Shades of Blue
If I told you that within the Chesapeake Bay watershed,
there was a wilderness oasis, devoid of the drone of highway interstate traffic
and the ever-present hum of electricity, where you can run your fingers along
the rigid surface of billion year old exposed granite and relish in your
escapism from modern development knowing you’re surrounded by 80,000 acres of
protected and never-to-be-destroyed-for-any-reason forests, would you believe
me?
I wouldn’t believe myself had I not touched the rocks with
my own fingers, experienced the almost overpowering silence with my own ears
and sighed in relief when I learned that the beauty I was completely
encompassed by was actually safe. Really safe. Like I can bring my own children
here someday and they will see with their eyes exactly what I saw through mine,
safe. Of course, I’m speaking about Shenandoah
National Park and the misty Blue Ridge
Mountains of the great state of Virginia.
As I began my 35 mile trek along Skyline Drive, the
signature route through the Shenandoahs, I travelled through a 700 foot tunnel in
the belly of Mary’s Rock Mountain where I was reminded by a quirky sign that,
‘only 1,300,000,000 years ago this rock was still molten magma’. . . lest I
forget, of course. I occasionally pass the wayward backpacker, no doubt
following the 101 miles of the Appalachian Trail
that transect the park, and I’m offered a casual wave and a glance that I can’t
help but interpret as, “You get it, too . . . this place is special”. Although
I’m visiting the park in the winter, I honestly feel a bit like a peeping tom
but in the best way possible. With the trees having shed the last of the autumn
leaves, I can see deep into the woods and eavesdrop on the inner workings of a
forest from squirrels climbing tall knobby chestnut trees to white-tailed deer nuzzling
through the fallen leaves in search of food.
At the tallest point of my journey, I pulled over at
Thorofare Mountain Overlook which is approximately 3570 feet higher than my
cubicle on the third floor of the Chesapeake Bay Program Office in Annapolis, MD
(not that I’m measuring). It was here that I experienced the deepest silence of
the journey. Sitting on a segment of a stone wall that runs almost the length
of Skyline Drive built with hard work and sweat by the boys and men of the
Civilian Conservation Corps early last century, my feet seemed to dangle on the
edge of the world. To my right, vast, open farming segments nestled comfortably
within the valley. To my left, row after row of misty near-ethereal Blue Mountains, each succeeding into a fainter shade of
blue until the last mountain blends almost artistically into the horizon. Yeah,
I get it. This place is special.
So, if I told you that within the Chesapeake
Bay watershed, there was a place 75 miles from our nation’s
capital where the mountains are enchantingly blue, the silence is deafening, and
you could experience true, unspoiled nature the way nature is intended to be, would
you believe me? Well, I guess you’ll just have to go and found out for
yourself.
