Summer in the Shenandoah Valley
When the Middle Days Arrive
June 11, 2006
The Valley has been changing, and the daylight stretching out, as the solstice draws near. There is a fullness along the country roads where trees recently bare take on a middle-aged kind of thickness, swaying contentedly with the last of spring breezes. The cacophony of cicadas, tree frogs, crickets, and a million other mate-seeking critters makes such a steady droning that you actually have to think about it to hear their song. In the fields that twist to fit the Shenandoah River sit tawny bales of fresh-hewn hay which, from a distance, speckle the countryside like Civil War infantry frozen in time. Read more
Rejoining the Battle
A Game for Friends to Share
June 5, 2005
Gene and I started playing golf, or some bastardized slash-and-burn version of the game, when we were about fifteen or sixteen years old. I do not remember why we started playing. Gene was a baseball player; they called him Hoover, like the vacuum cleaner, because his long, gangly arms sucked up baseballs left and right before they could slip past the infield. I played basketball, which would have been a very short career with my height, or lack thereof, and my tectonic plate-like speed, but they instituted the three point shot while I played high school ball, and I was not afraid to launch the ball from the hash mark, or even half court, if given a chance. Read more
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