Dispatches from the Underground: Time Travel in the Shallow South
I missed a week of Dispatches while on vacation in Virginia and North Carolina — and returned with a lot to say
In some ways, it feels like Virginia’s past is more readily apparent and available than it is up here in New England. In part, I believe this is to do with the fact that the young New England forest has covered up the fact that like 100% of the land was once cleared and agricultural. Following that, though many of our towns retain the brick riverside buildings of a different bygone era, and though many rail trails exist to mark where the trains once ran, it’s nearly impossible for anyone in “rural” New England to imagine the light industrial past of these small towns, when mills meant employment, railroads ran through nearly every tiny town, and, in many cases, population and overall vitality was much higher than it is today.
We tend to think of civilization and progress and population growth as moving along a straight and linear path, a line going diagonally upward. In the towns of New Hampshire (along with pretty much all of Massachusetts outside of 495), this is not even close to being the case. It’s hard to imagine the fact that population has gone down. The train thing is even weirder. We think of the idea of public transport like trains being available in even out-of-the-way places as a super futuristic pipe dream, when it was a reality already — a hundred and fifty years ago.
Naturally, Virginia is not immune to the evolutions of hundreds of years, but from what I could see it seemed to lack the buried eras we live our lives on top of here.
It’s beautiful. Like, I’m sure you’ve heard that before. It’s a thing people say. But it’s REALLY beautiful. There’s also no pine trees. Or very few of them, anyway. I have a deep and abiding love of pine trees, but this place is no less beautiful for lack of them.
I was able to experience Monticello, also known as “Heaven and Hell with Thomas Jefferson” — a rich topic for another time. From there, we drove an hour and a half to Appomattox, the site at which General Lee and the rebel scum surrendered. Ten years ago, I would have been interested in visiting neither of those places, and ten years ago I would have been an idiot.
Let’s talk about bears. I like to hike a lot in the woods and I really don’t like the idea of running into a black bear. They’re around here. Surely, they’re on Monadnock itself. I get even more concerned about this when I hike alone on the obscure trails. It’s not like I have a gun or anything.
I talk about this a lot, in fact. Anytime I see reports of their sightings in town on Facebook I have to comment: “They’re coming for us.” Maybe they are. I’ve seen them myself — once, when I lived deep in the Stoddard woods, I saw one running along the river on the edge of the property. It looked like a gigantic gorilla. Another time, also while I lived there, I came across a cute little bear cub seated in the middle of the road while driving to work. About ten miles later, I was pulled over for speeding, doing maybe 20 over (I’ve mellowed with age, guys, don’t worry). When I went to court to fight the ticket, I tried to use my encounter with the bear as an excuse for my violation, something known since as The Bear Defense. It didn’t work.
In preparation for not dying, I’ve read a fair amount about what to do when encountering — or being attacked by — a bear. None of this reading has made me enthusiastic about encountering or being attacked by a bear while hiking.
This made it all the more interesting when me and my buddy ran into the mama bear and her cub up in the Blue Ridge Mountains about an hour after leaving Appomattox. We were recounting tales of the past, as we always do (our poor wives!), as we hiked up a trail just under a mile long headed for a spot called Humpback Rock. It’s exactly what it sounds like — a giant rock protruding from the top of some Blue Ridge Mountain.
We were maybe a third of the way up and I was in the middle of a sentence about evading cops or something, coming up over the crest of a small hill, when I stopped and interrupted myself. “There’s a god damn BEAR, dude.”
“A bear? What? Where?”
I nodded ahead — she wasn’t far at all. Maybe 150 yards. Maybe. Most likely a little cub behind her — and as I did so she looked right at us. We were so close I could see her brown face. She didn’t seem super alarmed and looked back down at the ground, but I knew it was important that we handle this right. Without turning my back — and definitely without running — I backed away and back over the other side of the hill. The only thing from my prep I forgot to do was raise my hands and make myself appear bigger, but I just couldn’t bring myself to threaten this thing, considering it would easily erase me into a bloody pile.
We turned and continued down, me looking constantly over my shoulder to see if it was following us. If a brown bear stalks you, it means it’s a young adolescent male trying to use you to prove its own masculinity. It means it’s definitely going to attack you and you need to prepare to play dead and cover your neck. This did not happen and we made it back to the car to slurp a couple cans of cider. It had been intended as our reward cider for climbing to the top of the rock, but instead we decided it could be our reward for not dying. Cheers to that.
The Blue Ridge Mountains are astounding. After surviving the non-attacking bear (and warning others who arrived that they shouldn’t go that way), we drove off and I happened to see a sign for Shenandoah National Park. I remarked that I had never been inside of a national park. We went inside of it. It’s incredible.
If you are ever in North Carolina, you must go out for barbecue and get burnt ends. They are an absolute delicacy.
(I also tried raw beef while I was down there, but that was Japanese.)
My hosts in this more-southern state with a slightly higher conifer-to-hardwood ratio really were impeccable in their graciousness, and we began each day properly with iced coffee and Kahlua and tequila, because you gotta. We watched the Celtics lose on Friday night — then only the beginning of their slide into doom — followed by a Portland-Denver game that saw the first playoff quadruple-overtime since like 1954 or something wild like that. It was 2:30 am before that debacle concluded.
Before watching more basketball the next night at a wonderful house party, we had to watch some brutal UFC matches. It had been Johnathan, the brohammad I was visiting, who had demonstrated last year, to my surprise, that I absolutely love UFC. It’s magnificent violence. I recommend it. I may have to beg him for his login so that I can watch it every weekend. Don’t tell anyone.
Memories with wonderful friends are made better with a proper soundtrack in the car. The wild Virginia circuit we did (the one that led us to the bear) was wholly conducted to the heavy, harsh afrofunk of the Budos Band, and I held a surprise for the final leg of the journey — the songs from the animated 1977 HOBBIT. Having sung these songs for nearly three decades, we belted the shit out of them. Don’t even get me started on the animated Hobbit.
Days later, in NC, Johnathan inexplicably put on Dave Matthews Band, which was EASILY the most significant musical accompaniment to my late high school and early college days. I don’t listen to DMB much anymore. But you know what? They’re actually great, and don’t let anybody give you any shit for thinking so. Thanks, John, for busting that out. Best of all, he chose to highlight “The Stone,” which is an absolutely incredible song. I don’t care what anybody says.
We’ll conclude with a final note on music. As I type — up against the deadline as always — the clock is ticking down the final moments of 5/8, also known as Barton Hall Day. For Dead fans, this is the day in 1977 when the band played at Barton Hall at Ithaca College, often widely considered “the best show ever.”
There are endless debates on this, of course, and it’s not my personal number one — but it’s up there. Top 3? Top 5? It’s incredible. Go and find it. If you can, listen to the superior sound of the professional release on Amazon. Other less polished recordings exist for free on archive.org. Even if you didn’t listen to it on 5/8, it’s not too late. Go get it.