March 15, 2024
Yesterday marked the second-to-the-last day of a three-week journey from Pennsylvania to Florida and back. I had been pleased with what I had been able to do during that time, with the sites and sights I had seen, and the friends and sister I had spent quality time with. Now my goal was simply to get home. I didn’t think I really had time or energy for anything more profound than that.
But it wasn’t to be a simple drive. About 2:00, I heard a sudden and awful clacking sound. I immediately pulled off to the side of the interstate, having just enough room to come to a stop before crashing into a roadside barrier. I pulled over as far to the right as I could in a grassy area strewn with trash.
Long one-hour story short, my muffler had fallen almost all the way off. After a very nice man from AAA had scooched under the car and, realizing he could not somehow jerry-rig something to hold my muffler up, found that it simply fell off into his hands. It was that loose. He put it in my trunk and, after asking me to start my car, listened and said it wasn’t too bad and that he thought I could wait to get it fixed when I got home.
(And now as I’m typing, at 3:36 a.m., I hear a very sweet bird outside.)
I had the good sense to take some time to regroup rather than just soldier on. (Plus, I badly had to pee and my phone desperately needed charging.) Fortunately, there was a Cracker Barrel restaurant at the very next exit, just two miles away. I spent the first many minutes at my table laboriously typing a Facebook message on my phone, regaling everyone with my adventure on the road. I ate a meal and drank about three glasses of peach tea, grateful for the simple pleasure of a little sweetness in my day. Then, determined to make up for some of the time I had missed, I got back on the road and barreled on.
I had energy from all the tea and protein, and I drove until almost dark. Then knew I needed to find a place to sleep, as I don’t drive as well at night as I used to. Amazingly, I saw a sign for an inn and I pulled off. It was a privately owned inn up a somewhat steep drive off the road, off the interstate. But after several minutes of looking in the office window, and noting the absence of cars outside, I realized it was closed down. How disappointing.
I pulled out my phone and began searching for a nearby relatively affordable place. For some reason, whenever I did these searches, I could never quite be sure how close these motels and hotels were to my location. I used Google to find the address of the café I had passed just down the road and then I tried to find a place of lodging near there.
I chose a motel that I thought was nearby, paid for it online, and then, once again, after I plugged the address into my GPS, discovered it was a disappointing 40 minutes away. Not what I was hoping for. But I’d already paid for it and there was nothing left to do but start my car and drive.
GPS led me off the interstate onto the frontage road on the opposite side of the highway. And I noticed I was heading south, the direction from which I had just come. I don’t think anyone likes backtracking when they’re on a trip, do they? But having paid for it, what else could I do?
Quickly I found myself on extremely curvy, serpentine roads, driving up a mountain into national forest territory. The road was narrow with so many winding turns that I could not tell if I was going south, north, east, or west. I suspect I was driving in all those directions.
It felt surreal after a full day of driving on the interstate to be suddenly driving in a surprisingly remote area. A part of me was relieved to be away from the frenzy of interstate traffic, and another part felt nervous. I was reminded of the stories of mischievous fairies in Celtic lore who take hapless wanderers deep into the forest into a magical land where they live for twenty-five years, though it feels like a mere hour.
Where was I being taken?
I had a talk with my guides. And I finally reassured myself that they had a hand in this, that this was happening for a reason. And I started to appreciate my surroundings. I was in a deeply wooded area in one of the more ancient mountain ranges on the planet. I shifted gears (mentally, metaphorically) and began to sing. I sang to the mountains and I blessed them. I blessed the trees, and the springs and creeks and ponds, and any of the animals who might live in these mountains. I blessed the bear and the deer and the mountain lion. I even blessed Bigfoot, because it felt like his territory! (For those who don’t know, Bigfoot has been seen in many areas of the country. A quick Google search tells me that “thousands of ‘credible’ sightings have been seen in every state except Hawaii.”) Then, feeling sad for the occasional moth being drawn to my headlights, I remembered to pray for and bless the little creatures of the Earth—the butterflies, moths, birds, and bats, many of which are endangered. I also remembered the coyote, another denizen of the natural world who is not always appreciated, though he is an incredibly smart creature who plays an important role in the ecosystem.
My mood began to shift from one of anxiety to one of wonder. I began to realize that this road was leading me to the other side of the Blue Ridge Mountains. In fact, a tractor trailer following me on that winding road, finally turned off — onto an unexpected entrance to the Blue Ridge Parkway. (For which I felt relieved. There was something rather horror movie-ish about being followed by such a large vehicle on such a remote and winding back road.)
Gradually the serpentine road began to become slightly less curvy. Gradually the ascent turned to descent and then to relatively level ground. Gradually the wild forest began to be punctuated by small homes and farms. I began to hear the delightful sound of spring peepers. All along the road I was hearing a chorus of peepers. I passed cows contently grazing in the dark twilight.
I was awash with gratitude for the beauty all around me.
I checked my GPS. I was now on the latter half of my trip, supposedly getting closer to my place of lodging. Finally, I was directed to turn left onto a small highway. Finally, finally, I found my motel.
Once I unloaded the necessities from my car, I found myself with the nagging sensation that perhaps I had missed a spiritual sign earlier. Was the muffler incident a way of getting me to stop? Was I supposed to have seen something or done something back in Abingdon, Virginia, where the car incident happened? Or was I supposed to have settled into a motel at 4:00, rather than 8?
I got out my atlas. When I had pulled into the deserted inn above the Foot of the Mountain Café, I was in Buchanon, Virginia. Spirit, through booking.com, had led me up and through Roosevelt National Forest into the small town of Bedford, 26 miles south (in my northward journey toward home). What was I to make of this? I was too tired to figure it out. And I realized with some chagrin that if I had not taken 30 minutes to compose a Facebook post earlier, I might have discerned a message from Spirit earlier.
I brushed my teeth and went to the bathroom and, suddenly filled with great fatigue, decided to forgo a shower and crawl directly into bed.
I fell into a deep, deep sleep. Eventually I had a dream. A woman was curating an art exhibit. It was all exquisite simplicity. A simple movement, a perfect tableau, a lovely photo of a wing with light streaming through. She invited some of us to continue this artistic exploration and we responded with an immediate and enthusiastic Yes! Eventually some guys were hungry and started cooking hamburgers. The sight and smell of cooking flesh was so jarring after all the perfect simplicity that a man in one great flurry, gathered up the whole shebang, jumbling it all together into a sheet, and threw it away.
When I woke from the dream, it took me a moment to get my bearings. Where was I? Graduatlly my disoriented brain remembered all that had happened the night before. I asked myself: What was the lesson? And what was I meant to do this next day? The answer was immediately clear. Choose the road less traveled. Keep things simple. Remember the sacred.
