Monday, August 25, 2008

Road Trip to Virginia


Driving route 81 through Pennsylvania, we counted 36 silos from the time we decided to start counting them until the time we lost interest. Corn fields for acres, syrup for soda.

You could call 81 a highway, but when you're on it you are clearly treading the furrow. You always feel the presence of the blue ridge rising steady through the landscape to your right and left. Perhaps one of those ridges I saw hosts the Appalachian trail, the ridge-top route from Maine to Georgia. To walk the entire thing is one of my father's dreams.

Easy drive from Brooklyn to Woodstock, VA: Battery Tunnel, Holland Tunnel, 78 to 81. New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia. One has to mind all the trucks, mournful groaning beasts with those flaps of rubber hanging in back of the wheels, like dusty loincloths.


Above, 91st Annual Shenandoah County Fair.

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