Slide?
09.22.09-09.23.09
New Players:
Glen
Ginnie
Owls
Location: Monongahela National Forest, West Virginia
The police pulled us over in Petersburg, West Virginia clocking a 27 mph in a 25 mph zone. We left with warnings and directions to the Big Bend Campground in the Monongahela National Forest.
It had taken us about an hour to drive the winding roads to the campgrounds. At a faster pace the photo processor and printer bouncing in the trailer would have made mediocre firewood. At the entrance to the grounds, Ginnie a wiry woman, bobbed hair, studded ears, and cigarettes waved us down. She seemed to emerge from a space of conversation reserved for partners that have long been together, a comfort closely paralelling and perhaps aligning with and being happiness. Physically the space was a fire, a golfcart, a camper, tents and Glen.
The campground was deserted except for one other campgroup and the caretakers Glen and Ginnie. Emily, Joe and I spent the night of the 22nd pitching the tent and passing a bottle of wine and smoking around the fire. Topics of conversation: the trip, direction of Roosterhouse, the stars in the bowl above us, the loonlike calls of the West Virginian screech owl.
On the 23rd, from her golfcart Ginnie pointed out a peak above us on the skyline. The sundried beige point jutted out from fall turning trees and seemed to overlook the entirety of the park. She gave us directions, we repeated them and she parroted and again we parroted her.
“We’re tent campers” Ginnie had told us, meaning they lived in the park year round emerging for supplies and breakfasts at Mallow’s and Traditions 15 miles away.
Glen is a largish man with a white fur chest on tanned skin and like Ginnie in his 60s. Glen’s hands are soft and he wears glasses to read the minimalist rules of the park to us. Their kids visit them in the park and had been practically raised there, pulling fish out of the rivers and blowing sycamore leaves off of the paths.
Emily, Joe and I set out for the peak an hour before sunset on the 23rd walking along the South Branch Potomac River and then past a 19th century picket fence gravesite. From there we went straight up the mountain having to rest four or five times on shale outcroppings. The angle of the mountain steep enough to cause every stone dislodged by our steps to roll down towards the gravesite.
The mountains in West Virginia are not the mountains of Colorado but rather really steep hills that typically block out a third of the sky. They are covered with trees: oaks, sycamores, pines, and at their base junctures tiny streams carry leaves away. The topography of West Virginia makes driving an entertainment, a back and forth, speed up and slow down pace with plenty of blind curves and unmarked pavement. Other than the mountains the scenery consisted of black cattle and dilapidated trailer homes. Locals have a tendency to stare and hold conversations by their trucks at the end of their driveways. The people have a character that is much their own.
At the top of mountain we found a farmstead that without truck paths and mowed yard would have appeared completely deserted. We turned back and spent some time climbing trees and admiring the vista. The day was already a light grey darkness and we abandoned plans of finding the peak along the ridgeline. This was the top of this particular mountain and we left satisfied at that.
From there it was straight down the mountain knowing that the river was below. We spent the next few hours clinging to trees or falling to them until it was obvious that the best way to climb down a mountain was to not climb. This meant sitting in a rowing position. According to preference you tucked one leg under you or not and you slid. Slid down around trees, over stones, slid on dry layers of leaves down, bumping down and landing on soft beds of leaves three or four feet thick.
We slid in the darkness only using the flashlight to inspect the occasional ridge that dropped twenty or thirty feet. A fall off one of these meant being impaled on dead branches and a stoning even Jesus would not have approved of. Nothing compares to mountain sliding. You dug your heals in plowing paths before you, filling your bags with leaves, collecting scratches and bruises along the way. You had some control braking with branches and you had just enough sight to discern trees from space.
We found the river and soaked ourselves in it and crossed it. We then tramped across paths and over fallen wood trespassing and untrespassing. No moonlight guided us. We considered sleeping in the woods until morning. We backtracked and recircled. We were lost. We followed the river and then Emily spotted a sign across the river but was forced to retreat by a large mouldy brown eel. But she had to cross anwyay and did so skittering across it like a water spider.
From there it was camp and then fire, counting bruises and roasting marshmallows.
