If the computer room is the brains of the home, and HVAC the heart, then the deck is the soul, at least for this man of the house.
I reside in a little brick place I call the Hut at the Crest of West, where treated-lumber perch serves as the bridge of the Good Ship Dick. Even have my own ship’s wheel; a towering locust at the end of the yard my mainmast, its leafy branches like unfurled sails. You’ll wilt on the deck in the heat of the day the likes of which we’ve recently known, but come dusky dawn of star-rise summer eve, there’s no better place to be. Never ceases to amaze, how neighborhood air conditioners whirl and hum, windows closed to the nightly breeze that blesses mountain folk, and draws suffocating flatlanders seeking weekend reprieve.
After a long winter’s absence that dragged on through the cool, wet weather that dogged much of this spring, I’ve reacquainted myself of late with the deck, whiling away the late-night hours, thoughts drifting to the heavens, the vast timelessness of it all; how small and temporary are we who gaze upon it.
Or maybe it was just Keystone Light and Rock Lobster. Gotta watch that combo.
It was on the deck that I saw new moon born to threadbare infancy last weekend, crescent slice of mirrored sunlight slow-motion falling to Big Savage horizon. Each night accorded fabled orb a bit more girth, a bit more height in the sky, so that its hour upon celestial stage grew longer with another day. Around midnight Saturday, a big yellow banana stood upright atop the mountain, only to morph in a matter of minutes into a golden shark fin, stationary against the ridgeline . It too fell quickly from view, leaving naught but fading glow in the west, and silent prayer of thanks that I make my home among the splendor of these hills.
As much as our mountains divide, they also unite. So it is that I can show up on your doorstep Wednesday morning, talkin’ at ya like some long-lost, long-winded relation you wish had just stayed lost. Of course, I am from the river’s distant shore, the other side of the tracks as it were. For I realize there is Wild, Wonderful, and everything else.
Just as Big Savage Mountain bows to the waters of Savage River, and Backbone rises separate and distinct on the far side, I had wondered at the mighty prominence that arises west of Keyser, across the Potomac from Dan’s Mountain.
Soon after starting at the News-Tribune last month, I ran into Steve Meek at Keyser High School. It was my first conversation out doors with a local, and I reckoned the good Mr. Meek might know of such things. He’d been chalking the lines at the softball field, hood tied tight against hard winds kicking up the infield dust.
“What’s the name of that mountain?” I asked, gesturing past him to the massive green wall rising a mile or so beyond the field of play.
Ever since starting at the paper, I’d tracked the same rise to the southern horizon, and recognized in the undulating promontory, kindred spirit with Savage, Dan’s and Backbone. The only thing separating them, a river that became a state line.
“That’s Green Mountain,” Meek said. “Part of the Allegheny Front.”
Now I know its name, as I cross that bump-and-grind bridge over the storied Potomac, and look to a mountain that sings by name and permanence, of history.
The middle child of my beloved Progeny Three is headed to the 7th grade now, and I mourn not just the passing of another year, but the end of her year in Earth Science. We would read her lessons together, but Dad was usually far more interested than daughter. All the mysteries of this world, from erosion to electrons, solar coronas to continental drift, laid out in plain-speak almost simple enough for me to understand. Almost.
One tidbit I took from the good book is that these mountains are something like 375 million years old. We who dwell in their shadows, but flowers of the field.
It wasn’t just the mountains that whispered this week of mortality, but an anguished phone call that announced the name of someone dear I’d never see again.
My mom had found a true friend and treasured companion in Frank Shumaker, an 83-year-old romantic who gave her an engagement ring last Christmas. He died Sunday, one of the approximately 1,800 World War II veterans who will pass away each day this year. He’d served in the Army in India, and loved to tell stories of the place. A retiree of the Frostburg A&P, he always had a joke, always wore a smile. He was an usher at St. Mikes, and a regular patron of Tuesday-night poker at the K of C.
We are less for having lost Frank, more for having known him. I am reminded in his passing that a life well-lived reverberates unto ages and eons beyond mountains and stars, in love sown, blooming and growing to the generations, undying …