In Search Of

I didn’t find Big Foot. Or an Indigo Bunting, for that matter, but neither of those things is the point. It’s about searching. More than that, it’s about being out there, and being grateful.

September has been a month of making the most of weekends and doing things that I’ve been wanting/meaning to do for some time. Earlier in the month, the girls and I drove to Asheville, NC, to catch up with friends who moved there three years ago. We hiked, played in streams, visited some breweries (not the girls), sat on decks and caught up, and I even got a happy hour, back porch haircut. It was a great reminder to stay connected to good friends and change the scenery.

After a spring and summer at home and working, September made for a second opportunity to do something different. I stumbled across the C&O Canal Trust. The canal and tow-path are so close to home and so cool–we would occasionally run along it for cross country practice at St. James School, and then I got a 26.3-mile taste of it as part of the JFK 50-Miler more than a decade ago. Future adventures will include staying in canal houses, but in this case, the Trust website pointed me towards canal towns. And in particular, to Shepherdstown, WV, the former stomping grounds of a friend, artist, and mentor of mine. And the weekend assembled itself upon finding Sundogs Bed & Breakfast.

I can’t sing enough praise about Shepherdstown or Sundogs.

Shepherdstown is a college town that reminds me of Chestertown, MD, here on the Shore, but if you put it in the West Virginia mountains. It’s cool, funky, with shops, cafes, restaurants, theaters, a weekend farmer’s market, all built around Shepherd University. And as cool towns do, Shepherdstown has a get-lost-in independent bookstore in Four Seasons Books. It’s still COVID time, there aren’t any sort of gatherings or events going on, and masks were the norm and required to go in anywhere.

For us, looking for a weekend to unplug, unwind, and recharge, it was more about being outside than in town, and Sundogs hit the spot.

It’s maybe a 4 to 5-mile drive out of town, to a 46-acre retreat with trails running all over the property. The five rooms are named after dogs that the owners have rescued, and it’s a dog-friendly inn. Small B&Bs reflect the character, passions, and interests of the owners, and a horticulturalist who designs gardens and a NOAA meteorologist, who are both conservationists, animal rescuers, and fix vegetarian breakfasts for their guests in the morning.

Holly and I spent early mornings with coffee literally surrounded by hummingbirds, reading and bird watching, before hiking trails late mornings and early afternoons. I’m not much of a birder, but the list of birds I saw includes: Goldfinches, hummingbirds, Nuthatches, Tufted Titmice, Cardinals, Red-Bellied Woodpeckers, Downy Woodpeckers, Eastern Bluebirds, Carolina Wrens, Cormorants, Pileated Woodpecker, Red-Shouldered Hawks, and Cedar Waxwings.

Shepherdstown and Sundogs are both places I hope to return to. Which brings me to Indigo Buntings, birds that are around Sundogs, and I am sure were around us. It’s a common enough bird, even on the Eastern Shore where we live, I’ve just never really gotten good eyes on one (I may have seen one fly across the road into the woods while I was driving in Caroline County, it was the right blue, but I can’t count that).

We spent some time at Sundogs searching for Buntings, but not much time. We tried to learn and listen for the song, and walked the edge of the woods and trees in the field where they are often seen. But didn’t make it the focus of the weekend. Nor have I made it too big a focus of watching birds–just something that will be cool when it happens.

What it requires to be ‘in search of’ something is to be out there, to show up, to make the attempt, and that means something. A few years ago, I wrote about being in search of the Snow Bunting (Buntings are a theme), and so much of what I wrote there still stands. It’s more about being tuned in, mindful, and grateful for the search and for the experience. What it means is to get out in nature, to look around, to keep my bird feeders filled and notice who shows up.

As we gear up for fall, there are a number of adventures I am gearing up for, some physical, some mental, some spiritual.

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One adventure coming this fall that has been more than a decade in the making is skateboarding the 26-mile Western Maryland Rail Trail in and around Hancock, MD. A friend read about the paved trail when we first found long distance longboarding/skateboarding, it’s just never materialized into an adventure. We’re looking to change that in early fall, likely with a camping/backpacking element to make the most of the trip.

For anyone looking for a cool, scenic biking trek, the Western Maryland Rail Trail Supporters spell out what’s cool about the trail:

The Western Maryland Rail Trail (WMRT) is a 26 mile long paved trail that stretches from a mile west of historic Fort Frederick State Park in Big Pool, Maryland to its western terminus at the Potomac River in Little Orleans, Maryland.

Spectacular river views, vistas of hardwood covered mountains exploding with color in the fall, rock formations, dramatic tunnels, transportation history and pristine wilderness all within a few hours drive from Washington, DC, Baltimore, MD and Pittsburgh, PA. 

The WMRT is perfect for hiking, biking, inline skating (rollerblading) or, weather permitting, cross country skiing. One excellent feature is that the entire trail is handicap accessible. The trail is especially suited to families, novice cyclists (it’s almost completely flat), and  for anyone seeking a pleasant, leisurely ride.

Biking is the most popular use of the WMRT, with 26 miles of paved trail. The excellent western section follows the rugged mountain terrain west of Hancock, offering great views of the Potomac and surrounding mountains, and no interstate noise!

The more time I spend skateboarding, the more I realize, for me, it’s not about doing crazy tricks or accomplishing epic trips that are hard to pull off–it’s about being outside, having fun, skating with friends, with wheels rolling on pavement. In the spirit of being “in search of,” it’s a way of being in search of fun/stoke that only requires you to do it in order to find it.

Adventures of the mind can happen daily. And as a book nerd, those are journeys I look forward to every morning with my coffee. And there is something just cool about mind adventures with a group of fellow readers. We’ve had group reads of Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian,” David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest” (some actually finished that doorstop of a tome), and some of Thomas Pynchon’s “Mason & Dixon,” which also involved hiking to find Mason Dixon markers.

This fall’s first literary journey was inspired by the trailer for the forthcoming movie Dune. A fairly common view is that Frank Herbert’s epic novel is the best science fiction novel ever written. And I’ve never read it. So we have a group of five of us (so far, two of whom are English teachers, which speaks to the book being literarily legit) who are making the journey through the book. I am a little over 100 pages in, and I am looking for more time to read because it has pulled me in already. I am sure there will be more to come on this front. After Dune, I have been really looking forward to Robert Macfarlane’s “Underland.”

Another adventure of the mind and heart I have begun is reading and learning about Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Bendectine monk, who along with Thomas Merton, has been a big part of conversations in the Buddhist-Christian dialogue (for which Br. David was given Vatican approval in 1967). Through this pandemic time I have been a big fan of “A Network for Grateful Living,” without knowing much about its founder. Much more to come about Br. David. For any who would like to watch, here is a conversation he had with Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh about gratefulness. Each of them glow and laugh and remember, as if they were gratitude personified.

“We were doing peace, not demanding peace… If you are not able to be be peaceful and happy in every step, a peace march is not a peace march.”

Thich Nhat Hanh

The kind of “in search of” that is common to all of these things, is that to search, I have to show up. I have to be an active participant. And that is where the adventure is. Adventures in life, of the mind, and in gratitude.