Blue Ridge Parkway

On a mild-weathered week in October we make plans to ride motorcycles on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Me, my brother Wall, and our friend Carsten, a software developer turned Episcopal priest. The two of them left a day ahead of me, so I set off alone toward our rendezvous point, Wild Woody’s Campground and Amazing Antiques near Wilkesboro, North Carolina. 

I always enjoy these group motorcycle outings, the comaraderie, but there’s also a special pleasure in traveling solo on a loaded bike. For one, anybody will talk to you. It always starts with them, usually a man, moving closer to get a better view of the bike, in my case a blue Triumph Tiger. They kind of square up and take in the whole rig.  Comparing it, I think, to some picture in their mind.

“Where’re you heading,” they ask.

“Blue Ridge Parkway,”

“Oh, I’ve heard it’s beautiful. Always wanted to go.”

“It is beautiful,” I reply. “You should drive up and have a look.”

“I plan to. Once the kids are through college, and I can get some time off work. Like your Triumph. Had a Bonneville when I was young. Wish I’d never sold it.”

And so it goes. I usually get the distinct impression I’m doing something they always wanted to do, always imagined they’d do. And now the decades have flown by, stuff happened, and they just never got around to it…

Riding up through western North Carolina toward Wilkesboro is beautiful. Tidy mountain farms growing cattle, corn, and Fraser Fir Christmas trees. I’ve always been fond of this area. Doc Watson and his son Merle were from here, two of my favorite bluegrass and country folk musicians back in the day. Doc was completely blind from an eye infection in second grade but went on to become one of the premier guitar and banjo players of his generation. At fifteen his son Merle began playing professionally with him, and himself became known as one of the finest flatpicking acoustic guitar players on the planet.

Merle died at 36 when his tractor rolled over on a hillside, pinning him underneath. That sort of thing happens a lot more than you would think on a farm. It’s dangerous work, bush hogging steep hills, chain-sawing large trees. Working all day around heavy machinery, half ton livestock. 

In his memory, Doc started Merlefest, which grew into one of the largest folk and bluegrass festivals in the world, held every year right here in Wilkesboro. I made the trek up for years in the late 80’s and 90’s for the four day festival, a celebration of Americana music. I remember walking into one of the guitar company sponsored tents there one day and Doc was inside the doorway, sitting on a folding chair, picking away at a tune. Tennessee Stud I think it was. I just stood quietly a few feet away, the only spectator, marveling at his fluid technique, his melodious baritone. When he finished the song he turned his head in my direction. Not sure how he knew I was standing there.

“How are you, young man?” 

“I’m fine sir. And I sure was enjoying your playing.”

“Where are you from?”

“Georgia.”

“Georgia. I like it down there. Have a lot of friends there. Here’s something for you.”

And he launched into the finest Georgia on my Mind I believe I’ve ever heard. 

Growing up on a dirt farm in Deep Gap, North Carolina during the Great Depression, blind from childhood, had to be hard enough. And then to lose a favored son in his prime, with children of his own. The man has known tragedy and persevered. An American hero.

I get to Wild Woody’s right at sundown. No sign of Carsten or my brother. I check in with Linda Woody, the proprietress, and pick a grassy tent site right on a burbling trout stream in the back. My tent is the only one there, though Linda has quite a collection of vintage campers that she rents also.

She’s a character, a blond haired child of the sixties, who confesses to not offering food, only beer for sustenance. 

“But,” she says, “ There’s a biker bar next door makes a good hamburger.”

Sounds just my speed. I buy a cold beer from Linda, sit on the front steps nursing it, then walk next door, where I call the boys to check on their progress. 

It is pitch dark when I finally get a hold of them. They are still up on the Parkway, in the cold, not a light in sight, debating a turn they might or might not have missed a few miles back. I offer encouragement and they decide they’ll be here in forty five minutes. I sit down at a table, order another beer, and wait. 

The bar is not what I’d call a classic biker bar, though there are bikers there, mostly older guys in leather chaps and patriotic vests. Plus a good mix of camouflage clad deer hunters after a day in the woods. No pool tables, just some big TV’s playing football. The parking lot is filled with Harleys and pick up trucks. 

After a while the boys show up and we eat burgers, then set up camp in the dark, by the light of our headlamps. A friendly couple, Greg and Kjersten, have built a nice fire next door and invite us to sit and warm ourselves. We end up stoking the fire and talking motorcycles and travel until 2 AM.

Next morning we pack up and ride a winding approach road up to the Parkway, where we turn north toward Virginia. Those first few miles on a bike in the morning are always exhilarating, the simple purposeful beauty of it. Even overnight I sometimes forget it, only to click into first gear, pull out of the parking lot, and be reminded all over again. Time to pay attention. Time to return completely to the moment, because there’s no other way to ride. It’s a gift and a blessing, in real time. 

We’ve hit the Parkway at the height of Fall color, reds and golds stretching out in all directions. The road itself is an engineering marvel, winding 469 miles over and through the peaks and ridges of North Carolina and Virginia.

At times it snakes suspended off the side of a mountain, other times we’re riding through tunnels of color, leaves swirling over and around us. It becomes a game to try and catch one as it dances in the wind. It is truly a jewel, one of the great drives in America. 

We’ve given ourselves time to ride the entire Parkway end to end but there’s a cold front moving in so after a couple of days we make the call to turn back south toward home. Riding north or south we never get in a hurry. The speed limit is 45 miles per hour and that’s perfect for slowing down the ride, and slowing down the brain. We’ll get there when we get there. No rush. But going over the mile high peaks in the southern Pisgah Forest, I can feel the cold front approaching. Dark clouds are on the horizon and the temperature is dropping. 

We pull over at an overlook facing west and can see the beginnings of weather, off in the distance. After a conference and goodbyes, we peel off the Parkway onto a highway, going our separate ways. Me back to Georgia, and my riding partners to Tennessee.  But before splitting up, we make a plan to return to this road in the Spring, when the waterfalls will be flowing, and the wildflowers blooming.