained in the house when we first walked through. It was feminine-looking, imitation-antique stuff, well-worn wingback chairs, dark wood endtables, and so on. The master bedroom walls were decorated with flowery wallpaper, long faded. The two smaller bedrooms were painted lilac and pink.  

I found a Bible on a desk, thumbed through it, and scanned the faded handwritten notations. A photograph of a woman stood on a nightstand. The nephew said it was the widow’s daughter, who had passed from cancer some years ago.

We found a painter who painted the walls and removed the popcorn ceiling. We hired a mover to deliver our living room and bedroom furniture. Within a month of our move-in the water heater failed, we replaced it. In July the air conditioning system clanged and roared but provided no cooling. The HVAC was obsolete and could not be repaired, we bought a new system.

The new neighborhood was at first an alien world. We knew no one. The new home was smaller than the Virginia house, where we had accumulated all the stuff that moved with us and would not fit in the new place. Dozens of boxes and excess furniture remained in the garage. The garage was a kind of fun thing, we had never had one.

The backyard was enclosed by a beat-up picket fence. In our second year we looked for a contractor to replace it. We hired the lowest bidder. After we paid him I noticed the picket sections were nailed to the posts in straight rows rather than adjusted to the contours of the terrain, giving the pickets an odd crooked look. A year later picket nails started popping. But I guess the low bidder saved us a few bucks.

In time, we met some neighbors: next door, another retired couple, refugees from Cuba. The fellow is an engineer who got his training in the USSR, on returning to Cuba he fled to the U.S. We’ve seen him sunning himself in the yard in his Speedo. On the opposite side, a single guy who manages a pet store, across the street a friendly young woman with two teenagers.   

We got a few bids on adding a sunroom to replace the beat-up 10×10 deck. After seeing the bids we dropped the idea, I guessed I could refinish the deck instead. For three weeks I spent a half-day or more every day sanding, repairing, and restaining the deck. Since it faces the fierce Carolina sun through the summer, we never go out there. My repairs already are looking old.

The postage-stamp-size lawn is level. We bought an old-fashioned pushmower, the Home Depot clerk looked strangely at me. No gas needed, nor battery, nor cable. Pushing it across the front lawn attracts attention from the landscaping crews who manicure our neighbors’ yards. It’s a stiff shoulder workout. The lawn is getting thicker, the pushing harder.

That first summer we planted sunflowers, marigolds, and zinnias behind the house. They sprouted almost overnight in the rich Carolina clay. Within a month the sunflowers reached eight and ten feet, the marigolds and zinnias bloomed and spread like vines, filling the space with wild color we never saw in our Virginia yard. Giant hostas appeared in thick rows on three sides of the deck, giving a vernal cast to my fading repair work.

The marigolds and zinnias now show up magically in the spring from seeds left in the dirt by last year’s crop. For fun I planted green beans and that down-home Southern classic, okra. The green beans shriveled on the vines, the okra grew and grew. Sandy breaded and fried okra until it wore out its welcome.

In the third year we replaced the homebuilder-standard vinyl kitchen countertop with a stone one with a nice pattern to it. Last year we hired a smart young contractor to rebuild the bathrooms. We called him back to fix some glitches, he was happy to do it.

A friend recruited her daughters to paint the still-unpainted fence, the grandsons and a couple of other kids pitched in, we bought the paint, brushes, and ice cream for a fence-painting party. The boys and girls turned it a gleaming white.

On September 25, 2024 Hurricane Helene hit the Southeast. We were in New Hampshire, where the sun shone brightly. Our daughter Marie sent us a video showing the remains of a giant tree limb that fell from the neighbor’s yard, crushing three sections of our fence. Some folks around town lost power for two weeks. Nearly 50 people died in the state, more than 100 in North Carolina.

After the cleanup I salvaged some unbroken pickets and nailed them back into place. From a distance they look almost even.

We’ve thought again of the sunroom idea. Medical appointments are pending. With Trump bombing Iran, oil prices through the roof, stocks crashing, it’s still a no-go, at this five-year mark. We’re working on six.