Virginia

Virginia
July 17th

With the chance to travel for one week to the States, ostensibly for a conference, but with great opportunities for visiting DC area folks, I took a short break from life in Georgia to travel State-side. Uncle Jack picked me up from the airport, and after finishing up work, we went over to have beers with Uncle Eric, Noe, and Uncle Karl. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits, especially Noe who loved the stitched burlap handbag I brought her from Georgia. Cousin Steve, a burly six three now, is off to the army on Monday, so we had a good laugh over his ‘approved army command packlist’ which listed among other things, ‘three pairs of white underpants (panties, bras, or briefs)’ as well as ‘one box dental floss.’ He seems really keen on getting in there to kick some butt.

Cousin Janet, 20, on the other hand says, ‘no more TV for me, I’m going to read my summer away and transfer to Manhattan School of Art for acting.’

I had decided to taste as many foods as possible on this trip. We started off with breakfast at Annie’s, our favorite Mexican brunching spot in Manassas, and later on Saturday we ate Italian food, a yummy soup and salad combination.

Mark Lyles flew in on the red-eye from Los Angelos to hang out, and after discussing the architectural features of the Lincoln and WWII monuments in an early morning stroll around the Washington Mall, we went back to Annie’s for enchilades and green chile. Mark said, ‘...now just when I thought I had eaten my last of Mexican food, look where you bring me?!’


Bro Andrew is meanwhile becoming a professional outdoorsman as a third year counselor at Opequon outdoors camp in Winchester VA. Mark and I showed up at camp and coerced several cute but suspicious blond hippy counselors to let us borrow a tarp and a pot for a three day camping expedition. Blond girls! In the end they begrudgingly even gave us three tupperware containers to eat out of, but only after counting all 127 plastic bowls to confirm that, ‘yes, this session they only had enough for the kids and wouldn’t be able to let us borrow bowls.’ And no silverware, sorry.

Next tasty meal came unexpectedly, as Mark’s eagle eye caught sight of a small BBQ sign across a rural highway in western Virginia. We hung a U turn and managed to be the last customers at Doc’s famous BBQ, a much anticipated Appalacian Trail thru-hiker’s gorger meal.



Setting off at dusk with our packs full of water, cans of beans, a deck of cards, and a frisbee, we night-hiked up through Sky Meadows State Park to the Appalacian Trail, where we soon found a meadow to camp in. A quick fire, a Yuengling for old times sake, and we bedded down with the stars for our dream palette.

Even at 9am the humidity cranked up the heat so much that a mere stumbling towards the nearest bush at first waking produced severe perspiration. Breaking camp, we followed Andrew’s excellent camp map towards the nearest water source: a lake two miles further along the AT and then downhill through overgrown woods of vines, large leafy fronds, fully green oaks, maples, poplars, pungent lindens, and other trees we didn’t know. We discovered berry bushes galore, and again I was feasting on one of my all-time favorite delicacies; juicy blackberries, black raspberries, and wineberries filling our bellies as fast as our cautious hands could extract them from the thorny mess of stalkes and leaves.

Mark found the first dear tick, a tiny little guy that was hardly visible. He received an eyeful of consternation from the three of us before being flung back to his grassy home, too small to squash.

At the lake, we plunged in, soaking up water into every cell, and I secretly took pleasure imagining the drowning being executed to all the nepharious little skin dwellers trying to suck my blood. I napped on shore.

Later we threw the frisbee, napped again, ate berries, and played ‘frisbee 500’ -one man throwing the disc into the air as the other two tredded water, struggling to catch the toss over the head of the opponent. Minnows flashed in the shallows, and once while eating berries we noticed a medium sized snapping-turtle floating lazily on the surface nearby. We tried to decide where daddy snapper was probably wallowing, because this lake definitely has a daddy snapper in it, no question about that. The mud flats on the far bank were agreed upon and Andrew went to scout out the situation.



Arriving at the Manassas Gap hut later on Day Two, we found a group of scraggly young men with their shirts off, hovering over pots of food and lounging around the picnic table discussing weather, huts, snakes, and other Thru-Hikers.

‘Redbeard, when’s the last time we saw Chuckles? He must be cruising cause we haven’t caught him in days.’

‘Hey guys, Captain Morgan was here at lunch today, he says (in the logbook), ‘killer snake could have been lunch, but didn’t come out to feed my belly.’

‘Yeah, no snakes for me. You got salt? Hey Deep Blue, got salt?’

‘I think I’m going to push on tonight, I’ve got to make Harper’s Ferry in two days with the food I’ve got, how about you Mouser, you going on?’


Apparently this hut is renowned for copperhead sightings. I read nearly the whole logbook, and from at least May 2004, people have been sighting a copperhead that lives under the cabin. Most of the other entries were consumed with non-sightings of the copperhead, with most people opting to hike another six miles to Dick’s Dome hut.

About this time I discovered a severe burn over my entire torso, especially front and shoulders. The mean little UVs had penetrated the deceptive cloud cover and fried my sleeping body by the lake, now I would pay. I was pink as a beachball. I found a bunch of jewelweed and rubbed it around, to little consolation.

After doing another tick search that was unfortunately successful in the inner thigh area, we opted to spread our tarp and have the stars as our midnight candleabra again. Nothing like ticks to make a man nervous though.

Back to the lake on Day Three, following the not so un-fresh tracks of a bear, his big toe prints almost human like in the soft mud. We continued to detour for every berry patch and I began to suspect we were under the spell of the bear-spirit, being guided by some dopey, wind-sniffing, berry besieger who would lead us on in on in shuffling amble towards a den of cuddly cubs and brimming hives of honey. We found the lake again and ate delicious tunafish, another missing item in the Georgian diet. But having lounged all morning hoping for a copperhead sighting, we only dipped twice in the lake this time, and set a purposeful pace back towards the car, my backpack gently scrubbing my now flaming shoulders.

The sun set around us in the hazy humid way of Virginian midsummers, even the mosquitoes so lethargic they couldn’t keep pace with us as we steamed and huffed through vine gateways and over prickly stalk hurdles.

Headlamps came out and we enjoyed a night hike on the ridge top, our feet finding their own way in the dim light, our conversation joyful as we fell into a mile-eating stride that propelled us through the dark like so many hungry moles pushing through their tunnels towards the worm. That night we made a fire in the woods again, falling asleep in a small campground shelter. Mark says I talked in my sleep, and a bat flew overhead. I woke early because I couldn’t stand lying on my back or shoulders anymore, they hurt so bad. Next stop, the Aloe Vera store, wherever it is!

************************


Washington

Andrew went back to camp, Mark took the train for Philadelphia, and I showed up at the Fulbright conference center in a big air-conditioned hotel. The conference was so boring and pointless I dare not write about it. I did meet several interesting project people however, including one man who plans to jumpstart four art-therapy programs in hospitals in the Lake Backal, Russia region. I said, Patch Adams... he said, ... friend of mine. Interesting guy, I burned him some Georgian cds for the trip. Almost everyone else was going to teach or study something related to public policy or development, which of course are also important subjects for this day and age....

I stayed with Spirits Adam and Mark, and we sang and sang our nights away, improvising on all of our old tunes, and making up new ones while we were at it. So good to see these guys, and so comfortable. Meanwhile I platered my body with good cactus juice, and am only peeling one layer of skin, which is nevertheless kind of exoskeleton-esque and gross.

Food!! The best part of being in DC became all the delicious meals I treated myself too while going out with the future Georgia grantees and the small collection of music people that I could find. I bought a good coffee one evening, and ate Ethiopian food with my fingers, fresh sushi with chopsticks, drank Rogue’s Dead Guy porter from Oregon, and on the last evening ate drunken noodles with a Thai beer, hmmmm!

I went to Georgian Orthodox Divine Liturgy on Saturday and was surprised to find four women learning to chant. They pulled out all the handwritten chant notes that I used to sing with Antonina back in January and February, and I sang bass along with them to the surprise of everyone including myself. Later, we went to a house blessing by the Georgian priest in DC, followed by a supra, everyone speaking Georgian, and I couldn’t tell where I was, here or there, up or down. Chicken in a walnut paste gravy, mashed greens with silantro, ground meat baked into sausage rolls with fresh onions, cheese bread, and wine. Even toasts. True to Georgian fashion, everything was hours behind schedule and with my new friend Mamuka who had the same flight back to Georgia... well, we almost missed it.

Airplane food. Well, it’s nice that they bring so many drinks.

*******************


Amsterdam

Twelve hour layover and even though it felt like 3am, I went into the city for the day. In other times, I have walked myself to exhaustion around the tourist part of the city, so with a plan to see farther stretches, and perhaps visit the Van Gogh museum, I rented a bike first thing, and set off to get lost in the winding canals and streets of the city. I realized it was Sunday and asked someone if there were an Orthodox church in town. Surprisingly enough there was, and though it took me an hour to find, I managed to arrive in time for the Russian service. I of course went up to the balcony to hang out with the chanters, but was disappointed that I couldn’t participate because they were reading music from Russian script. Nevertheless, I stayed and hummed along to the very basic harmonies of Russian chant, missing my much more sophisticated Georgian chant (sorry Russophiles! :)

After the service, I of course befriended the six Georgians in the congregation, and was subsequently invited to another supra, an invitation which demanded returning my bike and foregoing my grand day of adventuring in the city visiting museums and becoming lost. We took a train out of the city, and as my eyes glazed over at the older Georgian lady who talked continuously at me, she told me just to fall asleep. I immediately obeyed and only woke up when we arrived in another city on the seashore, Leiden.

We walked to Thea’s house, sat in her garden on a big canal where boats of half naked Dutch sunbathers cruised by throwing bread crumbs to seagulls, two white swans, and one black swan. A black bird of some kind caroled in the trees behind us a breeze ruffling the leaves, and I lounged in the sun with about four or five other fine people, all speaking in three or four languages I couldn’t understand, our only commonality the Orthodox service this morning.

Hor d’ouvres were nuts, fresh melon, and white wine, lunch a simple pasta with Georgian style mushrooms, salad with my favorite vegi avocado, more wine, and fresh baked salmon. Hmmmm. I almost missed my flight a second time in two days.

Home again in Georgia sweet Georgia, 5am to bed.

This week will be getting the Anchiskhati choir visas, visiting with Luarsab’s family, writing the final rough drafts for the picture-narrative book, saying goodbye to foreigner’s choir members who are leaving, as well as my Peace Corps friend Nicole, playing frisbee, watching my back because another foreigner was mugged and beaten last week, maybe a little trip to Sighnaghi, a chanting trip to a monastery with my church choir, planning more trips for August, and trying to fend off the intense summer social life!