Again, Mill Mountain rises to about 1,750 feet, and I think my friends and I were at the overlook at or near its summit. These videos don’t do justice to the view, although the second one at least gives you the best sense of looking down at the world. The slope is so steep that peering down nearly induces vertigo.
I don’t know how true this is, but I read somewhere that Roanoke is the only American city with a mountain that is actually inside the city limits.
My Side of the Mountain. Looking for Frightful and The Baron.
That view is extraordinary, isn’t it? Mill Mountain rises to around 1,750 feet, and these were taken when my alumbuds and I were at or near the summit.
More mountain madness with the Mary Washington College kids.
I DO realize that those blurry car shots are weird. I just find them trippy and dreamlike! I’ll probably never stop posting them. (And that third really blurry shot makes me think of Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game.” The bright, laterally-racing greens just give it a sense of urgency.)
Meet my baby groundhog buddy. His neighborhood is that stretching bed of blue wildflowers.
This is Tenleytown, in Washington, D.C.’s Northwest, just a couple of blocks from a campus of American University — where I almost went to school, instead of Mary Washington College in Virginia. I even (somewhat hilariously) received “honors admission” there. (I was never actually a true “honor student,” even in high school, because my grades in math and science were fair at best — and anyone who knew me at age 18 could tell you that I was not exactly the brightest bulb in the socket.)
I remember being pretty excited as a high school senior at that admission letter. American U. was my first choice; I was only seduced away to small-town Virginia by a generous financial aid package from the good people at Mary Washington. (Yes, young people, Fredericksburg was indeed a small town in 1990, even if it now looks like downtown frikkin’ Fairfax.)
It was freaky sipping coffee in Tenleytown and pondering some other parallel-universe me who lived and studied and partied there as a kid. (Where would I have bought my comic books?) Most people don’t think about string theory when they travel, but I am both a science fiction fan and a really weird guy with a lot of time on his hands. (Where is that other Eric right now? Is he married? Is he writing? Is he equally irritated by Star Wars obsessives, the religious right, Orwellian language, people who push “healthy snacks,” the dumbing down of America, “fun-sized” candy, and the gradual decline of “The Walking Dead?”)
Anyway, Tenleytown a pleasant neighborhood with a brisk, college-town vibe to it. DC consistently surprises me by how friendly its people can be.
I left some poetry mini-books beside some news-stands on Albemarle Street, a cross-street with Wisconsin Avenue. The stands alternately inform readers in Greek, Spanish, Chinese and English about how DC’s most deplorable resident has most recently embarrassed our country. (I admire the Spanish-language papers’ predictable special antipathy for the president.) No matter how sad the news is, this town will not let you hide behind a language barrier.
Am I nuts, or does that Best Buy look like it was designed with the Watergate in mind? I keep wondering if that is someone’s idea of an obscure joke.
I left these beside a symphony of singing insects’ sibilances.
Seen from the edge of Greenwood-Afton Rural Historic District. (The gap’s 110 miles are the lowest passage through the Blue Ridge Mountains.) Thomas Jefferson met with other officials at the nearby Rockfish Tavern in 1818 to plan the University of Virginia.
June 2018.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 