Chapter 7 - The Mountain Air
Three weeks later, the Blue Ridge Mountains were ablaze with the full, violent glory of autumn. The maples were bleeding scarlet, the oaks burned in deep bronze and copper, and the air was so sharp and clean it felt like drinking ice water after a long run.
I pulled my station wagon off the paved highway onto the unpaved gravel track leading up to Raven’s Roost. The tires crunched rhythmically against the stone, throwing up small showers of golden leaves that danced in the rearview mirror.
When I reached the mountaintop overlook, the parking turnout was completely empty.
No tourists. No wandering hikers. Just the vast, silent expanse of the Shenandoah Valley stretching out below, painted in watercolor shades of purple and gray beneath a massive, cloudless blue sky.
I turned off the engine, got out of the car, and walked over to the low stone retaining wall.
The wind hit me instantly, cold and fierce, lifting my hair away from my face and stinging my cheeks with the raw energy of the high altitude. I pulled my red windbreaker tighter around my chest, resting my forearms on the cold stone.
Below me, the world looked impossibly vast. From up here, human lives—with all their messy, frantic complications, their petty betrayals, their whispered lies, and their desperate grasping for control—looked like nothing at all. Just tiny dots of green and brown, swallowed up by the ancient, unyielding permanence of the stone and the trees.
I reached into my pocket, pulled out my phone, and opened the camera app.
I didn't take a selfie. I turned the camera around, framed the vast, endless horizon of the valley, and tapped the shutter.
Click.
The screen flashed, saving the image.
I looked down at the tiny thumbnail in the corner. The colors were brilliant—the burning red of the canopy below, the endless blue of the sky, the crisp, clean line of the mountain ridge cutting across the middle of the frame. There was no one else in the picture. No background noise. No shadow of a man standing beside me, waiting for me to adjust my posture so he could look better in the frame.
Just the mountains. Just the wind. Just me.
My phone vibrated in my palm. A text message from Emily: “Mom, are you still at the overlook? Oliver threw his sippy cup into the dog bowl and we need you to come home and explain why dogs don't drink apple juice.”
I smiled, typing back a quick reply: “Tell Oliver apple juice is strictly for grandpas. I’ll be home for dinner.”
I slipped the phone back into my pocket, took one last deep, shuddering breath of the sharp mountain air, and turned toward my car.
As I walked across the gravel, the crunch of my boots sounded steady, heavy, and completely unhurried.
May you like
For the first time in twenty-seven years, I wasn't walking behind anyone. I wasn't waiting for anyone to catch up.
I was just walking forward, and the road ahead was wide, open, and entirely my own.
