The Road Less Traveled

I must tell you this.

Sunday, my brother whom I haven’t seen since last summer drove from Lincoln County to spend time with me. And how do two long-time apart brothers spend time? Watch a football game? Go to a summer blockbuster movie? No. None of those will do. Not my brother and me. We plopped two department store inner tubes into the Coal River at about 3:00 p.m., starting at Upper Falls in Tornado, and rode without paddles for almost six hours until we finally crawled onto shore at Lower Falls in St. Albans.

I’m going to try to post a map of the area we traveled. It really isn’t that far, a few miles. In fact, you can drive from Upper Falls to Lower Falls in about fifteen minutes. But since we were floating in a mostly still river without paddles, only our arm strength to push us along, it took a little less than six hours.

I knew it would be great. The Coal River is an underrated river because it is dirty and I know there was a serious problem for a while with a lot of harmful bacteria due to pollution. However, a group known as The Coal River Group has been working hard for years to clean up the river and has finally succeeded in turning the river into a water trail, calling it the Walhonde Trail. The entire trail is 88 miles, stretching across the Big Coal River, Little Coal River, and the Coal River, through three different counties. It’s probably impossible to travel the entire trail in one day, so the Coal River Group and the DNR have broken the trail into recommended “trips.” I happen to know that we took Trip C-2.

During our trip, they sky stayed a clear blue with a few clouds that made laying back on the inner tube so amazing. Since a lot of the river is shaded by trees, I didn’t get much of a sunburn. And if you’ve never been on a river as the sun goes down, I highly recommend it. This trip also gave plenty of time for my brother and I to talk, about his new relationship, about his future plans, and (of course) about our father.

Cheese Warning: While my arms regretted the trip, my heart, mind and soul did not. Seriously, it was nice to just float on the river, relax, and basically give myself up to nature. The only tension I remember was when I decided to roll over on the inner tube and had to keep from tipping over in deep water.

I can honestly say now that putting an inner tube on a river without paddles to travel about five miles is a wonderfully foolish decision. If you’re a nature lover, it is one of the best things you can do for yourself, to let the river take you and to enjoy the wildlife. We saw deer, herons, ducks, all kinds of fish.

Below are two maps. Let’s hope they work. The first is the official map for the Walhonde Trail. As I said, my brother and I took Trip C-2, so you can find it near the top of the map. This map is upside down for the flow of the rivers. The Big Coal and the Little Coal flow into the Coal, and the Coal flows into the Kanawha River at the top of the map.

The other map is the official Google Maps view of the area. You can zoom in (I think) and take a closer look at the river. We started just above Upper Falls Road. There are some interesting little islands close to Lower Falls that I think have some history with the logging industry.

View Larger Map

Until later — “There’s no turning back now that you opened up to your mind.”

This morning, as I was driving to work, I saw the most perfect sunrise, the kind where the clouds are painted with brushstrokes of gold before the sun officially comes up.  It was amazing.  And as I drove the Interstate, it took every bit of willpower I had to keep my eyes on the road as the sun began to crawl up from behind the horizon.  It reminded me of the day at Virginia Beach when I woke up early, walked out to the ocean, and watched a group of dolphins cresting the water as the sun rose slowly and patiently.

I love days like this, when so far everything just seems to cooperate, when your eyes and ears are opened to so many different sights and sounds.  My eyes are usually opened (or at least I try to keep them opened) but sometimes the noise and clutter of stress drowns it all out.

But not today.  Something tells me this is going to be a special day.

Those who have been friends with me for a while know that I have a passion for wolves.  My house is decorated with framed posters and paintings of gray wolves, ceramic figurines of wolves, resting in the snow or stretching their necks in a silent howl.

It used to be an obsession.  I even had wolf slippers that howl when you pinch their ears.  Now, it is just a deep love.  When I was a young teenager, I had a dream where I was hiking at night and got lost.  After stumbling through thicket, I had given up hope.  The trail I was on opened to a circular clearing and standing in the center was a wolf with snow white fur.  “Lost your way?”  His voice sounded like mine.  “Come on, it’s out this way.”  He led me away from the clearing and back into the woods.  After that, the dream was disrupted by my alarm clock.  This changed my love of wolves from a simple liking to a great respect and appreciation.

Native Americans studied and revered the wolf as a guide for behaviors like honoring family, hunting with grace and pride, and surviving in difficult conditions.  After my dream, this is how I also looked at the wolf, as a guide, a symbol of sorts.  My totem.

I was browsing the Internet, which I often do, and I found this site that links from the EPA web site.  it is called AIRNow and it shows the quality of the air in the United States today.  here is the map for Nov 13-14:

 So, as you can see, my neck of the woods has moderate air quality today.

I’m not sure why I thought this was so cool, but it is.  The Kanawha Valley is littered with chemical plants that incessantly spew chemicals into the air.  it’s no wonder we’re in the yellow.

Anyway, I thought I would share my cool new curiosity.

Until later — “There’s no turning back now that you opened up to your mind.”

Back in September, Jennifer and I took the girls for their first trip to Erie Lake. This was the first time we went to visit my best friend in Sheffield, OH. It would take forever for me to explain how I feel about staying by the lake, waking at 6:00 in the morning and standing speechlessly along the shore to listen to the water. I wrote an article about it for the WV Writers Newsletter:

It happened again. While sinking into a comfortable lounge chair on my best friend’s front porch, staring out at the seemingly endless stretch of Erie Lake, my brain toyed with a familiar thought: I could spend the rest of my life right here. I’m not sure how long this lasted, and hour or so, watching an army of gulls brave the air like hang gliders daring the northern breeze.

The air was cool, but I barely noticed, as I watched the stormy winds bring ocean force waves rolling against the sand. My friend explained that he had never seen it like this, that the waves were usually much calmer. “You’ve come at a bad time.” I could not help but disagree as I watched one of the gulls bobbing on the water like an abandoned buoy, warning the empty waters of danger.

This feeling, that I could belong somewhere and find the contentment I’ve been looking for, was not new. It happened three years ago, in Virginia Beach, as I watched a group of dolphins break above the tide and eventually disappear into deeper waters. I could spend the rest of my life right here. It was another moment when everything around me seemed to mingle into a force that worked its magic to make that moment one of the most perfect I have ever felt. Again, I was adding all of the reasons I could find contentment in a place other than home.

Robert Frost was a poet who seemed to share my feelings, but was much better at putting it into words than I. “Heaven gives its glimpses only to those not in position to look too close.” It is never when we are looking for contentment that we find it at its most powerful. Sure, we may find a temporary peace brought on by a rainstorm or the sound of birds outside our window. But most of the time it is when we are in a strange place, not expecting much more than the discomfort of adapting to a new environment, that the skies become a unique mix of blue, burgundy, and gold, the wind gathers enough strength to increase the sounds created by its movement, and everything seems to be more beautiful than you imagined it before.

What does all of this have to do with writing? Inspiration works almost the same. Often, when we are seeking it, it is nowhere to be found and we feel that pull to give up, call it quits, find a more rewarding hobby. But when we least expect it, our eyes are opened to something we may have never seen before, or changed so that we see it in new ways, and the pull transforms into a desire to put it all down on paper.

I hope inspiration will find you when you least expect it. In your lowest times, when you are ready to give up, I hope you will experience the joy that comes when inspiration swoops you up and the right words pour out of your mind like rain. I guarantee you will never forget it.