Trains and Virginia

I've been doing much more reflecting than doing lately. Riding the bicycle has lost its appeal to me. I think after forty miles to Walterboro, I am just sick of it. Even though the north wind has sent its gift one last great time before summer comes with its heat and humidity, I am content to sit in the hammock and dream. The temperature has dropped some fifteen degrees. Not only that, but it feels a tad drier. Yesterday, as I set out of the house, brave and happy, the weather brought me back to October, and the thirty-pound hiking pack on my back brought Asheville back. That nameless sense of wonderment and adventure, the undeniable feeling that as strange and new as the land is, it is entirely yours, 'ere you may go. I wandered the urban wasteplaces of North Charleston, in the areas where the green meets the grey. I'm always amazed at how green always conquers. As I hopped on the bus to venture to a likely hopping point, I saw my train dash right by, where Hannahan (harboring the ever-so-beautiful Goose Creek Reservoir) and North Charleston meet. If I had only begun my hunt half an hour earlier!!
After the bus dropped me off, I did what any transient in a town would do first. I hit up the community thrift store and got some great cords pants. Close by was the mighty interstate, where homelessness and the travel-weary are sheltered underneath, the psychological equivalent of a cave. I began my travel underneath it, taking walking trails. I felt so honored. I walked along Filbin Creek, under the looming I-526, keeping my feet within running distance of those train tracks that head on up through Strawberry and Moncks Corner, bordering US Fifty Two. I was about to run along to the other side of the tracks, tucked away in the woods, until my keen eye spotted a dormant police car. Walking. I forgot how much I disliked walking. I remembered so fondly the soreness the pack gave to my shoulders. As I heard the second train blowing, I ran up the end of Gaynor Street to Rivers Avenue. The train was on the track along the Cooper River. There are many, many train routes in Charleston. The green-eyed girl with the fifty-pound backpack was certainly right about train routes here being confusing. I've lived here my entire life, and I still can't visualize it all. The multitudinous routes finally began making sense in my mind. That night, after a long tiring walk back home, the combination of the north wind and a train dashing by, filling the air with great rushing sounds, gave me great chills. I need to hop at least one train before I leave in two weeks.

Geographically-Inspired Musical Location of the Day
I have been reflecting a lot on Virginia. It wasn't the mountain heights that really got me, it was all of that great valley at night, when time slowed down for just a little while. The air was fresh. Life-giving mist poured down from the mountains miles away. Lightning peacefully glowed in the far-away sky. I think the valley is what everybody ultimately comes up the mountain to see. They watched others die in that valley, they cried there, they strove in that valley, under the hot sun, all the days of their life. Up in the mountain, it is cool, quiet, often silent. They can get a bird's-eye view of their life. Rising above it makes it all easier to enjoy, but its so welcoming and peaceful, looking down from above. Everything makes sense. And when they come back down to earth, and put their bare feet in the warm, moist soil. I made sure to bare my feet on the wet grasses by Marby Mill. How perfect was it all! I think the same allure that the mountains has for me, the dry west has for those that call the mountaintops their home. 
I have spiritually connected to My Own Set Of Rules lately. It is a great album by Lou Reid and Carolina that I recently bought. It is called Blue Ridge Girl. He hops a train westward-bound. He finds love out west, but the cool, sweet mountain calls to him, the east wind carries the scent of the mountainside to him, and he longs for his Blue Ridge girl, softly calling. Always softly, silently. When you go back to that land, the loves of that land come along with it. The love-nature metaphors, they always come back. They are such a part of the land. And there is always room in these hills for another memory. I'm going on one more hajj to Asheville, taking my journey west (because hey, not everyone travels east to the holy land), to make more memories, and going further west from there.