#RSRSeesTheUSA Day 2: PA-MD-WV-VA
Setting off this morning after a night of sound sleep in gusting winds and pouring rain in Harrisburg, PA.
My Harrisburg Airbnb was the top floor of the same place I stayed on my drive from Colorado to Massachusetts after quitting my last toxic museum job, and there was something sweetly familiar to pulling up and staying there, especially as I’m in such a better mental place than I was at the end of 2020.
Since the day was beautiful, I decided to steer Stella along Skyline Drive and finally bought myself the National Park pass I’ve been looking for a reason to buy for years.
Spent much of the day tooling through off-season Shenandoah National Park. I love an off-season tourist area. I love seeing a place when it’s not “dressed up” for its main audience. I love having normally-teeming spaces practically to myself and seeing the grounds crew mowing and the visitor centers mainly closed.
Today I loved the sense of everything lying fallow around me. I’ve come to deeply appreciate my own fallow periods when production and activity and accomplishment all need to stop in order to rest and replenish.
The trees are skeletal silhouettes. The meadows are empty of wildflowers and insects. The whole palette of the place is mossy green-grays and wheaty tans and blue-tinged chocolate of distant hillsides covered in a notable lack of foliage. All around me felt like it was letting me drive through without bothering to put on a show. Like the park was lifting up its sleepy head to see my pass by and then tucking its nose back under its tail and going back to sleep.
Sleep on, Shenandoah.
Cloud of the day: this skyscape over Shenandoah National Park that looks like a pair of birds in flight or some kind of sky nymph smearing trails across the air.
Inspirations on my mind today, thinking about the importance of fallow periods:
Wintering by Katherine May
The Nap Ministry from Tricia Hersey
Hurry Slowly podcast from Jocelyn K. Glei
And then to arrive in my caboose hotel for the night with nature’s white noise from the stream nearby… a little *chef’s kiss* of an end to the day.
