Passage III

An East Coast Epiphany

Meadows of Dan. Peaks of Otter. Fancy Gap. Thunder Ridge. To read about the Blue Ridge Parkway, the most visited "unit," of the national park system, is to enter the realm of colorful language. But I knew better than to fall for the hype of brochures and Web sites preparing to embark on a 469-mile bike ride the length of the parkway. Well, I would lend an ear to some of the sweet talk: vistas of gently rolling farmland, swinging footbridges, mist rising from the Roanoke River are breathtaking.

I did, in fact, want to find myself face-to-face with a red-eyed vireo and smell a rhododendron in full bloom. Color. History. Twenty-seven tunnels, one named "Frying Pan." Sign me up! Maybe even a black bear would cross the winding pavement's road in front of me. But l was not going to expect perfection. I was not going to expect the pancakes to be hot at Bluffs Coffee Shop or the entertainment to be under way at the music center. I would approach this experience with the wisdom I had acquired at places like Zion National Park, a glorious park in southern Utah.

But here's the thing and the cynic in me perished on the Blue Ridge Parkway, on that two-week ride along the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia and North Carolina. The pancakes were hot. The Meadows of Dan were meadowy. Mabry Mill一its waterwheel spinning and its one-hundred-year-old loom looming一deserves the postcard attention they have gotten all these years.

Seeing me, too, I saw a bear. And not only were the rhododendrons blooming, so is the bluets and the foam flowers. (42) Sometimes everything that should go right did. Sometimes the fragrant thimbleberry is fragrant and the sign on the road really does say, "Next 20 miles,All Downhill!” Okay, the sign part is made-up, but the downhill was real. Southern Utah's "Subway" remains an elusive mystery. The Blue Ridge Parkway, as seen from my bike anyway, is a 469-mile miracle.