Around Town // Catoctin Mountain Orchard

What single activity better heralds the arrival of fall than apple picking? I don't know about you, but I can't think of anything more autumnal than that.

Whenever fall begins to appear, one of my favorite places to visit in the Frederick area is the Catoctin Mountain Orchard. Located about 15 minutes north of Frederick city, the orchard is nestled at the base of the dusky, blue-green Catoctin Mountains, the easternmost section of the Blue Ridge. Driving up 15 North--the stretch of country highway that connects two Civil War towns, Frederick and Gettysburg-- has always been one of my favorite stretches of road. You wind imperceptibly upwards, through sweeping farmland, vineyards, and orchards. In autumn, the mountains transform into crimson and gold cavalcades of color, setting the entire landscape ablaze. Against that fiery backdrop, the white silos and farmhouses stand out starkly, suddenly pristine against all the autumn hues.

It's within this pastoral scene that the Catoctin Mountain Orchard resides. Rounding a bend in the empty highway, you suddenly spot it: a small metal building, not much bigger than a farmer's market stand, surrounded by orchards. An overly-bright highway sign depicting cartoon apples baskets and block letters points to your destination. The sign may be bigger than the market, impossible to miss.

Open from early summer through late fall, the Market is my favorite source for fresh fruits, preserves, and baked goods. Once you step through its stiff-hinged metal door, your senses are accosted with flavor and scent: baking bread, tart apple juice, cinnamon-and-sugar, plump peaches. Row after row of mason jars line the walls, precisely ordered on makeshift wooden shelves. Their labels hint to sugary-sweet creations within: blackberry jam, peach preserves, apricot jam, sweet habanero pickles, pumpkin butter. Nearby, blue farmer's baskets overflow with apples, plums, nectarines,  berries, and peaches. Large white baskets offer samples for you to taste. An old-fashioned "taste before you buy" mentality presides here.

The closest basket cradles small golden apples, each about the size of my fist. Round, sweet little fruits that my grandmother would call "bakin apples." The basket's label identifies their proper name: Blondees. Mark and I share one. My teeth sink in to its crisp skin, and juice spurts. I start, surprised at how juicy and sweet it is. No convincing is required to include a bushel in our cart. That's the hazard of visiting this place: you leave with baskets and jars of yumminess that you truly don't need but truly do want.

Whether you pick your own apples, wander through the flower field, or just shop the market, Catoctin Mountain Orchard is worth the drive. It's the perfect way to spend a late summer/early fall afternoon.

Catoctin Mountain Orchard

15036 N Franklinville Rd

Thurmont, MD 

Oh, August...

Do you hate August? Or do you love this final summer month? I know, I know. Technically, September is the final summer month since autumn doesn't officially begin until September 23rd. But I can't help it... as soon as I flip that calendar page and see all those "-ber" months, my mind instantly fast-forwards to boots, scarves, hot cider, and falling leaves.

But I ask again, do you like August? I used to despise this month-- too hot, too muggy, too sticky. However, as most of you know, I've been making it my personal mission to love each summer day as it comes, to relish the heat and warmth and birdsong. It all goes by too soon, you know? It passes by to be replaced with snow drifts, cold toes, and bare branches.

Even though we have been experiencing some unexpected cooler weather (translation: low 80's instead of high 90's), summer certainly lingers here. Heat oppresses the outlying fields, crackling the grass and drying the creeks. So much gold-white sunlight and washed-out blue sky, tinting our vision with this summeresque hue. Like some heavy-handed camera filter. By day, white butterflies flit among the flowers-- dried hydrangeas, prolific marigolds, blasted rosebushes. The butterflies are like a sudden, whispered secret: there, startling your senses, and then gone. By night, fireflies pulse in the trees, rendering the woods something magical and unknown.

As much as I love autumn, I don't want to think yet of faded leaves, pumpkin grins, or the first film of frost coating the ground. Not while the sun still warms my shoulders, not while ice cubes still chink and melt in my glass, not while each day still bleeds into the next, so full of sunlight.

Today, I just want to lie down, fade into the yellowing grass. The blades itching the backs of my knees and elbows. I would spread my hand, fingers wide and grasping. The sun would warm my palm. Feeling its touch, my fist would close, as if gathering the light. As if I could just grasp this day, this summer, and hold onto it forever.

Freedom and youth only last so long.

Crossing the Line // A Poem

When your car tires bump
-fwump fwump—over the stateline
and the drivers speeding beside you
tap their carhorns to signal a homecoming,
you find yourself staring at the dismal
stretch of highway ahead,
the same as that stretching behind you:
the only hint to your arrival in Dixie,
the Great Peach State, the Empire State
of the South, the home of the O’Haras
for God’s sake, is the orange cartoon fruit
dominating the welcome sign.
Otherwise, it’s all asphalt, big rigs, and litter
with occasional signage yelling
that Jesus loves you, yes He does
or lottery tickets sold here, play and win big.

 Where,
you ask, are the cotton fields, the peach
orchards, the rednecks with their rebel
emblazoned Chevys? Where
can I find the bluegrass twang
or the pearl-collared debutantes
and their quarterback counterparts?
Where, you demand,do the magnolias grow
their lemon-scented petals blanketing
the earth, and where can I find
the twisted oaks with their sagging shawls
of Spanish moss crawling with insects?
And where, once more, are the white brick
mansions with their fluted columns
and sprawling fields? And, oh, can you tell me
where I might find a Confederate, please
one is wanted dead or alive? 

Here.Take this exit, yes. Here, now.
If you want to see and hear and taste this land 
you call the South—south of what?--then follow
an old road into a forgotten, half-empty 
town bypassed by culture and progress.
In buildings half-eaten by wisteria
growing in clumps and tangles
order vinegar slaw and smoked pork
in a basket, drink enough sweet ice tea
to rot your teeth or at least stain them yellow
for awhile.
Here we have a Hallmark, a Bi-Lo,
a dirty Wendy’s, and y’know I hear
they’re putting in a Walmart by the highway. 

Drive further still and you’ll collide
with the first tendril trails
of industrial sprawl, strip malls
and condominiums cropping up,
reaching for the quiet pastures and mountains
like grasping fingers.
If you want to stretch your legs
and don’t mind clay stains
on your white tennis shoes,
you can lean on this here fence post,
mind the barbed wire coming loose.
Walk soft through tall fescue,
wary that your footfalls don’t discover
a coiled rattler. Don’t lift that sun-warmed 
rock unless you want the sting
of the scorpion hidden beneath.

Catch the flutter of sunlight
in the quick fly-flick of a chestnut’s tail,
her hide dappled brown with sweat
from the heat that settles
and cloaks your skin and mouth. 
Mosquitos, no-see-ums, horseflies,
copperheads, cottonmouths,and water-moccasins 
gliding and circling nearby, always.
And so much green sun-tinged
yellow: the tangled undergrowth,
the knee-high weeds, and the thistles
with their ungraceful purple blooms. 

And there, finally,
the sought-after peach orchard,
squat trees in brisk rows,
the laden branches drooping
to the fallen fruit, rotten
and oozing on the orchard floor.
Pluck one, 
dangling in the sunlight,
its flesh yielding in your hand. Round,
delicately soft and flushed pink.
Something sweet and nourishing,
spurting sugar, something sweet
you can sink your teeth into.

Self-Portrait in Third Person

She falls asleep with good intentions.

She pulls the fluffy duvet to her nose, snuggles deep into the warm embrace of her bed, scoots her icy feet under her husband's leg, and hears his resigned sigh, As her mind drifts, just before her thoughts unravel into nonsensical dreams, she thinks: I'll wake up early. I'll fix a bowl of oatmeal. Actually have time to curl my hair. To drink my coffee. Maybe even read a page or two. Yes, that's what I'll do--

Only to abandon those good intentions of preparedness in favor of a few extra moments of half-sleep and warmth in the morning. After several years of practice with procrastination, she knows how to apply eyeliner and mascara with a quick, steady hand. How to quickly tease, twist, and pin the mousy-brown hair that reaches to her mid-back. As she pulls on her boots, stretching the last minutes of getting-ready time before she jogging to her car, she wishes she was the kind of girl who could just brush her hair, apply a quick layer of tinted moisturizer,look in the mirror, and call it sufficient. Instead, she sprays every hair and irons every wrinkle into place, compelled to look her best regardless of the day's appointed tasks.

Protein shake. Travel mug warm with black coffee. Gloves. Scarf. Lunch. Book. Cell phone. Water bottle. To many things in one woman's purse, she grumbles to herself as she juggles bag and keys. Then it's two kisses to her husband and a quick pat to her wiggling pup, before dashing to her car to make the long work commute she dreads every morning.

The Maryland winters still make her shiver. The snow streaking the road still makes her grip her her steering wheel a little too tight despite having learned how to drive in real winters. As the work day slips by, memories of southern summers keep her warm as she bundles herself through cold days, She looks ahead to evenings at home with her steady-rock of a husband and bouncy pup--her own little family. The simple joys of her head on his shoulder and the whistling ping-and-patter of their old house's radiators console her in the deep part of winter, keeping homesickness at bay.

Over a slow-cooker supper, she and he will laugh, nudge each other, talk about the next day's events, maybe the next home renovation, or when and how they'll move back south. Curled against the arm of the couch, she watches as he leans forward in his seat, biting his lip in intense focus upon the new football video game. He doesn't notice the  faint grin that quirks the corner of her mouth; she wonders if he knows the pleasure she gets out of these moments--just watching him be him--before drifting to sleep on the couch, the warm weight of the dog pressing her feet.

Only to begin it all again tomorrow.

Peaches, vol. 2

I'd like to share another excerpt from a larger creative nonfiction essay

I've been working on. In this essay, I'm attempting to capture what

"Southerness" means to me. The following post contains a page

from the larger work. I hope you enjoy! 

The trees grew in tangled, regimented rows, at once so precise and so unruly. If I closed one eye and tilted my head to the side, the corridor of brown trunks seemed to stretch indefinitely, one after the other, row after row, trunk by trunk. Mise en abyme. Above these soldierly bases, the trees’ branches spread into a chaotic canopy. In winter, the trees were squat and barren, the secret twinings and twistings of the branches revealed in their nakedness. In spring, pink-white buds festooned and softened their bark hides, sprinkling on the ground like a confectionery snow. But now, in summertime, was when the peach orchard really blossomed. The branches drooped, heavy with fruit that grew in clumps. Sometimes, so many peaches grew on one branch that their haphazard bunching reminded me of someone trying to carry to many things at once. Eventually, the weight of the items would become overbearing and, one by one, thing would begin to fall. So it is with peach trees: the hard, green balls begin to blush, kissed by the sun, and as they soften and fill with juice, the tree loses its strength. Branches begin to sag under their burden, lowering toward the orchard workers’ hands, as if begging to be picked

My grandparents did not own the peach orchard, although I, in my childhood naivete, assumed that they did, just as I assumed all the world was open, mine to play and skip and run through. On three sides, the orchard enveloped his land: left, right, rear. Only the front of the house was open and that bordered by a one-lane country road and, beyond, the railroad track.

When the hottest August days arrived, my grandfather would select one of grandmother’s largest plastic bowls and, taking my hand, lead me into the orchard.

Under the orchard’s canopy, I stepped into another world, one muffled from the outside world by drooping branches and whose humid air thickened with the sticky scent of fructose. So late in the season, several peaches had already fallen to the ground. Bruised and ruptured at the base of their trees, the fruits began to decay, mixing their spilt juice with the red earth. I placed my feet deliberately, taking care to avoid the ruined peaches. I cringed at the yield and squish if I happened to step upon one, the sudden squirting of rotten juice. The sugary substance coated the toes of my shoes and made the Georgia clay cling to their fabric. Maw-maw won’t like that, I thought.

“Here,” my grandfather’s voice said. “Some ripe ones.”

At his direction, I passed between the branches and emerged into an open spot of sunlight. The air here was fresher, not so pungent with the scent of sweet flesh and decay. My grandfather smiled and lifted a low branch, pointing to its burden. Three fist-sized peaches, their flesh unbruised, unblemished, pale yellow and blushing red. With two hands, I held grandmother’s bowl as he picked them.

Grinning and emboldened by our find, I scurried onward. I was smaller and more agile, able to duck between and beneath the squatting trees. Soon, I outpaced my grandfather whose presence faded to a voice behind me. I paused, searching for fruit, and there, dangling alone on a branch, was a great, round find. Baseball-sized and fat with sugar. With one hand, I pulled down the branch, the leaves jostling, and with the other I plucked the peach.

Just as soon as it broke away from the branch and I felt its rounded weigh in my palm, my eyes widened. Behind this seemingly perfect fruit grew another, just as large and fat. Yet this one teemed and moved. Beetles, black and scuttling, roiled across its flesh, so many that the yellow fruit seemed to have grown its own glistening carapace.  Disgusted, I recoiled and lost my grip on the fruit I had just picked. I grabbed for it, but it fell with a thud muffled by grass and leaves. I plucked it from the ground, turned it over. Its smooth body had darkened, already bruised.

My grandfather’s tread neared.“Grandpa,” I called. “Look.” I pointed to the bug-infested peach.

He squinted in the sunlight, then frowned. “Yep. That happens. They’re drawn to the sugar. Just like us, I reckon.” He took the bowl from me. “Let’s head home.”

Her thumb guiding the small knife, my grandmother carved the peaches into perfect wedges. She offered me a slice, balanced on the blade’s edge. I shook my head. Even though I could imagine how fresh and sweet it would taste, I couldn't sink my teeth into the peach’s skin. My mind still crawled with the memory of that rotten peach, still clinging to its branch, its skin roiling and squirming with beetles. 

For a previous installment, click here. 

Image source

Peaches

If you head north on Highway 365—people from Atlanta will call it 985, but everyone north of Gainesville knows it by its real name 365, and if you don’t use that name, people won’t know where you’re sending 'em—you will eventually find two towns whose names sound like musical notations or perhaps like a widow-lady and her scruffy dog: Lula and Alto. According to their oldest citizens, both towns once promised to boom and spread. Lula with its train station and our Alto close enough to feel the ripple effects of Lula’s progress. Yet, as so often happened with these hidden Southern towns, the highway diverted all attention from the railroad, and soon, the town began to disappear until all that was left was the shell of the train station, an abandoned peach stand, and a few brick buildings hinting to a main street. There, a traveler would find the requisite small-town stores: a hair salon specializing in quilted purses, a wilting florist, and a bait-and-tackle shop.

The abandoned peach stand. A turquoise green shed, sitting lonely on the Old Cornelia Highway, the two-lane path that the big road bypassed. If a person didn’t know better, he would think the stand was a relic, some lost piece of the town’s history, forgotten and empty like so many other buildings, their only denizens the grass overpowering their foundations. Surrounded by pink-flowering trees, the abandoned stand rests at the front of a peach orchard. Gnarly, stooped trees in regimented rows that file away over the low rolling hills.

What appears to be the front of the farm property, evidenced by the stand, the driveway, the house facing the street, is actually the rear. Time and change demanded the citizens of Lula and Alto face another direction. Located on the opposite side of the orchard is the sprawling farmers market Jaemor Farms, a main stop on the agritourism trail of Northeast Georgia. This supersized market is renowned for its boiled peanuts, pumpkins, and apple harvest. In late summer and early fall, when the grass becomes scorched and the trees start bowing under their fruits, wealthy Atlanta and Gwinnet citizens battle Interstate 85, just to taste the Northeast’s peaches, apples, squash, and tomatoes.

My grandparents bought their produce at Jaemor. In their Georgia dialects, that word—produce—became a dull spondee, each syllable dragged to its full length, a slow-moving word that rolled off their lips like honey dripping off a spoon. At the grocery stores in Gainesville, my grandmother always held my hand tight in hers, but at Jaemor she gave me my own basket and let me run the aisles. 

Kicking aside the dried stalks, leaves, and corn husks forgotten on the floor, my tennis shoes scuffed on the concrete. My nose tickled with a cornucopia of smells: the brushed, dry scent of the paper apple-bags; the sickly sweetness of the melons; the earthy smell of potatoes, radishes and carrots; the sharpness of a yellow squash; the sunshine-y tang of row after row of peaches.

Leaning on his cane, my grandfather held up a melon. Its green, round belly drooped and rolled between his hands. He frowned, surveying its spottled hide, and then lifted his knotted thumb and gave the melon a sharp thwump!

“See that splotch on its belly? Hear that sound?” he said. “It’s how you check for its juice. Take it to your grandmama.”

Like a master revealing trade-secrets, my grandfather led me through the market. He placed the ripe fruits into my small hands, instructing me to discern the weight and heft of the ripe opposed to the unready. He taught me to search for the red gleam of a ripe tomato, to listen for the drumbeat of a ready melon, to smell the sweetness of a juicy peach.

Arranged in baskets, the peaches were piled haphazardly, red and yellow gems waiting to be polished. My index finger brushed their downy flesh, soft like the hair on a baby’s crown. My grandmother always wrinkled her nose at a peach’s skin and peeled away the fuzz and down with her sharp little knife.But I protested. I loved the way the tender fuzz tickled my nose when I bit into the peach’s yellow flesh; I loved its brush against the roof of my mouth, the way the sticky juice spurted and oozed between my fingers. 

Perfection, ain't it. 

image source: here

Home for the Holidays

Clutching luggage in each hand, one bag balanced on the  very edge of your shoulder, you kick the door with the toe of your boot. Thunk thunk thunk. A distant patter of footsteps, someone hurrying to greet you. The knob creaks and turns, and then the door swings up, suffusing the winter night with warm air and yellow light. It slants across the law, a distended rectangle reaching out to welcome you home. 

Panting, you heave your burdens--duffle and gift bags--over the threshold. As the chill ebbs from your limbs, you breathe hellos and how are yous, fielding hugs and backslaps. A bundle of fur bumps past your shins--the dog rushing in before you. His head low and his tail beating, he innocently displays all the excitement you feel as you let your luggage fall to the foyer floor. Your shoulders ache from the relieved weight as you think "I'll worry about those later." For now, you are home. 

This year, we spent Christmas in Virginia with Mark's family: the Hobbs and the Richardsons.

Every family has its own unique holiday traditions, but Mark's family always ensures that a few of my own family's traditions are observed. Every year, without fail, my own mom made sausage and cheese balls. After opening our gifts, she would pull trays of sausage-cheese balls, crumbly and warm, from the oven. Crispy and brown, they were always too warm to touch, but we grabbed them anyway, bouncing them around on our palms before dropping them onto a small plate. Too good to wait. My sister, father, and I would wolf them down, pausing only to douse them with Tabasco sauce. (Some families are wine connoisseurs. The Black family are hot sauce snobs.)

The first year that I spent Christmas with Marks, I passingly mentioned that I would miss Mom's sausage-cheese ball breakfast. To my surprise, I awoke the next morning to their familiar smell and found a small plate sat before me, complete with a side of Tabasco.

It's the little things that let you know you are loved.

For me, Christmas can be described through its various tastes and smells.

Heady cinnamon. The buttery, velvety softness of chocolate-peanut-butter fudge. The tartness of cranberry. Sweet boiled custard, smooth and thick on your tongue, like melted ice cream. Juicy ham, spiced with brown sugar. The creamy whirl of mashed potatoes, drizzled with salty ham gravy.

The day after Christmas, Mark's maternal grandmother hosts a Maryland-style holiday dinner, and her dining room swells with family. Having lived in Baltimore before relocating to Virginia, Gram whips together a seafood feat that makes everyone's mouth water. Steamy shrimp, fried oysters, and lumpy crabcakes whose "one per person" rule would test a saint's willpower. Marylanders are as proud about their crab and seafood as Carolinians are of their BBQ or Georgians of their fried chicken. The pride is well-deserved.

Eating seafood at Christmas surprised me the first time I ever encountered it. Being from the Deep South, I associated tinsel with casserole, Santa Claus with chicken and ham. But after having been a member of Mark's family for three holiday seasons, this tradition now feels just that: traditional. It simply wouldn't be a proper Virginia Christmas without shrimp.

Recently, I encountered an interview article of the ever-vivacious and cherry-lipped Taylor Swift in which she remarked that some of us love to give gifts and some of us love to receive gifts. I definitely fall into the former category. I honestly derive as much or possibly even more joy from selecting paper, ribbon, and trimmings than I do from unwrapping my own presents.

However, this year, I received an unexpected gift that upended my giving preference. On Christmas Eve, my iPhone pinged with a text message: a video file of my father reading The Night before Christmas. As a little girl, I would snuggle on my parents' bed with my sister (along with a stuffed animal and a kitten or two) to listen to him read the familiar poem. Even though my sister now has children of her own and I'm married and living hours away--when we're all together for the holiday, we still curl up like little girls, ready to be read to.

It's funny how something as simple as hearing your dad's voice can make you feel both gut-wrenchingly homesick and content to your very core.Such is the magic of the holidays, I suppose.

What are some of your favorite Christmas traditions?

How did you and yours celebrate? 

Summer's Ending, vol. 2

Summer's ending brings its own unique color palette. It's no longer the dainty pinks and tender greens of spring, nor yet the crimsons and violets of fall. Instead, summer's ending adopts duskier hues, as if life's pigments too are growing weary and scorched by an over-zealous sun.

Like the powdery blues and washed-out yellows of a summer sunset.

The juicy reds and verdant greens of a summer's harvest. 

The chipped white and peeling red of an old farmhouse.

Or the yellow ochre and faded black of a flower hedge and its bumblebee denizens.

This post is the second installment of the series Summer's Ending.

For volume one, check out this post. 

Reno & Garland: How We Met Two Dead Generals

On our Saturday hike, Mark and I abruptly walked into a mowed field. The tree-shrouded path of the Appalachian Trail deposited us into this open expanse without warning. One moment we were in the embrace of woods, the next we were on a road side, facing a field. We stepped quietly, wondering if we were trespassing or walking through park territory.

Then, we noticed the sign. A green board, trimmed with gold: a historical marker. We had walked right onto a little-known historical battlefield. The field, its broad green interrupted by one sprawling oak, had been the stage for a bloody conflict involving some 90,000 Michigan men. As the birds tweeted in the shrubs and a farmer's tractor rattled in the distance, I had difficulty imagining the field, so serene now, full with men. Men arrayed in precise lines, their nervous banter punctuated by hoof beats and then the sudden blast of artillery. Considering the numbers--90,000 on the Union side alone--the large field suddenly seemed small. So much life collided and clashed in one spot, on a little-known backroad in Maryland.

"You know, you don't learn about these battles in school. The little battles that happened way out in the country," Mark said.

Perhaps my Civil War history is simply not up-to-snuff, but try as I might, I couldn't remember the Battle of Fox Gap, one of three battles pitched in the attempt to possess South Mountain (ironically, also the sight of the Washington Monument we visited in this post). One of the Confederate generals involved in the South Mountain battles, General James Longstreet, lived in Gainesville, Georgia--my own stomping grounds. You may recognize Longstreet's nickname "Old War Horse," bequeathed by Lee himself.

Beyond the field lay a rectangular stone fence with what appeared to be a grave marker jutting from the middle. Mark and I trudged over to investigate. Closer inspection revealed the monument to honor Union General Jesse L. Reno. Off to the side, less than twenty feet from the memorial site, was another marker, smaller and worn. This one honored a fallen Confederate general, Samuel Garland, Jr., born in raised in Lynchburg, Virginia. This fallen Confederate was from the same town as my husband.

Nearly two hundred years ago, Garland fought and fell in this forgotten spot, hidden on a backroad, his memorial stone small, cast aside from the victorious Reno's, nearly hidden in the trees. He drew his last breath on a trail Mark, myself, and countless other hikers now stomp past, booted and weary just as he and his troops were booted and weary.

"He was from Lynchburg, baby," I shouted over to Mark. He looked up, eyebrows raised.

"Really? That's crazy."

History converges with us, with our present state, in so many ways. It lies, untouched, on our roadsides, in museums, in the very earth beneath our feet. The very landscape is changed and scarred by its passing. A field which should have been reclaimed by the forest remains mowed and kept, one faded wreath and green sign marking its significance. Hundreds of men fought and died at Fox's Gap--yet I did not even know of their existence until I practically tripped over their death site. there their memory lies--even if we don't remember or acknowledge it, even if we would rather praise some, and hide others in the tree-line. Sometimes, history reasserts itself, demands that its people be remembered and it's monuments be seen. I And I truly believe that doing so reminds us where we've been, what we've fought for, and what we're living for. 

Weekend Photo Reel

Lately, Mark and I have been spending our weekends in the woods. Saturday mornings found us eating a yummy breakfast, stuffing a daypack with a few necessities (camera, water, granola), and unfolding a map of Maryland. Last weekend we found the first Washington Monument. The weekend before that, we hiked to Cunningham Falls.

Mark loves to hike. Seriously, that boy. He would rather be in the woods, walking a quiet path, than anything else. And of all the quiet paths to be found, he particularly loves the Appalachian Trail. Friday night, he called me to his desk, where images of trail shelters were displayed on his computer screen.  "Let's hike to this one," he suggested.

Once again, I found myself lacing my hiking boots and checking my camera's battery. Mark loves to hike; I love to take photographs--it's a happy union.

"

Compared to other trails, the A.T. is a quiet, unassuming. It's fluctuates and shifts, changing form and shape as you walk. In some spots, it's as broad as a back-country road; in other places, it shrinks to a boot's width. Because our summer has been uncharacteristically mild and wet, the undergrowth was tangled, wild, and green. Wildflowers clustered on the trailsides. Fungi sprawled across the fallen treetrunks, slowing transforming their dry bark into some new being, alive and moist.

On the A.T., passing another hiker is a encapsulated moment of kind human interaction. More often than not stooped under a heavy pack, the passerby meets your eyes, nods, and smiles. "Great day for a hike." "Do you have the time?" "Nice to see you." There's no nameless shuffling or eye avoidance; there is no grocery-store aloofness. Whether he's been on the trail for a month or a day, the hiker is happy to see you, to cheer you on, to share a beautiful day.

Leave no trace--the A.T. missive and the mantra of any respectful hiker. At Rocky Run shelter, we met three middle-aged men: the Canadian, Old Guy from Florida, and Tin Can Dan. Each man was section-hiking the trail, alone. Somehow, they three arrived at Rock Run on the same day Mark and I decided to go for an extended walk in the woods. Five paths converged at one shelter, in one moment. They had plenty of ear-pulls and head-pats for Solo.

Tin Can Dan, so named because of his homemade camping gear, shared news of the graffiti and vandalism he had spotted at shelters further north. "All it is, is a rock. Or an old log lean-to. But people feel the need to mark it up, tear it down." Emboldened by his indignation, Tin Can pointed to his baseball cap. "Look for a man with a U.S.S. Ronald Reagan cap on TV, marching on Washington. I'm gonna try to raise some money, see who all I can get behind me. I got six grandkids who I want to hike this trail someday,  but there's gotta be a trail left to hike. All this, of course, if this chicken-egg growing in my chest don't get me first."

As Mark and I packed to leave, having eaten our lunch with three strangers, Tin Can's eyebrows raised. "Leaving already? Did I talk too much? I usually do. The woods do that to you, after awhile."

He waved us on, and we wished him luck and safety for his long walk to Georgia. As we walked north, he shouted for us to remember his warning: leave no trace. The Vietnam vet, with his scrappy arms, battered hat, and round glasses, will never cross our paths again (unless of course he succeeds in his Washington dreams). But his last shouted missive followed us on our walk back to the car. Because of him, I stepped a little more carefully, noted the smaller flowers and unfurling greenery, realized the extraordinary resilience and fragility of the trail's beauty.

About a mile from the parking lot, a flicker of blue, underfoot, caught my eye. Stooping, I picked up a single butterfly wing. Why was it lying on the path? Had a wind scooped it up, deposited it here? How it had survived all those men and their booted feet--our booted feet as we strode past? I considered pocketing it and taking it home, to press into the pages of some unused book. I shifted it to my other palm...and noticed a blue stain on my thumb. Glitter and dust--one touch had already damaged the wing's delicate powder.

"More will wear off, the further you carry it," Mark noted.

I tilted my hand and let the wing flutter and fall back to the ground, where it settled on a patch of bare earth. Leave no trace. We walked on.