After a long day whitewater rafting on the New River, we were about ready to hit the sack and call it a day. We wanted to make a little progress first though, so we set the GPS for Washington DC and hit the road, planning to stop and make camp in an hour or so.

Apparently, our Garmin GPS had other ideas. It had passed the day idly sitting in the car, and was eager for a bit of adventure. At least that’s the only reason I can figure why it led us into the beautiful but not exactly on the way Monongahela National Forest, instead of to a nearby interstate.

Before quite realizing how we’d gotten there, we found ourselves in the middle of an absolutely pristine wilderness and winding back and forth on a narrow mountain road very reminiscent of the Blue Ridge Parkway, but minus the conveniently placed rest stops and overlooks.

Though the winding route was gorgeous, after a full day rafting I lacked the stamina to appreciate it, much less navigate it. The road lacked even a shoulder to pull onto, never mind a place to camp.

Looking down at the GPS, I saw nothing but green for at least 80 miles. “80 miles is only an hour and half,” I told myself. Then I looked at the speedometer and realized that I was averaging only 25mph in these very twisty twisties. I looked at my watch – 20 minutes to sunset. Then I said “shit”. Mountain roads are not a good place to drive after dark.

“At least it’s not raining,” I told myself.

When the sun came down the fog rolled in. 20 minutes after that a heavy rain began to fall. I slowed down to 15mph, and still felt like I was on the brink of death with every curve. With no shoulder, stopping wasn’t an option.

White knuckles gripping the steering wheel I debated whether or not to wake Dayna, who was sleeping fitfully in the passenger seat. Just after I decided to wake her on the premise that she should be conscious for what could be the last minutes of her life, she woke on her own accord.

She looked at the road. She looked at me. She tightened her seatbelt, and gripped the ‘oh shit’ handle above the door. She spoke. “Can I help?”

“Pray for a campground, or even a place to park,” I said.

We rode on in silence. Lights appeared behind us, tailgated us, and then passed us. I figured that they were either suicidal or superhuman.

At one point an 18-wheeler passed us going in the opposite direction, and the force of its passage rocked the van back and forth and covered the windshield in a deluge that made it impossible to see anything for several seconds. They were very long seconds.

In spite of the danger or perhaps because of it, the scene was hypnotic and primordial. We rolled into fogbanks and out the other side. The rain fell in torrents and then slackened. For many minutes we could see nothing beyond the soft halo of our headlights, but occasionally the rain would slacken with the fog and we’d find ourselves suspended in the forest in a bubble of absolutely breathtaking clarity. Then the rain or the fog would start again.

When I saw the dark green of a forest service sign and a gravel road just past it approaching fast in the murk, I managed to pull off just in time. The sign said “Virgin Spruce Overlook – 5 miles”.

The gravel road was a narrow one-lane affair, and the brush and trees crowded thick on either side. When I was doing trailwork with the forest service the accuracy of NFS signposts was widely bemoaned. A sign that said 5 miles could be more accurately interpreted to mean ‘between 3 and 10 miles’. As it was then, so it was now. We drove, and we drove, and we drove some more, deeper and deeper into the forest. Never have I felt such a sense of remoteness in a motor vehicle – it was almost like backpacking.

Finally we arrived at the end of the road. It terminated in a cul-de-sac, a trashcan and the trailhead it’s only features. Just as we arrived the rain slackened to a drizzle, and then stopped. I got out to make camp and beheld the deep dark of the deep woods. When I looked up into the sky I found only gray due to the cloud cover, but when I looked around me in the clearing I saw stars everywhere – fireflies.

After I lifted pop-top of the camper into place, I unzipped all the windows to open our home to the lightshow outside. Dayna and I stood hand in hand and watched the symphony – the lights of the lighting bugs calling to one another in patterns that rippled and bounced across the clearing. Gradually I became aware of the sounds of crickets, and realized that their calls were manifested in a similar ‘call and response’ pattern. The lighting bugs and crickets were having a party, and we felt like the luckiest party crashers in the world.

That night, I had one of the most restful night’s sleep in my life. The next morning greeted us cool and crisp, and Dayna and I both woke up feeling refreshed. We had a leisurely breakfast, and then ventured onto the trail.

Everywhere we were surrounded by Spruce tree young and old, and the needles crunched under our feet. “Baby Christmas Trees,” Dayna said as she clapped, and I realized that she was right.

The trail was short, but absolutely beautiful. Sometimes it’s better to be left wanting more, and we were. As we returned to the van, another car pulled up. We’d had the sacred place all to ourselves for 12 hours – it was their turn now.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 21st, 2006 at 10:38 pm and is filed under West Virginia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.