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to scarlet and the poplars change to gold. Walking a country road in October is like walking through an old cathedral, with shafts of sunlight pouring through stained glass and ruined choirs. The air has the tang of hard cider. It smells of open fires.
There is even something to be said for winter in the mountains. We don’t get a great deal of snow, but when it comes it transforms the countryside. The snow stays clean, unsmudged by city soot, and it piles up in scallops of whipped cream. The mountains sleep, old men with white hair, and nothing much moves but the deer and the somnolent cattle. On clear nights, through the bare and bony trees, you can see a billion stars. Maybe two billion. Only a passing plane, bound for Dulles International, provides a reminder of the world outside.
We have been like Lancelot: We never could leave it at all. So we believed when we shook hands with Mr. Corbin. At 45 the spavins and wheezes of age are not even passing thoughts. But one day there comes the sudden painful thump, the sharp imperative reminder of mortality, and the metaphorical heart says stay, but the literal mind says go.
We move this week to a house on South Battery in old Charleston, with a view from the bedrooms to the sea. It is a city of great charm and friendliness — Charlestonians call it the Holy City — and I will have a comfortable office to work in. This is not retirement. That comes a few years hence. I will be commuting constantly to Capitol Hill. Ultimately I may try my hand at teaching. Who knows?
On the Friday before St. Patrick’s, I made my last drive out from Washington. I had hoped for a gorgeous spring day, with every budding tree just perfect, but the skies came up gray as gravel. I paused at a favorite spot west of Amissville, where Route 211 makes a long climbing turn. Ordinarily the whole panoply of the Blue Ridge comes into view, but that afternoon I saw the mountains through a blur of rain. Only it wasn’t rain.
Taken from “The Writer’s Art” column by James J. Kilpatrick. Copyright 1990 by Universal Press Syndicate. Reprinted urith permission. All rights reserved.
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