Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 2, 1995 TAG: 9507030120
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALAN SORENSEN EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
I DON'T often have adventures to recount. For that reason, and lacking inspiration to address a more serious topic, I'd like to tell about my family's recent trip to West Virginia.
It wasn't an adventure on the scale of, say, "Deliverance." Never mind that it sent one daughter into a panic and me running through a woods during a violent thunderstorm. Never mind that, absent serendipity and friends, our family might have had to hitchike for miles along a deserted rural road or spend the night, wet and miserable and without shelter, huddled in unforgiving wilderness.
The point is, everything came out fine. No one really suffered. On the contrary: Occasional exposure to adversity improves character, I might have told my wife and kids at the time, had I lacked the wisdom to grovel for their pardon instead.
In a happy and settled life, a minor mishap can loom large, especially if you can look forward to years of being reminded of it, which, in this case, I'm pretty sure I can. Yet the mishap is no less minor for that, especially given the starry vastness of the universe and the various problems, vindictive viruses being just one, that humanity confronts today.
OK, so I lost the car keys. It happens.
How often do you get to choose what to lose, or where to lose it?
On the Saturday in question, we set off early, kids and bikes in tow, for West Virginia and the Greenbrier Trail. We'd never been to this particular conversion of railway into gravelly biking and walking path. It's the sort of greenway the Roanoke Valley could use. But we were there not for fact-finding, but for fun.
Riding along was providing plenty of that until, in an ominous turn of events, 6-year-old Nell veered off the side of the trail, over what she might have regarded as a small, ill-placed cliff.
I scrambled down to retrieve her and the bike. I've not since made a big deal of the poison ivy I was exposed to as a result - refraining partly out of stoic reserve, partly in consideration of the fact that, at the time of the incident, Nell was learning how to ride her bike without training wheels and I was running alongside and supposedly grasping the neck of her shirt to prevent an event such as unfortunately occurred.
Anyway, Nell suffered no worse injury than she regularly earns at playgrounds. Nor - bless her traumatized little heart - was she about to let a fall interfere with learning to ride like Lucy and Laura, her two older sisters. In no time she was back in the saddle, albeit emitting little yelps if I momentarily let go of her shirt.
I figured a visit to the Greenbrier Hotel's ice cream parlor might erase any abiding resentment. I can't say what impression our family's sweaty intrusion made on the hotel, but I believe it had the desired effect on Nell.
My absolution, alas, was not to last. Our next stop was Blue Bend, a beautiful swimming hole in the middle of Monongahela National Forest, complete with genuine swinging foot bridge, and flat rocks arranged by the Civilian Conservation Corps.
According to the Insider's Guide to Virginia's Blue Ridge: "There is no more invigorating feeling in the world than baptism by Blue Bend's waters." This description initially dissuaded me from going near the frigid stream. But the air was humid and my family insistent, and you never know when an act of prudence might lower a loved one's estimation of you.
So I changed into swimming trunks, locked the car with my wallet in it, and placed the car keys - as anyone might have - either in my shoe or in my bathing suit pocket. I don't remember which.
The rest happened like a blur. I had just recovered from the invigoration, was floating on my back and trading splashes with the kids, when the sky began loosing a tremendous thunderstorm. We ran through it to the car, where we discovered the keys missing. It was not a happy moment.
My wife and I staved off despair by taking turns searching the woods between the river and the parking lot. I also scoured the rocks along the stream while the family crouched under the only available shelter - the overhanging roof of a small cinderblock restroom next to the parking lot. Nell was crying pretty hard by this time (she has a thing about thunderstorms) and I was trying to find the right mix of (1) expressing contrition over the fix I'd left us in, while (2) reassuring that our situation was less than desperate.
Giving up on finding the keys, we tested the arms of each child to see whether one might fit in the cracked-open car window to unlock the door. Nell's was too short, Laura's too thick. Lucy's (the 8-year-old's) was just right. As we conducted this experiment, all heck was breaking loose around us - lightning flashing, branches falling, the deluge pounding our shivery skins. It was comforting to be able to climb into the car, soaked but protected.
I must have looked a bit bedraggled by this time. When a van came into the parking lot, its driver refused to roll down his window as I stood in the rain trying to talk to him. Finally, I was able to hitch a ride with another couple who knew the man who oversees a nearby campground. The electricity was out, but he hiked with me over to a building with a working phone.
Here's where the serendipity and friends came in. We had previously arranged to meet newspaper colleague Geoff Seamans and his wife, Nan, for dinner at a restaurant less than an hour away. I had only to call the restaurant and ask them to ask the Seamans to come pick us up. Which they nicely did, sparing us a long night in a big forest. They took us home after a dinner, during which one child slept and two barely spoke. The next day we drove back to Blue Bend with a spare key. No harm done.
For the obligatory moral to the story, I suppose I could cite lessons appropriate to the flooding of recent days. The deluge has, as always, prompted people to recognize their dependence on others, as well as their thirst for stories to tell.
In our little case of the missing key, I was most impressed by the (near) absence of recriminations as we pulled together to make the best of a situation. My wife was especially kind. Today, Nell drives her two-wheeler like a pro, and I am sure any associations in her mind between West Virginia and unpleasant events will not long linger.
by CNB