October 19, 2020

We strolled through the little tourist town of Occoquan last week, probably for the hundredth time. It’s a couple of miles from our street, a cute place if you like 19th century frame and brick buildings that house antique and knick-knack shops, small art galleries, and a couple of pretty good, not great, restaurants and coffee shops. “Quaint” would capture it. Sandy used to bring my mom down here when she came to visit from Jersey. They both got to know the shops and the shopkeepers, some still there, many long gone.

Occoquan, highlighting its modest antiquity, prompts visitors to look back fondly on history, including their own. But we’re working at a cross purpose: to keep from transforming our years here into an anthology of old folks’ tales that would have the younger ones rolling their eyes, which I’ve noticed when oldsters retreat into their memories and stay there.

The town sits along the murky brown Occoquan River, which flows from the Occoquan reservoir to the Potomac just east of I-95. Main Street extends from a stretch of upscale riverfront homes on the east side that ends at the interstate to a one-room local museum at the west end. Mom’s Apple Pies, just off Main, is roughly the midpoint. The town says it’s historic because it was established “circa 1734.” The architecture doesn’t go back that far, but we don’t quibble. The town developed as a port and served as a transfer point for mail during the Civil War. Eventually silt made the river unnavigable for larger vessels. The town puttered along on local industries. The museum’s collection of old photos is interesting, the way old photos of your hometown, or mine, are interesting.

At the east end of town a concrete bridge carries U.S. 123 over the river into Fairfax. The massive structure dominates the river view. The highway is packed with traffic during rush hour that in the morning backs up into town. You can’t miss the dull drone of gridlock on I-95, which reminds me, reminds everyone, that the grind of commuting to the federal agencies and contractor ghettoes of D.C. and Arlington overwhelms Occoquan’s cultivated image of small-town charm. 

Oh well. The contradiction between northern Virginia’s tacky affluence and its image as a mecca of culture and sophistication has something to do with our decision to bolt from here. The rugged, spectacular beauty just to the west no longer compensates for the expanding dreck of highways, strip malls, and mass-construction stacks of houses and townhomes.

Occoquan recently extended the Main Street sidewalk into an expanse of greenery, called River Park, which not surprisingly borders the river up to its narrow mouth. Looking west from the park you see the rocky falls and rapids where the river leaves the reservoir and flows past the town and the Occoquan marina and continues under the I-95 bridge, forming the boundary between Fairfax and Prince William counties.

We walked through the park and sat for a few minutes on a bench facing the river. It was sunny and warm, the leaves now pale yellow and orange, fluttering in a slight breeze. Two guys with fishing rods floated downstream in a rowboat. A few people strolled by, but the park was mostly quiet.

I’ve never been a big Occoquan fan. I don’t like any overdose of old-fashioned—whatever. I get weary quickly of year-round Christmas decorations, homemade quilts, and Mason jars of off-label honey and jam. On my grumpier days I wonder about the business concept. The town, apart from the museum and a VFW hall, seems to exist to sell stuff to outsiders; there is no church, school, or supermarket. The shops focus largely on Christmas shoppers and “Occoquan Days,” massive street bazaars in June and September, when visitors park a mile or more away and cross a six-lane thoroughfare to browse through stacks of quilts, carvings, and landscapes by local artists. 

It isn’t all commercial, people do live there. Several blocks of waterfront now are occupied by condominiums offered at around $800,000. They sit just above the river, which during Hurricane Agnes in 1972 rose six feet and nearly obliterated the town. The places on the adjacent hill, some with spectacular views, run close to that. Quaintness can be a gold mine for realtors.

I have my own history in Occoquan. For five years, while I published a newsletter out of my basement, I used an Occoquan post office box, and made a near-daily trek down to the little post office on Main Street. I often wondered whether my subscribers believed the place really existed.

On 9/11 I was at the post office when I heard the news. Six months later I sold the newsletter business and went back to commuting. All these years later, I drive by that little post office and look back to those newsletter days, when I never put on a suit or went to staff meetings. Then I regressed and went back to work in an Arlington office for a dozen years. All in the past. Haven’t worn a suit in a year. The post office is still there, untouched by those 19 years.

We said hello to a few passersby in the park. We sat quietly for a little while, both of us staring out at the river and the woods on the Fairfax side. The silence brought home the looming disruption in our lives in coming weeks, when we’ll detach from this place forever. Over the years we’ve unconsciously memorized the layout of the town, what’s along each quiet street. After all those strolls down Main Street, Occoquan, with its comfortable if slightly threadbare familiarity, will disappear for us.

We headed back to the car, then spotted a sign for a cafe we’d never noticed. We went inside and sat down and talked with the server. The place has been there for years, she said, with a different name. We headed home, back to dragging boxes.

The night of our Occoquan stroll I joined my monthly book club meeting “online,” which is how it’s been held the past six months. The technology usually outsmarts me. This time, I blundered onto the site, the other members showed up. We talked about the book, about other things. I mentioned we’re moving to South Carolina which, if we continue to meet by computer, should make no difference. If the club resumes face-to-face meetings I’d be out of it, expelled by my own remoteness. One member said somebody could bring a laptop to the meeting site. I appreciated that. We’ll say goodbye to Occoquan. I’ll start looking for the next book.

October 12, 2020

Past and future collide in strange ways if we let them. We find that what we think of as the present doesn’t really exist. Every experience, as soon as we reflect on it, suddenly is the past, transformed into memory. We treasure them all, or at least try to learn from them. Then we move on.

I looked back Saturday to losing my left kidney just a year ago, and the following five days in a hospital bed. Leaping forward to the days now rushing by, we’re looking at life in a two-bedroom apartment in another state.

Fall was setting in when I left the hospital, as it is right now, the weather mild, the leaves starting to color. The first week was excruciating, but slowly I got better. More weeks, then months flew by. Other things rushed in. The docs who cared for me were skilled and dedicated. Expensive, too, but that’s goes with the terrain. It was my crisis. Now the entire country is facing one. I learned about strains of cancer I had never heard of. Now we’re all learning about viruses, about epidemiology. We’ve heard the tragic stories of the last pandemic, and the ones before that. Only the most obtuse—you know who you are—now pretend it’s just like the flu and will simply disappear.

Republicans, Democrats, and independents who claim to have a pulse were electrified, in the wrong way, when Trump pulled off his mask at the top of the White House staircase last Monday. It happened, even as we wondered whether to believe our eyes. For me, it brought home the tragic, terrifying image of the autocrat in Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ luminous, eloquent novel, The Autumn of the Patriarch.

Garcia Marquez, who won the Nobel for literature in 1982, wrote of the interminable rule and finally the death of an aging Latin-Caribbean dictator. His flamboyant, passionate, poignant paragraphs describe the social and political decline, poverty, and despair inflicted by a tinhorn authoritarian on his nation. Garcia Marquez borrowed from the lives of such Latin autocrats as Franco of Spain, Trujillo (Dominican Republic), Gustavo Rojas Pinella of his own country, Porfirio Diaz of Mexico, others.

The Latin association is familiar for Americans; most recently, Pinochet in Chile, Somoza and Ortega in Nicaragua, Garcia and Efrain Montt in Guatemala, now Maduro in Venezuela. Non-Latins would be the big three: Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un. Then, in his own mind, Trump.

Garcia Marquez drew his readers into dreams, fantasy, magic as he created the world of the old dictator and those he ruled. Right now America seems a bizarre place, a world of dreams and nightmares. We open the newspaper each morning braced for shock or some prurient, lowbrow comedy. Then we remind ourselves we really are in the autumn of someone holding high office who inspires us with wonder, the wonder of witnessing the unreal. It will end, either in three months or four years. What will be left?

Meanwhile, like everyone else, we’re battling, amidst the pandemic and the election frenzy, to stay anchored in the real world.  I’m still cleaning up the place for the new owners. Last weekend I dragged everything out of the toolshed, scrubbed the walls, and primed and painted the floor. I hauled my nearly-new lawn mower and a box of tools to Habitat for Humanity, and another box of our daughters’ more-than thirty-year-old little-girl clothes to the Red Cross (why did we still have them?) We uncovered still more boxes of our kids’ grade-school papers, report cards, swim team trophies. I repainted the edges of the kitchen cabinets with semi-gloss paint, covering the flat latex I had tried to get away with.

The new owners came by to take window measurements, we introduced ourselves and had a nice visit. A friend helped me haul away an old sofa and box spring. We bought insurance for the apartment we’ve rented for six months and transferred our health insurance. We hauled boxes from the basement to what used to be the dining room and hired a moving truck. Furniture and boxes now are staged near the front door, but we’re still consolidating the inventory. We’re pushing forward to wrap up our lives here.  

Yet, as if postponing the inevitable, I keep doing some of the things I’ve done for years. I worked my regular shift at the Holy Family food pantry—30 clients in under two hours, the typical lineup. The unfortunate, the unemployed, the sick empty the shelves, the way it is at food pantries every day, everywhere, underlining the real state of the country.

But the inevitable is coming. We stare at the stacked boxes and indulge in our own wonder: three weeks left here. The past week has been cool and clear, as that gentle fall crispness creeps into Virginia. It’s the weather that coaxes those brilliant blooms from the chrysanthemums and makes the begonias and impatiens, with a little rain, explode in red, pink, and white. The new owners told us the flowers helped clinch the deal for them. I’m happy about that, I’m sure I am.

The bigger story, we remind ourselves, will be in just over three weeks. Unless the mailed-in ballots make things complicated, the country’s course may be recharted. The timeless Garcia Marquez allegory will resonate again. For those of us who have seen it before, the future will rush past with a flash of wisdom or regret then, as always, recede into the past.

September 28, 2020

Alex and I stamped our feet and shivered in the falling darkness. We stood at a place called Blackrock Summit, a bend in the Appalachian Trail maybe 30 miles from the southern end of Shenandoah National Park. In the light of our headlamps we had set up a makeshift aid station, four boxes of snacks and bottles of water, two hundred yards up a rocky grade from Skyline Drive. Will, our runner, still was a couple of miles away, according to the GPS sensor he carried. We were his support crew.

We had met Will about eight miles south at Turk Gap, his first stop for aid 12 miles after he started running at Rockfish Gap, near I-64 and about midway between Charlottesville and Staunton, Va. He hoped to break the record for the “fastest known time” or FKT, for traversing the 107.8 miles of the Appalachian Trail that passes through the Park. He is very fast. The record, set just 36 hours earlier, is 23 hours, 14 minutes, 23 seconds. If anyone can break the record, it’s Will.

It was chilly, probably in the low 40s, when we arrived at Turk Gap about 6:00 PM. The clear mountain air has a sharp bite to it. I pulled on two thermal shirts and a hooded sweatshirt. We hauled the aid out of Alex’s truck. He had packed food and snacks, cold-weather gear, water, and Tailwind, a powdered energy drink mix. We set up a table and chairs. Promptly at 6:30 Will emerged from the forest. He nodded, grabbed some cookies, refilled his water bottles, and disappeared up the trail. That’s how you get to fastest known time.

Something wasn’t right when we got to Blackrock Summit. We drove a bit further, looking for a white AT tree marker, then backtracked and parked. Alex ran up a short spur and found the AT. He checked his watch. We waited. We pulled on our gloves as our fingers grew stiff. Alex’s phone rang, it was Will. We were off—the rendezvous was Blackrock Gap, a mile back. Will good naturedly ran the extra mile. He fueled up and was gone. As we drove towards Doyle’s River Overlook, we saw Will’s headlamp flash through the trees as he crossed Skyline.

At Doyle’s we had gained elevation and could pick out in the distance the twinkling lights of Charlottesville. The cold took our breath away. We parallel-parked our vehicles to deflect the wind. I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders. Alex lit his propane stove and cooked us a hot meal. We sat huddled, guzzling steaming ginger tea.

Above us a bright quarter-moon had risen, the stars glowed brilliantly in the wilderness sky. The wind abated, the crisp mountain air revived us. We got Will’s gear ready, then saw his headlamp moving toward us. He trotted in looking strong, but a little strained. He had taken a spill miles back, his knee was acting up. He now was a few minutes behind his projected arrival time. He grabbed his refilled drinks and a sandwich and headed into the darkness. Eight miles, or two hours, to the next rendezvous.

At Ivy Creek Overlook we backed Alex’s truck up to a chain across a fire road and set up the aid station. Since we had time, I slumped in the van and closed my eyes, my blanket pulled tight. For a while I heard the soft twanging of Alex’s country station as he heated up Will’s soup. I slept for an hour.

We went through the aid-station drill when Will arrived. He had pulled on his long-sleeved running shirt. We handed him a cup of the hot, savory chicken soup, just the thing for a trail runner at 35 miles. Will stuffed a peanut butter sandwich and some cookies in his pockets. He was ten minutes behind his projected time. We walked with him to the trailhead. “Razzle-dazzle,” Alex yelled, and Will was gone.

Smith Roach Gap was another quick stop, seven miles up. The wind had abated but the chill still penetrated. We stood peering into the darkness. Will showed up in good spirits, but still behind schedule. He lingered, gulping soup, then waved and reentered the trail.

To get to South River we drove five or six miles to our point of entry to the Park at Swift Run, then three more miles up the Drive. We found the trail access point, then had to hoof it, carrying the boxes of aid a hundred or so yards to the AT. At that point the trail descended from higher ground, Will could coast in. We waited. Alex checked his watch. We walked a short way up the trail and listened. Nothing. We turned back. Soon we heard footfalls and saw the glow of Will’s  headlamp. He was walking. For the first time since we met him, he sat. The knee injury from the fall had stiffened. He stood and stretched, then took a few tentative steps and felt pain. He rubbed the knee and pondered going on. A few minutes later he dropped from the run. He had covered 50 miles. We picked up our aid boxes. Will limped with us back to the vehicles. It was about 4:00 AM.

In this time of pandemic, the AT still beckons. Virginia has more than 500 miles of the Trail, the longest segment of any state. Shenandoah National Park’s 108 miles is the northern segment. Further north are the rocks of Pennsylvania and Maine’s 100-Mile Wilderness. You jump on the trail and go, watching for those unique white blazes.

A few years ago, on a bitterly cold January day after a fresh snowfall, two friends and I climbed the Pass Mountain Trail, which links with the AT west of Sperryville. We passed an AT shelter, folks were camping. They waved, I shivered.

The AT always is in season. It conveys something mysterious, something magical. Not escape, exactly, but the awareness that traversing rugged places trains us to persevere, to move forward, to overcome. The Trail is about climbing rocky ascents to see the pale sky of the western horizon, the green hills to the east, then descending through deep gorges along plunging streams. Will knows he’ll get his FKT. The Trail is long and tough. We’ll be back.

September 21, 2020

We’ve been glued to the tube in the evenings watching news footage of the holocaust in California and Oregon, the Gulf Coast floods, the still-spreading pandemic, the scary clown show in Washington. But we quit our all-day house fix-up grind for a few hours to have lunch with a friend, a woman who came to the U.S. from Guatemala years ago. We kept in touch after she lost her job as administrator of the food pantry where I volunteer. We last saw her in February, just before the pandemic shut Virginia down. She and her husband now are doing well, both working, daughter in college, son nearby.

A day or so later I heard from an old colleague. We lost touch years ago. Recently I read that she had just published a novel. It’s an intense, passionate drama of a woman living through the American Revolution and the savage Cherokee wars in East Tennessee, a time of violence and hardship we now can barely comprehend. The title contains these words: “The Story of Hope.” She’s now planning her next book.

A friend in Florida contracted covid-19. She was sick for weeks but recovered. Back to work. Our youngest daughter, studying for nursing school in Colorado, learned she made the “President’s List” for the summer semester.

I got out of the house Saturday to volunteer at Athletic Equation’s “social-distanced” 12-hour run at Prince William Forest Park. Runners cover either a 6.5 or 11-mile course for a maximum of 12 hours. Few stay in that long. The winner is the guy/gal who racks up the most miles. I ran one loop. Good clean fun, but after a couple of loops you need spunk to keep going.

We all could use some spunk. Like the baby turtles pushing out of their shells in those PBS nature flicks, life keeps pushing us. For fun we drove past the three other for-sale houses nearby.  We agreed that ours, next to all three, is a gem, a palace. Right?

Not exactly. Not by a mile. We patted ourselves on the back for getting the place painted, then looked closer and found more nicks and dings, chipped caulking, spilled paint, a broken wall outlet, cracks in the concrete walkway. All that is on us, we’ve blown the budget for contractors. We need new outlet facings, new stones on the stone walkway, mulch in the front yard, back yard, etc.

I didn’t know moving was a sentence to hard labor. But then, it’s housework, after all. We now know this is what everyone does. We’re not griping as much. This is no joke, but it’s become easier to laugh at ourselves.

You can’t go backward. My former co-worker from Guatemala, seeking work, persevered, said her Rosary, and eventually found a good job close to home. The Tennessee novelist spent countless hours in front of her computer screen bringing her thoughts to life. Our friend in Tampa fought the virus, took her medicine, and got better. Our daughter cracked the books day and night to earn those As. These stories repeat themselves everywhere, every day.

I know enough to appreciate and treasure those things; I got sick and had my dark, not-feeling-very-good moments in recent years. We remind ourselves that many Americans are living with stunning tragedy, unspeakable heartache.

We can’t comprehend the experience of the victims of the pandemic, the wildfires, the floods. Still, we all know others who have taken or are taking their turn in the mill, struggling with serious illness, struggling to find decent work. In an entirely different universe, others confront personal challenges to achieve something singular and unique, like writing good fiction.

Amid your own hardship, you may come to realize that you have no alternative but to go on. Struggle and pain in human experience can in some unknowable way teach fortitude, courage, strength, thereby offer a path to recovery. In this hellish year, as millions suffer, perseverance and faith can carry us. They emerge from love, the relentless, mysterious gift of God.

They carry us back to the richness we can find around us. We find it by welcoming new things, experiences, people into our lives. We find it also by facing down difficulties, unique or mundane: the job search in times of trouble; the serious illness; even the blank, unforgiving computer screen that tortures the writer with doubt.

The things we wrestle with aren’t always life-changing. I’m preoccupied with nuts and bolts, nails and hammers. I wonder if anyone else is trying to install an outdoor electrical outlet facing, spread concrete on a cracked driveway, build a stone path. Really, in our besieged country right now, this slog through amateur house touch-ups to make the place presentable for would-be future owners seems a petty, self-indulgent sideshow.

But it isn’t, not really. Someone has to do it. Seems that after all these years we’ve come up with something like a plan. We’re worried about what lies ahead, but we’ve unmoored ourselves from this place. Whether it’s Trump or Biden, we’ll be somewhere else, close to kids and grandkids, but still somewhere strange, somewhere alien to our up-to-now closely regulated lives. We’ll be planning our next adventure in a new place. This house, the toolshed, and this scruffy back yard will belong to someone else. All that work, all that living, behind us. It’s time.