TRAIL DAY 105
Sat, June 4, 2016 My 75th birthday. It had been on the horizon since I started and very consciously since Grayson Highlands. It was there that I saw “500″ with the AT symbol pointing at those magic numerals. Small, light-grey stones laid out in green grass grazed to the nub at the northern edge of the Highlands evoked deep emotions for the time that had arrived.
Now was the day, family intact but for two grandkids living their lives far away on their own turf. We all collected for a sumptuous breakfast and lingered a good while just soaking up the occasion and being together. After breakfast, I would hang around and relax but some would head off for adventure: a stream to swim in – preferably with a rope to swing off a ledge or a cliff to jump from. No wimps in the West clan.
The Inn kindly did laundry for me while I took tent and sleeping bag out to the large field beyond the parking lot to air out just as I had done by the pool at the motel in Waynesboro.
I enjoyed the sitting area at the foot of our stairs where I read some magazines, one of which had an article on the Appalachian Trail entitled “the 2,000-mile CATHEDRAL.” Nailed it!
We made arrangements to have the family dinner in a room off the hall to the Tavern. It was Friday night and the place would be busy. Musicians would play in the hallway and join us for a few songs once the celebration got started.
Location and schedule figured out, Bonnie and I and a few others went off to a 5 p.m. mass, my first since Valentine’s Day. Having heard the simple gospel of the forest, the gentle whispers of the woods and the occasional soul-stirring, wind-blown torrent of emphasis in canopy above, the wordy liturgy seemed superfluous and perhaps self-important. It was hard to connect with vestments, readings, incantations and rituals.
I didn’t and don’t pan it. The liturgy and ritualistic practices have evolved over time, throughout history, even as the depth and breadth of cultures have evolved around the world. But my mind and determination were captured by “the 2,000-mile CATHEDRAL” and perhaps, at least for the meanwhile, my God was beyond culture, was perhaps pre-culture, primordial. Maybe I was back at the point where the dirt was gathered, yet to become man, earthbound. Perhaps, having shed all the garments of an adorned society, I was a post-innocent naked babe at his mother’s breast and the heavy culture was superfluous, distracting.
Soren and Karen arrived soon after we returned from the church. Hugs all around, even from Theo.
Once they settled in, Soren joined Bonnie and me in the Tavern to relax before dinner. Soren sat next to me and got teary because, with my beard, I looked a lot like my late, older brother whom he dearly loved. As he looked at me with a searching and tender gaze, he said, “I wasn’t prepared for this.”
I had to agree with his assessment. From pictures I’d seen of myself, especially those taken by Justice when I dunked myself in the stream in Grayson Highlands, I too was startled by how much I looked like my older brother. Some of the siblings thought I looked like my mother. This was a logical connection because my brother looked and was a lot like her.
When the time came, we filtered into the room where the lighting was soft against old, greyed-out beams and wall boards. The floor was worn down bricks still comfortable on the feet. A few drinks were followed by a fine dinner.
Most memorable, however, was the cake that my daughter-in-law, Wendy, kept refrigerated from home to the happy hearth of warm hearts. She delivered it with 75 candles aflame and very impressive. I suspect she needed a permit from the fire department. My meal and the live music were on the house. The dessert fare and flame were on Wendy and family.
I had entered the last quarter of a century. How much of it I’ll see, we know not. My blessings are numerous and they were very much in evidence again this year as my family gathered for my 76th birthday. I am as old as the 18th century (17 hundreds) was when our nation was born.
Day #105 Wayside Inn, Middletown, VA 0 miles