This morning, I found myself needing to make a trip to Natural Bridge for our Leadership Conference.  Driving from the ‘Noke, I knew exactly how to get there… just hop on 81, high tail it up the road about 35 miles and I’m there.  Easy peasy.  However, I didn’t find myself in the ‘Noke this morning, rather at the lake.  Using my handy-dandy GPS on my phone (how did I, the queen of getting lost, ever survive without this feature? Well, I guess it’s obvious, I didn’t… not very well, anyway.) I loaded up the directions from the lake house to Natural Bridge and was pleased to see that time wise, it wasn’t that much further.  I left early, just to make sure that I was there in time for the start of the presentation.  (As luck would have it, they were 45 minutes late starting due to some technical issues, but I was there at 7:45am.  I was proud of myself.

But the drive?  I had no idea when looking at the directions before I set off would lead me down my own personal memory lane.  I was unaware of where I was headed, never realizing that the course I would take this morning would take me back at least 15 years.

I set off and before long, I was in Bedford.  I passed the church that I attended for a long time, the one that had the pastor that I connected with.  I thought about stopping by on my way home, but quickly remembered that I attended his retirement service a little over a year ago.  It was the service where I realized that as an Episcopalian, I thought we never talked about Salvation.  In that service, I realized that we said the word Salvation over 5 times every service.  It was also in that service where I realized that growing up Episcopalian, saying the same things every Sunday, that I just said words.  I never truly understood what I was saying.

I then passed Avenel where my parents held the renewal of their wedding vows on their 25th anniversary.  Their renewal ceremony came at the conclusion of my marriage and the memories of watching my parents, so happy after 25 years when my marriage of  just three failed, came flooding back.  It was hard for me to stand there carrying the barely a year old Samara on my hip while three year old Matthew followed my brother around like a little lost puppy and smile.  It was a cross roads in my life that, looking back was adventageous for me to go through, but a point where I never wish to return.

Going a little further down the road, the scenery started looking familiar to me and it was then that I realized that this was the route my father would take after church on beautiful days to the Peaks of Otter on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  As a child, I hated those drives.  I just wanted to be home.  I had no desire to sit in the car and look at the mountains or the leaves changing or being on a road where the speed limit was 45 mph and people actually adhrered to it.  I wanted to be home.  I wanted to be out of the mandatory church clothes that I was forced to wear and enjoying the last bit of my weekend.  All these years later, I am the person that wants to take those drives.  I am fortunate in the fact that my children enjoy them as well, or at least, they pretend like they do and don’t tell me otherwise.  I was not so considerate.

When I passed the sign advertising the Peaks of Otter Winery just 4.6 miles down the road on my left, I was transported back to October when the boy and I went on our first date.  It was there that I called him out on being nervous; where I questioned if it was going to last if he was all over the place and antsy all the time.  A quick, “are you nervous?” out of my mouth followed by a curt, “insanely” out of his established that perhaps he would settle down over time.  The Winery is also where I gave him every opportunity to kiss me, but he never did.

A few miles more, I passed the sign for the Apple Festival where we also went on our first date.  When I passed the Country Store where he held my hand for the first time, I smiled.  He actually asked if it was okay.  We’ve come a long way in nine months and it was nice to be able to think back to that day, to the fun that we had, for it was that day that I started to learn how to just “be” and truth be told, it was extrememly hard for me to sit in the car for a long drive with no particular destination in mind.

I traveled down Route 43 for a little while longer and passed the bed and breakfast where my ex-husband and I spent our wedding night nearly 12 years ago.  That was the night that Princess Di passed in her horrible accident.  I remember very little about the bed and breakfast itself.  We arrived, walked around for a little but since he had falled and twisted his ankle just a few hours before the wedding, he was in pain.  We laid down on the bed and fell asleep, fully clothed, not awaking until the morning when breakfast was served.  We were home before 11am the next morning.

I knew as I passed the Otter’s Den that I would soon hit the parkway and the Peaks.  It was there that the boy finally got over his nervousness and all it took was the first kiss.  I remember the kiss as just a little one, but it was enough to catch me off guard and lose my footing.  But from then on, he was fine; no longer nervous.  He told me later that the anticipation of that kiss was the cause for his nervousness in which I joked with him for awhile that if that’s all it was he should’ve just kissed me in my driveway that morning as I knew then that I wanted him to.

I thought, after passing the Peaks and travelling the 5 miles of the Parkway that my memories were over; that I had experienced the last for the morning.  It wasn’t until it was time to turn off of the Parkway and when I found myself on 43 in the Jefferson National Forest that I realized that I was where my father brought me to teach me to drive the pick up truck.  It was his philosophy to teach you in an area that was tough so that everywhere else was a cake walk and 43 has nothing but hairpin curves and hills and I might also mention that while it is two lanes, one going in each direction, they are very narrow.  My father had faith after traveling that today.  Even with 15 years of driving under my belt, that stretch of my journey was nerve racking to me.  I can’t imagine sitting in the passenger seat with a 17 year old who didn’t yet have her license and thought that she knew it all.

Making it through the curves, watching my GPS arrow look like it was wigging out going around all those curves, I found myself at the intersection of Parkway Drive and Main Street in Buchannan.  For those of you up north, you might be pronouncing that bUUUcanan.  But not here.  Nope.  Here, in the south, or more specifically around these parts, it’s Bahcanan.  Don’t ask me why.  We have several little townships that aren’t pronounced how I would pronounce them, but it’s the easiest way to tell if someone isn’t from around here.  On my right I saw the hybrid Buger King/Stop In station and there, we used to stop after softball games when we found ourselves traveling to that side of Botetourt (pronounced Bot-E-tot) county.  It wasn’t often, but we knew that we had a good hour’s drive home and we were hungry.  So that’s where we stopped.

It was there that my memory lane trip ended and I found myself on 81 just 7 miles from the conference center.  I called the boy to recount the memories and to share with him what I had seen.  On the way home this afternoon, I happened to be on the phone with him when I passed the little country store and said to him, “awww… there’s the country store again where you held  my hand for the first time.”  In disbelief, he asked, “you remember stuff like that?”

And I do.  I remember small things, insignificant things.  I remember things that I’ll never really need to know again.  I can tell you what I wore to New York City on my 8th grade field trip but I have trouble looking at one of the four kids and calling them by the right name.  I don’t even think I can tell you what I wore yesterday short of the to-die-for heels that kill my feet, yet I still wear them anyway.

Now, in addition to this being a trip that flooded my brain with memories of my past, I have to tell you that this was truly a trip through God’s country.  I was able to sit back and take in the wonder, not only of what He has created here, but what He’s done in my life through the years.

I have to be honest… I can’t wait to do it again tomorrow morning!

Until next time…