Memorial Day

Our friends Allen and Gala came up to Blue Ridge for a visit Memorial Day weekend. Gala and Johnna have been friends for over thirty years, and Allen and I just get along. We enjoy each others company, and don’t get on each other’s nerves, even over a few days. That’s saying something. I’ll take it.

We rendezvous at Mountainside Market up the road, and beat the church crowd to sit outside eating the market’s famous Smashburger’s. They’re famous for a reason. Juicy, flavorful, and completely decadent, classic American fare. And no judgement please. This is my ration for the month. Or quarter.

The Market sits along old Highway 2, beside a flat green meadow. It’s the last stop before the road turns to gravel, and ascends straight up to over 4000 feet in the Cohutta Wilderness. Pretty much right from our backyard. After the burgers Allen and I drop the girls back at the cabin, put the truck in 4 wheel drive, and roll up the rutted mountain toward the Jacks River trailhead at Dally Gap.

Along the way, there’s an old church and cemetery where I sometimes stop. For clarity. And to remember. It’s a peaceful place, high and windswept, with gravestones dating back to the Civil War. A few young local boys are buried there, teenagers, twenty-somethings. One in 1862. Another 1865. Their bodies brought back here to rest from who knows where. Cold Harbor, Gettysburg, Stones River. Atlanta.

One stone reads 1944, three days in from D Day. 21 years old. Fighting Nazis in France I guess. And then a 19 year old from 1968. Vietnam. 2004 a 23 year old. Fallujah? It’s the young we always send to war. And the poor. Weren’t many rich folks living up in these hills, working small farms carved by hand and axe out of the dense forest.

Allen and I park at the trailhead and hike off down the gently sloping trail toward the Jacks. The woods are lush and green, almost like a rainforest. Thousands of ferns line the trail, which is tunneled at times by the mountain laurel and tall Hemlocks. The laurel is blooming its white flowers. We talk a little, about books we’re reading, the scenery, and joke about our middle age aches and pains. Allen is an avid cyclist and hiker. I’m happy the trail isn’t too steep.

We hear the river long before we see it, and then there it is, a wild and beautiful thing rolling and crashing down through the gorge. Over huge boulders and downed trees, the sheltered rivulets holding native brook trout and maybe some browns that have swam upriver to these remote headwaters. It’s a scenic walk, and the entire day we’ve only seen one other hiker. On a holiday weekend at that.

One reason Gala and Allen have come up is to see the Synchronous Firefly annual phenomenon. End of May first of June when the weather’s right, they come together for courting and mating in the tall trees of the southern Appalachians. It can be quite a sight, but impossible to depend on. Mother Nature at her temperamental best.

Unfortunately it’s raining. First we can hear thunder over the Cohutta’s, and then a storm moves in, rumbling and slashing across our small cove. I love a rain storm and this is a good one, pounding the porch roof and streaming off the eaves. As the sun is setting it finally stops and a double rainbow stretches across the valley. It’s vivid and complete, and end to end feels like a tribute. To lives sacrificed and to those that remain.

And then. Crazy beautiful. The lightening bugs draw together in the trees, a cloud of them, pulsing, and we settle in for the show after all.