Article 3 - "A COVER OF DARKNESS" DECEMBER 2006 edition of First Church of The Streets

    The sky darkened as we pierced through the south, and the unknown inviting me to itself became hidden with shadows. There were mountains there somewhere, but I didn't know them, couldn't see them. In the coal-black night, the mountains of Virginia danced beside me. But to me, they were strangers who remained unknown, because they used the darkness to hide themselves away from me.

    We were going to be bedding down in northen Virginia somewhere, in a truck stop or a rest area. For sleeping purposes, we had equipped our van with a roll-up mattress that fit perfectly in the back, as long as we stashed all of our belongings up in the front, a sort of barrier shield that double-shifted as privacy walls. To block out any of the street lamps that came upon our way, we had a silver shield to cover up the entire windshield. There were pillows and blankets to make ourselves comfortable, though it didn't seem like we needed the latter at this point in the May heat. At the very least, it could make a double bedding if it became too hot. This was the way we had traveled before on the road, and for the first few nights on this trip, this would be how we spent the night.

    I had driven into the state border from West Virginia, but now I sat as a passenger as the sun slipped away from me and I was left without any sense of direction or orientation. Driving at night, especially on an empty highway that was unfamiliar, seemed to take me away from any sense of familiarity. This even if it was a familiar vehicle like my van, and the company around me from everyday life, like my husband and dog. It was like I had been transported to some strange land, and these apparitions next to me had been replicated to provide a substitute to sustain me in the land of the unknown. In plain language, even the known seemed different in unfamiliar terrain.

    We were crossing into the Blue Mountain range, though at the moment, they were nothing more than black gobs that blocked my vision. Somewhere in there was the Shenandoah Valley, of which we were going to be driving right by. On our original itinerary, we'd marked this as a destination, but with our limited time, it was going to be nothing more than a thoroughfare for us, something to drive through until the next time. Maybe it was a shame to pass up that kind of opportunity. But with a sense of pragmatism that I couldn't quite muster, there was the reality that only so many things could be done from coat to coast with only a month to spare. And, I admitted more truthfully, too many things missed.

    As we drove, billboards appeared as sirens to tempt me, signs promising me home cooked meals for cheap and motel rooms with TVs and showers for less than twenty bucks a night. There were hotels that had jacuzzis starting from forty nine dollars a night, and they came with hot breakfasts. Chain restaurants told me that they resided next to the hotel, promising me a great deal on hamburgers and ice cream sundaes if I'd only plop my credit card down and surrender to the clean sheets of its twin sponsor. I looked at the rolled up bedding in my van with the refrigerator of cold food and sighed. My husband managed to drive past them all, and we passed the first challenge of the day as we roughed it on the road.

    Somewhere in that valley, less than a year earlier, there had been two brutal murders that received national attention. Two women named Julianne Williams and Lollie Winans had been killed in the Shenandoah National Park while hiking on the Appalachian Trail. The murders had been a hushed topic amongst some women in the hiking group I sometimes joined. Although the women seemed to have been killed because they were lesbians, their murders left a pall upon women I knew who hiked or traveled, straight or gay. It underscored the danger, the fear, of traveling. It seemed to give life to the urban legend, "Women, beware! Stay home where you are safe!".

    I don't know if that was what I sensed as I passed by the mountains. I may have felt the echoes of the women who were killed, or some other cry that only came out when the darkness breathed light into them. Traveling in the United States has a reputation for being dangerous travel, though from my perspective, having seen what looked like submachine guns in Italian airports, and being grabbed by Mexican hagglers, it didn't seem any worse than any other country. Any fear monger could talk you out of walking out the door. Don't travel overseas because they hate Westerners. Don't travel to Europe because they hate Americans. Don't travel in the United States because they will kill you and rob you of everything you have. I don't know, but it sounded like "they" needed some serious help. I couldn't see why I should make "they" my problem. After all, if "they" wanted me so badly, "they" could mow me down at the neighborhood grocery store when I thought "they" weren't looking. Fear could make a perfect prisoner because there was no need for any bars to keep someone in. And most of time, the sentence was perfectly voluntary. I was, as much as possible, not going to let myself be bound by fear's clutches. Danger lay in the shadows of all roads, no matter how smooth and familiar and quaint they were.

    We pulled into a rest area just outside of Luray, Virginia, where on the sides of the road, the night darkened happy signs of tourism such as the Luray Caverns and other things where if you wanted to drop your money, the promise of happy family memories to be made lay behind the curtain. There was no other passenger vehicle but us, and the humming buzz of trucks at rest and departure. Yellow light from the lamps outdoors bathed us in a glowing haze through our curtains.

    As we prepared the vehicle for our first night of sleep on the road, the truck engines sounded like a lullaby for the weary traveler, like a reassurance that there were others on the road with me, taking similar paths. In that moment, every memory of having done this before came back to me, a deja vu of warmth and comfort.

    It may sound strange to find bedfellows in a rest stop with strangers, while laying on a cushion in a twelve foot long vehicle. But the road brought out a different side, and shadows sometimes felt like friends. Ghosts of the past and of those who had gone before me could act as spirit guides in the road ahead. It all was in what the manner of choice was, if I would let fear override my sense of instinct and balance. My instinct told me to sleep and let the night hold onto me, and all was well, as I fell asleep with the sound of diesel engines to sustain me.