The Big Wind-down

Elise with cousins Katie and Grace

Our peregrinations have brought us to this final spot in Shenandoah National Park. The weather has been rather mild for July, not too humid and not too hot. Only one significant storm blew through on Saturday evening, but it didn’t inconvenience us thanks to the wise and multitudinous preparations of Danine’s sister Lyn. She has taken the Scouts camping enough to learn how to prepare for every eventuality.


Conor and Taylor

Since we arrived, we have had a number of gatherings. On Saturday night Danine’s brother Colin and sister Lyn along with their families joined my parents and us for cooking out and catching up. On Sunday afternoon we set up in the picnic area and many friends and more family came. It was a welcome back party and everyone welcomed us joyfully and warmly. Many who came had followed the blog all year and some we hadn’t seen in a long, long time. Thank you, loyal fans.



Honestly, our time here has brought on all sorts of conflicted feelings. We are good with settling down and reintegrating with the work-a-day masses. The hard part is remembering, say, our glorious progression from the Grand Canyon to Moab or our quiet days from Elk Prairie campground in the redwoods up to the Olympic peninsula. I think it’s the transition we are dreading — not job worries or house worries so much as the great big mental gear shift that has to take place. It hasn’t always been easy being a tiny, three-person community, but it’s what we are used to right now and it’ll be strange to wake up and go in three different directions each day.



Meanwhile, everyone has been — and surely will continue to be — incredibly supportive and we’ve had a great time here at Big Meadows. We walked a little of the Appalachian Trail on Monday with Danine’s parents and Elise’s cousins Katie and Grace. I’d begun to feel resentful of the many people who told us on Sunday and Monday that they had seen bears on the way into the park. We spent eleven months going to places where bears live and saw only two. Then, on Monday evening, a gentleman walked over to our campsite and pointed to the nearby wooded hillside. There, we watched for about ten minutes a small mother bear and her two tiny cubs foraging for insects. All three wandered among the rocks and lifted or knocked over the smaller stones looking for good things to eat. It was marvelous.



Later Monday evening we went on a ranger guided walk through the meadow. We munched on the wild blueberries growing in it as we walked. Throughout the meadow deer were grazing. Scores of deer. Scores! We watched a fawn about 70 yards away run and leap in circles for the sheer fun of it. Each evening next to our campsite a ten-point buck walks and munches grass. White-tail deer are much handsomer than mule dear. I’d forgotten.



The sleeping weather has been great: cool, not humid. However, even the low humidity is still way too high compared to the West. It wouldn’t hurt the park to install some blimp-sized air handlers and dry this place out a bit. Another upside: few mosquitos. Another downside: gnats, gnats, gnats with a capital gee. These gnats are not disturbed by air currents and will even form a cloud directly in front of a blowing fan (to mock us).

Tuesday morning we went to a ranger talk on birds of prey. Ranger Georgette even brought out two Real Live Birds. Both were owls. The first was a charming Barred Owl. Did you know owls have ears that are asymmetrical — one side is higher than the other? This helps them triangulate the noises made by poor, hapless mice and such. In fact, if you put an owl in a completely light-free room and release a mouse, a healthy owl will find it one hundred percent of the time. That’s ninety-nine point nine percent more often than me. The second owl was a screech owl, which is about the size of a thick paperback book. They don’t screech. Go figure. Did you know that if we had eyes similar in proportion to our bodies as owls do, we’d have softballs sticking out of our heads?



In the humid, langorous afternoon we roused ourselves to go on two hikes. The first was up Bearfence Mountain which requires a rocky scramble to a 360-degree view. Next we joined up with our friends Tom and MJ, along with their son Joe, to hike down to Dark Hollow Falls. The falls were lovely and the water was cool — just ask Elise. She fell in.


MJ and Tom with Danine, Joe with Elise

Tuesday night will be our last campfire of the trip. Tomorrow we drive to Falls Church and begin a new phase of life. I’m sure we’ll be fine, but there’ll be a little bit of sadness as we leave behind this incredible year about.

I’ll write another entry once we are back, so don’t worry.