The picture, the experience, the ramble may be from last year, but the memory of the day and the experience of the walk lives on (and in fact, I am writing these words a year later). Clearly, I am still searching for whatever I sought on that road a year ago. In fact, since then, I have journeyed to that place and walked that road many times.

I wondered why. I wondered what it was that continues to call me back to this tiny town in Bath County, VA. When thinking with my logical mind, I find no reason for its mysterious magic. I’m not a particularly outdoor type, although the pandemic has changed that to some extent. It isn’t a luxurious or engaging destination in so many ways…it doesn’t fit the profile of the usual destination I would choose when traveling. It certainly doesn’t fit the profile of a place that I would return to over and over again.

And yet, there is this walk. There is this mountain. And when I am there, I cannot wait to walk this road. And when I am not there, I am plotting to get back there, so that I can walk this road…so that I can smell the forest and look deep into the woods and listen to the birds. In these many months of pandemic times, this simple walk up a very small mountain has meant everything to me. It has comforted me, it has held me, it has challenged me and it has changed me. And I do not know why and I do not begin to understand how. And that experience was the same the day this picture was taken, and the same two weeks ago when I walked this way in the rain and looked for the fog-wrapped hilltops.

I do not understand, and yet, I understand, or I would not return.