Deliverance, in more ways than one...

I ran away from home when I was forty: the spring after my husband took off, my daughter went into treatment, and my sister had a nervous breakdown. Those things are bad enough, but I think it was when the hundred year old oak fell in the middle of the night about six months after the man was gone that I'd had enough. I was wakened by the sounds and sights that looked like the start of ET. Men sounds, shoes through brush and shaking flashlights. At dawn I looked out my office window and saw nothing but branches.

Inside I felt nothing but overwhelmed and weighted down.

That was it.

I'd longed to see Monticello ever since I'd seen something about the place in Smithsonian. I longed for an adventure that was all my own, so I decided that May Day — also my dad's birthday — was the time for a trip. I would go to Longwood Gardens, then wind down toward the south and through the Blue Ridge Mountains. I got the maps and made reservations in Pennsylvania and in Virginia. I planned no further than that.

On April 30, early in the morning, I simply left. There are no words for the feeling of reaching the Delaware Gap without an agenda of any kind. I went the long way and wound down along the river, among the wild forsythia. I had never seen the shrub as it had been intended--a fountain of gold in a clearing. Enormous, tangled, latest growth waving in the breeze.

That first night, I reached the little roadside motel with an unaccustomed peace, and a strange sense of something close to fear. For more than a decade I had been bending to the needs of one person or another. My family for the last twelve, and a friend before that. I had lived in other people's homes until I married--and when I had a home with him, there was always compromise or some small or large tug of war.

That night I realized that, for the first time in my life, I could simply choose my own course, including where to eat. The fact that I found this somewhat disturbing made me smile. A decision just for me? There was no "Oh, whatever you would like, dear. That's fine." No making do.

No excuses. Rats.

No one to blame should the choice prove less than good! I really hated that.

What I was about to find out, though, was that I didn't hate it at all; in fact, the freedom to choose suddenly meant that I was happy with the simple fact that the choices were all mine. Had the trip ended there, it would have been useful.

Fortunately, it didn't. I ate at my first "family style" restaurant — an all you can eat buffet where we sat at trestle tables. Tables for twenty and everyone together. It was ideal for a lone travel and a family promptly adopted me. I played with a three-year-old and a little girl no more than six. They sat on either side of me and we had important conversations about ducks, a toad, and some book about a bear.

I had the remote in the hotel. Need I say more than that?

I'm an early riser, and there were lawn chairs beside each front door, so I took a cup of the motel coffee and settled in the chair to simply watch. The view was simply to the other side of the street, but that side held a six foot embankment with a field above, and perhaps a buggy would go by, just as they went by my friend's cabin outside Lewisburg. That is a settling, calming sight for me. And you just never know what you'll see if you simply watch. It was just after dawn, and the mists were eerily rising from the field. I wasn't sure why, since the day was cloudless and dry.

Then I saw him.

The Paul Bunyan of farming. An Amish man, no more than twenty, tall, muscled, shirtless. Overalled, with gleaming arms, blond hair beneath a straw hat, sticking to the back of his neck. Eyes that were a focused blue that even at this distance, pierced the mist. (At least to my line of sight they did.) Six Percherons strained and heaved before his plough. Looming, sudden giants, emerging from the mists, prehistoric breath hanging in the morning air. The smell of new-turned earth and the sounds of the straining horses, left me breathless.

Or perhaps it was the young man. I'd been alone for months...

May Day, May Day...

For some reason I was really hungry for breakfast down the road.

I was off for Longwood Gardens before 9:00, just an hour's drive from the hotel. I had my cane, but mostly used it as a baton for the morning, as I wandered a hillside of heath and heather, through daffodils and tulips and marvelous early spring plantings. The place should be named "Gardeners' Heaven," but that's okay. I spoke to no one. I bought nothing. I had a backpack with lunch that I'd bought at the restaurant near "home." (When I travel, wherever I sleep becomes home.) I had a towel to sit on and a book to read, and a journal in which to sketch or write. I felt light, young ... happy. Freedom felt sweet, and it occurred to me that being single had a great deal to commend it.

Funny. I suddenly remembered that I had never had a desire to be married; I had wanted kids. When my husband pursued me, I was tired from surgeries and pain. I had nowhere to go. It occurred to me that I had not given him my whole heart at any time. In fact, at that moment in the gardens, I was happier than I had been throughout most, if not quite all, of my marriage. This made me sad; it made me sad for him more than me.

I went to bed that night annoyed with myself. I awoke that Sunday angry and grumpy and ready to be nasty. I'd gotten up early — Maybe my Mythic Ploughsman would be there! No. Not a good start and I nearly slammed the door when I went inside, just remembering in time that there were two rooms on either side.

This was not the way to approach the next five or six hour drive! I was headed for Charlottesville, VA. It would not be at all acceptable to travel like that. I had discovered earlier that I'd forgotten my camera, so I had about ten of those orange cardboard cameras they gave us way back then. Three of them were panoramic view cameras, and took up a little more room. I was in such a bad mood that even this was making me angry and I sort of threw my clothes into the suitcase, rather than packing and wondered why nothing closed.

An hour later, I had showered and decided to wear my prettiest sundress-black, with lilies on it, my cool little shoes, and to wear make up. Sometimes putting on a mask lets me assume an attitude of happiness. Sometimes the assumption sinks in and it seemed worth a try. It worked.

I hit the Blue Ridge highway early, and thought that I would take one of the several numbered routes that cut across the mountains to reach the highway south to the city. What could go wrong with a numbered route? Half an hour into the drive the road became dirt and one lane...

Every stereotype I had ever seen of "mountain" people came into my pathetic brain. I laughed at myself, but they stuck. Half an hour later, after passing just two houses, each, YES, lined with old bottles, bits of metal, and even an old bathtub, I was more than a little scared. There were no pulloffs. I could not tell how much further the road would go, nor how long it would take. It wasn't that I was afraid the car would break down, so much as how would I back up if a car came the other way at all? Well, one did. Somehow, though, we managed to inch by one another, doing a dangerous, but careful weave, adjusting, each of us to the furthest edge of our road. We stopped a moment, because we each saw the other was not from Virginia.

"How far have you come?" I asked.

"I'm not sure. Forever. Or maybe about forty-five minutes."

"Same here. About half an hour or so, though, it gets wider and paved. You?"

He shook his head. "Dirt all the way. Nice pull off though haflway along. Good luck. You got enough gas?"

"Plenty. You?"

"Yup."

I felt a little better, and drove along. Sure enough, there was a very generous pull off and I parked the car and got out. And to my left, across the road, was the most beautiful river view I had ever seen. I was so nervous, I'd never noticed the climb to this point. I looked over a cliff to a mountainside covered with pinks, purples and whites of wild rhodedendrons. And there, before the far ridge of, yes, blue mountains, was the Shenandoah River. There were honey bees all around me, but, for perhaps the first time in my life, I was oblivious. I rooted around in my trunk and got out the panoramic camera, as well as my little normal one.

I began to snap pictures. I must have taken a whole roll of normal sized pictures, and I snapped six panoramic, then started back to the car.

There was a loud sound of brush breaking and I stopped cold, in the middle of the road, heart pounding, more afraid than I'd ever been. A bear?

From the woods appeared, rather than emerged, a man about six foot three — my husband's size. Flame red hair and a staff easily a foot taller than he. An army shirt with the sleeves cut off, ripped off filthy jeans, and large muscled arms as glistening as my Mythic Man's. A gap showed between his brown teeth as he slowly grinned at me.

I think I saw bugs hopping on his head. The stench was overwhelming. And in my head, a familiar banjo theme, despite all my best intentions ...

PART II coming Soon--sorry. Have a chance to be with friends Sunday. That trumps blogs!