Return

It has been a week since I had driven the Parkway. I returned home to Charleston with no money on me at all, not even coins. How appropriate, how fitting, how matching of my mood. I had entirely maxed out. I was depressed for two days, in the drowsy Charleston hot-haze mornings, it all oozing by with no car to take me anywhere. I wouldn't be able to get back up to Florence to do anything with the car until my travel companion's family was down for the weekend doing sight-seeing with family.
Monday, my second set of wisdom teeth were taken out. I spent much time playing guitar in self-healing while listening to much much music. Alison Krauss singing Everytime You Say Goodbye always reminded me of ascending a mountain road (US Fifty-Two, wonderfully enough) up and over the horizon-to-horizon mountain wall that loomed above and beyond, so unsurpassable that a tunnel went through, capturing the mists of the morning world. That mandolin always reminded me of the enchanted wilderness, so fresh, so comforting, so assuring of the goodness of life nestled in the good mix of sun and leaf-given shade. That bass searingly pounding, pounding ferocious like the car and like my brave pure heart.
Just think about U.S. Fifty Two, starting in the dirty dusty holy Charleston of towns. From dinge-water lapping the Battery up through the cotton and corn of South Carolina, up through to Florence, to all of the marvelous mist-shrouded Mt. Airys and Pilot Mountains of the world, over the mountain fortress of West Virginia and through some of the most beautiful final ridges of the Appalachians. It encompasses all.

Fifty-Two going through Lake City: Among the rusty dulling dusk, the high clouds usher in Magic City. . .