A New Spin

Three days, two wheels, one woman. The ratio is perfect. I’ve stashed the kids at summer camp, left my husband at home, and stolen away, headed for the hills. I’ve got my bike, a few books, a bottle of wine and the Blue Ridge Parkway, and with only empty hours and empty road ahead of me, I can breathe again. Ah, the pine-scented mountain air, shaken free of humidity and responsibility.

I set off on this brief solitary sojourn tired and restless, needing to break out of the mundane cadence I find myself grinding through with work, kids, house and home. There’s nothing like the rolling hills and steep climbs of the Parkway to make me, a flatlander, shift into gears I’m not used to using.

These three days of pedaling along this ancient mountain spine are less a bike tour than a detour, a trek away from my numbing daily routine onto a more clear, more simplified path. Yet ironically, even though I’m fleeing monotony, it’s the monotony of the Parkway, of mile after mile of nothing but trees, hills, wildflower meadows, cow pastures and the occasional deer or groundhog, that calls to me. Sure the post-biking endorphins kick in with their serotonergic zing, but the physical workout is secondary to the mental zone-out, the spiritual tune-in. Maybe it’s a midlife thing, but huffing along this undulating two-lane road, dodging black flies and motorcycles, is my idea of fun, or salvation. Or both.

I admit I’m a Blue Ridge romantic. To me the Parkway with its quaint split- rail fences and bucolic landscape is peaceful, beautiful, a bit mysterious. I’m never sure what lies around the next bend or over the next hill, or, especially when I’m grinding the granny gear, if the hill will ever, please God, end. Even the pavement itself has a nostalgic appeal—not too smooth, not too rough, with tiny bits of pebble mixed in that remind me of my grandparents’ driveway when I was a kid, a pine needle-strewn blacktop we were always glad to arrive on.

Built as a public works project during the Great Depression, the Parkway links Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park with the Great Smoky Mountain National Park in western North Carolina, hugging the crests of the world’s oldest mountain range along the way. The North Carolina segment is the part I know best, and the poetry of this Appalachian terrain never fails to move me. Violet hazy fog can shroud the distant hills, amber sunsets melt over mountainsides, hawks and vultures swirl effortlessly overhead, hang-gliding on updrafts as if on time itself. The Parkway more or less follows the route that the character Inman takes as he trudges his long way home in Charles Frazier’s novel, Cold Mountain (the actual Cold Mountain is just a few miles away). It’s a haunted, elegiac topography, a world of scarp and crag, of knob and cove and gap, with place names bearing witness to fearless Scots-Irish settlers and Cherokee natives. Passing through this memory-drenched landscape healed Inman’s war-torn soul, and it heals mine.

I may be unclear about what direction I’m headed in professionally, personally or spiritually, but here on the Parkway, where life is pared down to North and South, fl at or hilly, I can get my bearings. There are no maps to decipher, no decisions to make, no wondering where in the heck you are or how you’re going to get where you want to go. When I enter the Parkway I turn right or left and that’s it. From there I just ride, pedaling past milepost after milepost, subtly marked by white numbered stones on the grassy shoulder. The straight shot is reassuring. I’m just along for the ride, digging deep and hoping I’ve got what it takes to endure the inclines, then savoring the payoff, milking the downhills for all they’re worth.

On their printed guidebooks, the National Park System dubs the Blue Ridge Parkway “the All-American Road,” but as I mosey my way from the Virginia/North Carolina border toward the Linville Viaduct, I realize that it’s the antithesis of All-American, at least in terms of 21st century America. With a speed limit of 45 and absolutely no billboards and no commercial roadside attractions, the Parkway goes against the dotted line of every fast-paced, fastfood, get-there-at-all-costs American value. This, in fact, may be the only virgin swath of asphalt left, the only roadway without the Golden Arches or Wal-Mart or the Dollar Store visible from its path. The only road built for the sole pleasure of meandering.

And meandering is my main objective on this low-impact getaway. I’m here to practice the fine art of vagabonding, in hopes that my spirit will settle as my mind and body wander. I pull off the Parkway at most every overlook, indulging in the excuse to catch my breath, eat gingersnaps and take in the view. I relearn what it means to read the landscape, and realize just how apt the term “overlook” is. This before me—the dense forests, the great scruffy rock outcroppings, the way the land curves in on itself and the endless swells of mountain roll toward the horizon, the balsams and laurel and dogwood— this is what I typically overlook. My eyes and brain are so accustomed to consuming constant gulps of information: I scan the morning headlines, digest homepage sound-bites and process an onslaught of advertisements and 24-hour news, but I fail to acknowledge the stories that are both timeless and new every day, broadcast across the land, the sky, the sea. Back on the road I bike on, to the next overlook, the next mile marker, until it’s time to quit for the day and go soak in a hot tub and pull out the wine, the books. Each pedal stroke makes one small revolution, and these build toward a journey of revolutions. A shift in the way I move through the world, and the way it moves me.

Stephanie Hunt lives, writes and bikes at sea level in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina. One of her favorite Parkway pit stops is Brinegar’s Cabin, milepost 238.5. Contact her at www.stephaniehuntwrites.com.

~Stephanie Hunt