Picnic memory
To reach High Knob it’s five steep miles up a mountain with curvy roads including numerous switchbacks.
When I was a young girl, my parents would drive us up a long winding road to a place called High Knob. It’s a recreation area in the Jefferson National Forest perched on the southwest tip of Virginia. Along with a rickety wooden lookout tower (where on a clear day you could see mountain ranges in four other states) there were picnic tables painted in forest service brown, a freezing cold mountain lake full of salamanders, and winding paths through thick vegetation where a person could get lost in imagination and wonder.
Up in those weathered Appalachian Mountains, my family delighted in Sunday afternoon outings. Pack up the trunk with the well-worn picnic basket and some old blankets to spread near the lake. Leave the tasks at home. It was an exclamation point at the end of a working-class week. A punctuation mark in the routine of a household full of unspoken things that seemed to not matter as much up in the hills. We sometimes went with one or two other families so there was a bit of mischief and mystery my brothers and I could share with some children that weren’t our regular neighborhood friends. Adults relaxed and stories lilted forth alongside wafting smells of food cooking over a fire. Kids became feral and ventured down lush sylvan trails. Weathered rhododendron spread arms over delicate ferns. Lichens painted complex texts on ancient stone, and shafts of sunlight hung in the old growth.
Last week I was in the George Washington National Forest that anchors one side of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. It was new and familiar at the same time. The North River runs noisily alongside picnic grounds, campsites and trailheads. I came upon a picnic scene, and suddenly I was no longer 64 years old. I was a child again. The memories unrolled in slow motion. The smells, the sounds, the images. Time is not linear. Smoke hangs in the air like a ghost I was waiting to find. Voices drift across a meadow. Shafts of light dance along the river, and the trees gesture toward me. This is where paradise lies. It’s not somewhere else. It’s not something we have to wait on, or earn. It’s right here in the forest where we left it.
Smoke hung in the air like a ghost I was waiting to find. George Washington National Forest near Dayton, Virginia.
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Watch for children, including your inner child . . .
This is in the Jefferson National Forest near Norton, Virginia. I can almost guarantee my feet ran up and down those stone stairs when I was a ‘children.’
You can go home again
On July 1st, 2023, I drove myself up to High Knob. I went looking for some former version of who I am. I walked in the water and let the mud and decaying leaves cover my feet. I tried to catch salamanders. I stood in the old bathhouse where after waiting at least an hour after lunch, you got to change into your bathing suit and head for the cold lake. The memories bathed me in bliss and bewilderment. Lest I paint a picture of a carefree childhood, let me remind you that every family has their particular set of troubles. But we seemed to be able to forget them on picnics in the forest. I hope you are lucky enough to have a picnic memory. If not, maybe you can make one soon. Below are a few more images from High Knob. You can click on an image anywhere in this post and make it full screen.
