Abiding Peace

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“To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it
go,
to let it go.”

—Mary Oliver (1935–2019). American poet and essayist. The quote is from her “In Blackwater Woods” (American Primitive, 1983).

“They’re gone! I can’t believe it. They’re not there.”

“What?” Gary wanted to know, as we savored our breakfast in the early morning quiet.

“The chimney swifts. I don’t hear them. They must be gone.”

“I’m not sure,” he mused, looking toward the kitchen fireplace. “I heard them last evening during dinner.”

Before I could answer, their high-pitched trills interrupted us as they took their morning flight out of the chimney.

“I guess you’re right. But it doesn’t sound as loud as usual. Maybe some have gone already.”

The chimney swifts have taken shelter in our kitchen fireplace for longer than I can remember, arriving sometime during summer and departing sometime during fall.

This year was no exception. But somehow, I was more aware of their going, perhaps because I had come to love their early evening and morning serenades.

But a few mornings later, I looked at Gary again, knowing that I was right this time:

“They’re gone.”

He nodded.

A week or so later, we were sitting on our deck enjoying a glass of wine after dinner.

“My God!” I exclaimed. “They’re still here.”

Gary knew that I meant the hummingbirds, because as I spoke one whirred its way past us, so close that we could see its iridescent forehead and crown before it hovered and then torpedoed itself to a limb high up in a tree, so high that had we not followed its path, we would have lost sight of it.

“They’re hanging around far too long. The nights are getting too cool, you know,” I continued. “They need to start their migration.”

“They’ll be gone soon?”

“Oh, yes. Soon.”

Yet, they continued to tease us with their unexpected comings and goings, despite my worries about their fate. We figured they knew what to do and when to do it far more than we did.

But then one evening, wine glasses raised, we looked at one another with the same surprised realization.

“They’re gone.”

And so they were, just like the chimney swifts. Gone.

I sat there for longer than a while, thinking about other things in our lives that we know will leave us, although we never know when.

Not our material wealth and possessions that bring us comfort and security.

Not our occupations and endeavors that give our days meaning.

Not our status, recognition, or professional titles.

Instead, I was thinking about the things we know we cannot keep.

Youth. We feel it diminishing in our bodies. We see it in our mirrors. Gradually. Ever so gradually.

And then, one day, gone.

Health. We start noticing the body that used to work without our noticing. The loss, gradual. The reminder, visceral.

And then, one day, gone.

Independence. Driving ourselves, managing our own affairs, living on our own terms. Giving up the keys is a hard surrender.

And then, one day, gone.

Family. Friends. Pets. Losses, one by one by one. We keep on keeping on.

And then, one day, gone.

Mind. The slow disappearance of the self we’ve always known.

And then, one day, gone.

Love. The kiss. The touch. The smile.

And then, one day, gone.

The eyes. The breath. The heartbeat.

And then, one day, gone.

Whose Mountain?

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“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”

— John Muir (1838–1914). American naturalist, writer, and conservationist. My First Summer in the Sierra (1911).

I have lived here on my mountain for decades. Three, I suppose. For part of that time, I was a weekender–a stranger, if you will. Then, I settled in full-time. These days I’ve lived here on my road longer than anyone else, so it’s natural, it seems to me, that I call it my mountain. But one morning, looking out my kitchen window, I caught a glimpse of something vague rising up across the road and beyond the bare trees. I leaned in closer to see more, to see more clearly.

I could hardly believe what I saw: the western slope of Jordan’s mountain.

Jordan’s my neighbor at the end of our road. From his deck, the mountain gathers itself fully. It rises in one unbroken sweep, its long slope climbing steadily toward a rounded summit that seems almost deliberate in its restraint—no jagged drama, no sudden spire, just a steady lifting of earth toward sky. Even in winter’s bareness, when the trees surrender their leaves and the mountain shows its bones, the shape holds. The eye travels upward almost without effort, drawn along faint ridgelines and subtle folds in the land until it reaches that quiet crest.

What has always struck me is how completely the peak reveals itself there. Standing on Jordan’s deck, nothing interrupts the view. The mountain appears whole, self-contained, as if it had chosen that vantage point for its portrait.

Over time, without quite intending to, I began to think of it as Jordan’s mountain. After all, he was the one who could see it fully, standing there on his deck. If a mountain can belong anywhere, it seemed to belong there.

That’s why the glimpse from my own kitchen window surprised me. Through the bare branches across the road, beyond the field I know so well, the familiar rise appeared—partial, yes, but undeniable. The same long slope. The same patient ascent. The same quiet summit, just visible enough to recognize.

In that glimpse, I knew at once what it was. As I stood there smiling at my recognition, a thought swept across my mind:

“If my trees weren’t in the way, I could see Jordan’s mountain, all of it, clearly.”

My smile widened and I started chuckling out loud. I kept hearing over and over and over again the rumbling sound of my voice:

My trees.

Jordan’s mountain.

My mountain.

In my laughter, I lapsed into a moment of geographical precision that pinned me down. I was standing on my mountain in Virginia at 38.81° N, 78.52° W.

I began to wonder. What if I followed that latitude all the way around the globe?

In my mind’s eye, I did. Eastward. All around the world, following the morning sun.

I crossed the Blue Ridge, headed toward the Atlantic, and sailed out across an ocean whose swells rose and fell like mountains of water. No trees to obstruct my view. No neighbor’s deck to offer a better one. Just wave after wave, each crest giving way to another until sea and sky seemed to meet at the farthest reaches of sight.

And lo! The coast of Portugal. Elvas (38.88° N), a town of whitewashed houses and ancient fortifications rising above the plains of Alentejo. Old walls. Countryside stretched out toward distant hills. Olive groves. Fields whose colors changed with the seasons. And, somewhere, I was certain, stood someone just like me, surveying that familiar landscape, as pleased with their view as I was with mine.

Minha!

Farther east. Spain. Alvarado (38.81° N), broad agricultural plains of Extremadura. Fields stretched beneath an enormous sky. Olive trees, low hills, and an occasional stone farmhouse. Here, too, someone stood at a window, looking out over land that had become as much a part of their life as my mountain had become of mine.

¡Mía!

Across the Mediterranean, past islands rising from blue water. The rugged highlands of Turkey. Afyonkarahisar (38.76° N), an immense volcanic rock thrust upward from the city, crowned by a fortress that had watched over the surrounding countryside for centuries. I imagined someone on a nearby terrace looking up and claiming that great stone sentinel.

Benim!

Farther east, the broad plains of Central Asia. Near Qarshi (38.86° N), Uzbekistan, cultivated fields and irrigation channels spread across a landscape shaped by desert and river. Beyond the green patches of farmland lay the dry expanses of the steppe, their horizons so wide that my own wooded mountain seemed almost enclosed by comparison. Somewhere beneath that enormous sky, someone most assuredly was looking across the land with my own proud innocence.

Meniki!

Still onward and onward. Across the deserts and mountain corridors of western China. Zhangye (38.93° N), where the Hexi Corridor runs between distant ranges. Ocher hills, red sandstone, green fields nourished by mountain water, and barren slopes rising toward snow-covered heights. I could almost see someone standing at a window, taking in that extraordinary landscape and thinking what I had thought so many times.

我的！(Wǒ de!)

Across the Yellow Sea and a peninsula where a line drawn near this latitude once answered whose? with barbed wire. I hurried on, not wanting to ask anyone there to shout mine.

Then open water once more, and the islands of Japan. Near Sakata (38.92° N), rice fields spread across the coastal plain, with Mount Chōkai rising majestically, its volcanic slopes climbing toward a summit that wears snow well into spring. There, too, someone was looking toward that great mountain with affection like mine.

私のもの！ (Watashi no mono!)

Then came the Pacific, so vast that I wondered whether I might have undertaken more traveling than a man standing in his kitchen ought reasonably to attempt. But eventually the western coast of America appeared. I crossed mountains, deserts, and high plateaus until I reached Colorado Springs (38.83° N). Pikes Peak rising above the city, its great summit towering over the eastern edge of the Rockies. Surely someone stood looking toward that mountain, making the same declaration I’d made so often.

My mountain!

I laughed again. I had gone all around the world, assigning mountains to people who had never asked me to do so, just as I had assigned Jordan’s to him.

And there I stood in my kitchen, looking out on the world.

My trees.

My mountain.

And beyond the bare branches, just visible across the road, was the western slope of Jordan’s mountain.

I hadn’t moved an inch.

I smiled, again and again and again. In one fell swoop of the gazetteer, my and mine had dissolved into our and ours.

The Essay I Didn’t Write

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“I celebrate myself, and sing myself.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892), American poet and author of Leaves of Grass.

I cannot sing. I do not make that declaration out of modesty. It’s true. I cannot sing, try as I may.

But in a recent dream, I was poised on stage for my singing debut on “America’s Got Talent.” The stage lights were warm, and as the judges called my name, I started humming Coldplay’s “Yellow”:

Look at the stars
Look how they shine for you

Instantly, I knew that Coldplay should be standing where I stood, not me. I stopped humming and told the judges so.

They stared at me under the lights. Then, one by one, they agreed.

I woke before anyone had sung a note. But in my waking, I recalled more lyrical words. They weren’t from Coldplay. They were from something I read long, long ago and far, far away:

I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument, while the song I came to sing remains unsung.

Somehow, as a high-schooler, I had discovered Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali, and from that point forward those lines from Song 13 were burned into my brain. It does not matter that I garbled the lines and omitted a word or two.

What matters is that the lines stayed with me and surfaced when I needed something to say—something that might stand in for what I did not then fully understand and, therefore, could not say fully—when I was writing a placement essay for college Honors English.

I’ve often wondered what I actually wrote between those bluebook covers sitting there in Old Main. I wish I could remember as vividly as I can still recall the minty smell of the green, oiled sawdust the janitor swept faithfully across the hardwood classroom floors, darkened and smoothed by the generations of footsteps before me.

I can see myself writing about dreams deferred in a coal-mining region where Christmas shopping never happened until Christmas Eve, when the miners were paid. Where hand-me-down clothes were talked up as “good as any” because better and best lived in catalogs. Where parents did without so that their children would have enough to make do. Where hope hung mid-air between paychecks. And where, on Sundays, it was lifted—however briefly—by the gospel notes of “In the Sweet By and By.”

I can see myself writing about the value of an education, as a way out of a region where talents—generation after generation—had been trapped beneath the surface of pride and poverty, unable to escape. And as a way up, for me—a first-generation college student—to live the good life I saw my teachers living, the life I saw others living who had gone away and not looked back.

I can see myself writing about my vocation—what I was meant to do with my life—with all the earnestness and idealism of a young man who believed in the power of words and ideas. I had dreamt of becoming an English professor since I was in the third grade, and there I was at the start of that journey—a freshman majoring in education at Alderson-Broaddus College.

I can see myself writing about finding my voice, about learning to trust my ideas and discovering whether I had anything worth saying that others might want to hear. I knew it would involve years of reading and study, exploring ideas, and imagining myself one day standing before a classroom, inviting students to do the same. But somewhere between having ideas and giving voice to them lay a distance I had not yet learned how to travel. I wanted to believe that my voice mattered, that my ideas mattered, and that somewhere along the way I would find the confidence to make them heard.

I can see myself writing about my social unease, about being the youngest of six children and growing up accustomed to my own company. I had spent countless hours playing alone, in a world where woods and gardens welcomed me without question. Nature had been my playground, my companion, my refuge. I had loved that solitude, never thinking of it as something from which I needed to escape. But college was another world altogether, one in which I would have to find my footing among strangers, make friends, and discover how to belong without the familiar safety net of home.

But I know what I didn’t write about.

I didn’t write about being gay.

I didn’t write about being the gay son of a father who mined coal and a mother who preached, growing up in a household where economic hardship and spiritual conviction were powerful forces shaping our lives. I didn’t write about the complicated business of being a young man like me in 1965, in the South, sitting in a college classroom at an institution with Baptist roots. I didn’t write about the uncertainty of finding my place in a world that had not made a place for me at its table.

I knew better than to write about any of that. Some things were best left unsaid, especially when saying them might close doors that had only just begun to open.

But silence did not mean that I was without questions. Far from it. I had questions enough to fill a dozen bluebooks, questions that seemed every bit as important to my education as anything I might learn from Chaucer or Shakespeare or Dickinson or Frost or Albee. How was I to live? How was I to love? How was I to become the person I was meant to be in a world that seemed determined to tell me who I could not be?

And beneath those questions lay something almost spiritual in its urgency. It was not unlike the medieval plea that I came to love from Piers Plowman: “Tell me, O Lady, whom men call holy, how may I save my soul?”

But I never feared for my soul. Not then. Not ever.

God is, and I am.

That settled it for me.

What remained unsettled was everything else. How to reconcile the life I knew was mine with the life the world expected me to live. How to find love without surrendering myself. How to claim a place at the table without pretending to be someone I was not. How to make my way in a world where the rules had been written by others and for others, long before I arrived.

Those were questions no college placement essay could answer. But they were questions I carried into every classroom, every friendship, every new experience. They were as much a part of my education as the books I read, the lectures I attended, and the examinations I passed.

I wish I could remember what I wrote in that bluebook. Perhaps I wrote something earnest and ambitious about the power of education. Perhaps I borrowed Tagore’s words to lend a little eloquence to thoughts I could not yet express with confidence. Perhaps I wrote about the future I imagined for myself, never once acknowledging the future I could scarcely imagine.

Whatever I wrote, it was only part of the story.

The rest would unfold over the years, not between bluebook covers but in the life I chose to live authentically, without asking permission, without allowing others to define who I was or what I might become.

I never felt compelled to make an announcement about being gay. I simply lived my life and let others make of me what they would. But a bluebook is a different matter. I had been asked to put my best self on those pages, and I put down only the self that was safe to show.

Perhaps I’ll never know what I wrote in Old Main. But I know what I would write today, with another bluebook open before me.

I would quote Tagore once again. But this time, I would answer him.

I would write that I spent a good many days stringing and unstringing my instrument. We all do. We come into this world without knowing who we are or where we belong, and we tune and retune for years before we trust ourselves with a single note.

I would write that the coal miner’s son became the English professor he had dreamed of becoming since the third grade. That he loved and is loved. That he took his place at the table without pretending to be anyone else.

And I would write the sentence I knew better than to write in 1965.

I am gay.

Three words. They would not have filled a line of that bluebook, let alone the pages. It took a lifetime to fill in the rest.

I still cannot sing. Ask anyone who has ever stood beside me. But that has never stopped me from trying to make a joyful noise. The song I came to sing has not gone unsung. I have been singing it all along, in classrooms, in essays, in a life lived without apology.

It took me all these years to write this essay. Not to discover who I am. I knew that before I ever opened that bluebook.

I am. And you are, too.

The Lecture I Never Gave

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“If you want to write, just write.”
—Brent L. Kendrick, b. 1947. Old enough to know better.

Over the last five years, I’ve written nearly 260 creative nonfiction essays—personal essays, you might prefer to call them. And instead of 260 essays, I might prefer to say that I’ve written about 750,000 words. More dramatically, three-quarters of a million words. Any of those counts would be true. And let me add that those essays have appeared right here Monday after Monday after Monday without fail, since December 2021.

If you’re thinking it was magic, all that I have to say is:

“Phooey!”

Magic had nothing to do with it. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I pulled it off by doing what I spent decades telling my Creative Writing students to do:

“If you want to write, just write.”

Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it?

Yep. In a way. Whatever it is you want to do, you have to do it and keep doing it over and over and over again if you want to get it done. Again and again and again.

It’s that simple.

“If you want to write, just write.”

But that’s not the whole story.

The part that doesn’t get included is that while you’re doing whatever it is you want to do, you’ll encounter many strange bedfellows. I never taught that part because I hadn’t gotten in bed with enough bedfellows of my own.

Since 2021, however, I’ve slept with many.

Doubt. Am I good enough? Who’s reading what I write? Who cares whether I write—or don’t? Does anyone? Do you? Shakespeare nabbed it: “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.”

Loneliness. Mathematically speaking, writers = solitude. Other people, as a rule, aren’t really interested in what you’re writing or thinking about writing. And if they lend you an ear or three, you run the risk of talking too much and walking away feeling empty from the lip service. Robert Frost toyed with the danger: “Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second.”

Ideas. This one is strange. Initially you worry about not having enough of ’em. Then you discover that you have too many. You find yourself reciting J. Alfred Prufrock: “Then how should I begin / To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?”

Motivation. Melville’s Bartleby accompanies you regularly. Probably every time you’re thinking about whether to write, you hear his muffled moan: “I would prefer not to.” It’s no easy task kicking that one out of the bed. There’s almost always something else that we’d rather do. Or not. I can relate.

Time. Don’t even go there. We’re all allotted the same amount. The challenge is to stop believing that you have all the time in the world. Chalk one up to Andrew Marvell: “Had we but world enough and time.” We don’t.

Work. This one is a no-brainer. Earlier I established once and for all, with a mere utterance of Phooey, that writing is not magic. Now let me say what it is. Work. Lots of work. Lots of drudgery. Lots of pain.

Deadlines. The strangest bedfellow of all. But come on. Tell the truth. What do you do when you don’t have one? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. With a deadline—whether imposed from within or without—we always do something to meet it. Even with a deadline, you’ll often find yourself facing it head-on before you’re able to scrape something together. But guess what? Something outranks nothing.

Doubt says: Is this good enough? Does anybody care?
Deadline: Doesn’t matter. Write.

Loneliness says: Nobody gives a damn what you’re doing.
Deadline: Write.

Ideas say: There are too many of us. Where the hell do you start?
Deadline: Pick one. Write.

Motivation says: I would prefer not to.
Deadline: Cute. Write.

Time says: Tomorrow will do.
Deadline: No. It won’t.

Work says: It takes hard work.
Deadline: Work harder to make it happen. On time.

Because after all those disagreeable creatures have climbed into bed with you, Deadline finally creeps in—and—frankly, my dear, Deadline doesn’t give a damn who’s already under the covers.

Listen up and get this.

Nobody at The Wired Researcher ever said that I’d get fired if an essay didn’t appear on Monday morning. No editor standing over me. No paycheck withheld. No professor docking my grade.

I invented my own Monday deadline. Then I submitted myself to it. I still do.

Not always gracefully.

Just a few weeks ago, Friday arrived. I had lots and lots of ideas and false starts but not one single paragraph. Somehow, I just couldn’t discover my writing rhythm. Saturday morning? Faster pulse. Shallow breathing. The grandfather clock ticked louder than it had any right to. Doubt was wide awake. I struggled alone. I didn’t want to admit my fear, not even to Gary.

I’d love to tell you that inspiration struck. It didn’t. The clock did. I left the bed where I always write and put down one bad sentence in broad daylight. Then a better one. Then another. By day’s end, I had a draft. A really rough draft. But, at least, I had something that I could revise. And revise. Five. Six. Maybe seven times. I had an essay. Not the one I’d planned. But come Monday morning, I had finished “There It Stood.”

It went up on time. Nobody knew the difference. Until now.

I created an artificial constraint and then treated it as real. Over five years that imaginary line on my calendar made me write three-quarters of a million actual words.

So, if you want to write, just write.

But do yourself a favor. Let that obnoxious bastard of a Deadline hog the covers.

A Note of Mountain Gratitude

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Yesterday, my blog reached a little milestone, and I’d like to share it with you because you made it happen.

With three months still left in 2026, The Wired Researcher has logged nearly 24,034 views from 20,000 visitors this year. After all these years of Monday mornings—writing, wondering, remembering, laughing, and occasionally raising a little hell—I’m still amazed that people keep stopping by.

If you’re one of them, thank you. Truly.

Now, it’s onward and upward toward next Monday’s blog post!

Painted O’er

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History, despite its wrenching pain,
cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage,
need not be lived again.

—Maya Angelou (1928–2014), “On the Pulse of Morning”

Laughter broke the silence of the subterranean sanctuary just as Gary and I were approaching the garage elevator and saw the sign at the same time.

We couldn’t help ourselves.

The sign was anchored prominently on the wall to the right of the call button. Painted forest green, it was so glossy, even in the shadows, that it made the letters of the hotel’s former name seem more raised than they might have seemed otherwise. And the overlaid white lettering of the hotel’s new name seemed nearly an afterthought.

After our first burst of laughter, Gary and I both gasped:

“Oh. My God. Why’d they do that? Why didn’t they install brand new signage? This is just … painted o’er!”

We kept laughing as we took the elevator up to the spacious historic lobby. I recognized it at a glance. It was exactly the same as it had been when I attended meetings there a decade ago. And a year before that. And a year earlier.

We were in the midst of understated, old-world elegance. Muted olive-green velvet sofas and generous upholstered chairs gathered over richly patterned rugs, and dark-wood nested tables gave the seating areas a slightly clubby intimacy. Overhead, enormous brass chandeliers hung dramatically. The whole place felt gracious, traditional, and faintly grand—comfortable rather than showy, as though it had settled safely into its history.

Nothing had changed. Except the name.

And when it came to the parking garage, the signage hadn’t changed either. Not really. Its historic name—though painted o’er—overpowered the present.

I was still laughing quietly when we found our room and got settled in. I could not help but think about a similar scenario in Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle.”

After sleeping for twenty years, Rip returns to find the quiet village inn gone, replaced by a shabby “Union Hotel”; the old shade tree has given way to a flagpole flying the unfamiliar stars and stripes. The world he knew has become a new nation.

But then Irving undercuts the transformation.

Rip looks at the tavern sign and recognizes the same ruby face of King George beneath the alterations. The red coat has simply been changed to blue and buff; the sceptre becomes a sword; a cocked hat is added; and “General Washington” is painted on top.

Painted o’er.

Surprisingly, this whole notion of a name change and what it means—or doesn’t—packed itself up and followed me as Gary and I drove back to our Shenandoah Valley home.

I started thinking about name changes outside literary landscapes. I started thinking about name changes in the real world.

I started thinking about Shenandoah County’s Stonewall Jackson High School. In 2020, following nationwide protests over the murder of George Floyd, the Shenandoah County School Board voted to rename it Mountain View High School, removing a name associated with the Confederacy.

Four years later, a newly elected school board voted to restore the name Stonewall Jackson High School. In August 2026, a federal judge ruled that restoring the Confederate names violated federal law and ordered the School Board to replace them. The board has appealed the ruling and is seeking to keep the names in place while that appeal proceeds.

For now, Stonewall Jackson High School is Stonewall Jackson High School once again.

Painted o’er. But in reverse.

The new name hadn’t been lettered over the old one. The old name had been lettered back over the new.

And that old name carried a history of its own. During the trial, a historian testified that when the school board first chose the name Stonewall Jackson, it did so in part to discourage Black students from seeking transfers into the newly opened high school.

That wasn’t a name chosen for its ring. That was a name chosen to keep a door closed.

And then I thought again about the hotel.

I had known it for decades as the Stonewall Jackson Hotel. Now, I had slept in Hotel 24 South.

I couldn’t help but wonder about its name change. What prompted it? Would it, too, return to what it had been before? Had the hotel simply painted o’er?

I had no idea. But I knew a little research might help me decide whether I had been laughing at or laughing with.

I found the answer, and it, too, took me back to 2020.

In the weeks following the murder of George Floyd, protesters began gathering outside the Stonewall Jackson Hotel, calling for the hotel to change its name and remove the enormous rooftop sign.

On June 16, the owners announced that they would do just that. They said they wanted to respect the history of the Shenandoah Valley while honoring all of its citizens and, with a new name, embrace “a future that enhances our values of equality and inclusiveness for everyone.”

Fine words. But words are easy.

The protesters knew that. They kept coming. They wanted to see the words followed by action.

In July, signs began coming down. In August, the hotel asked Staunton’s Historic Preservation Commission for permission to remove “Stonewall Jackson” from that enormous rooftop sign—the very sign I had seen more times than I can count. On September 1, the new name was announced.

Change took place. Real change.

Hotel 24 South.

The new name intrigued me, too. It wasn’t an attempt to invent a history for the place. Quite the opposite. The hotel stands at 24 South Market Street and opened in 1924. Its new name reached backward even as the hotel’s owners said they were looking forward.

Then I discovered something else.

The enormous rooftop sign itself wasn’t original to the hotel. It had been added decades later, as downtown Staunton businesses worried that bypasses, Interstate 81, and development on the city’s outskirts would carry travelers—and their dollars—right past them.

Even Staunton’s preservation staff concluded that the sign was not historically significant to the architecture of the hotel. Old, yes. Familiar, certainly. But not an essential part of what made the building historic.

That stopped me. I had been thinking about all of this backward.

Changing the name hadn’t changed the hotel’s history. The history was still there. The building was still there. The grand lobby was still there. The olive-green sofas, the rugs, the dark wood, the enormous brass chandeliers—all of it had greeted Gary and me when we stepped off that elevator.

Stonewall Jackson was still there, too. Not on the roof. Not over the entrance. Not as the hotel’s name. But in its history.

And get this. Hotel 24 South doesn’t pretend it was never the Stonewall Jackson Hotel. Its own history still says that it was. What changed was not the past.

What changed was what the hotel chose to call itself in the present.

Maybe that was what I had missed when Gary and I stood in that parking garage laughing at that ridiculous-looking sign.

Those raised letters underneath the glossy forest-green paint suddenly looked different to me.

They weren’t necessarily evidence of something unsuccessfully hidden. Maybe they were evidence of something remembered.

There is a difference.

We cannot paint o’er the past and make it disappear. Nor should we. George III remains underneath George Washington. Stonewall Jackson remains part of the history of a grand old hotel in Staunton—and part of the history of a high school in Shenandoah County.

But remembering a name and continuing to bear it are not the same thing.

The hotel chose to remember. The school board chose to bear it again.

One lets the past show through. The other asks the past to speak for the present.

Was I laughing at that sign in the parking garage? Laughing with it? With it, I think.

Perhaps that old sign got it right after all. The old name is still there. You can see it if you look.

But over it, another name.

Painted o’er. This time, with good intent.

Close Fast the Door

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The Soul selects her own Society —
Then — shuts the Door —
To her divine Majority —
Present no more —

—Emily Dickinson.

It started to fade. All I had to do was enter the building. I left behind the exterior facade—the rough, irregular fieldstones, gray and ochre, mortared into massive walls beneath a steep roof of weathered wooden shingles. Oneness.

It started to fade. All I had to do was decide where to sit. Dark wooden pews, all stark straightness—high backs, hard edges, rigid parallel lines running wall to wall. Oneness.

It started to fade. All I had to do was look upward. The towering dark-wood pulpit climbed nearly to the ceiling, its massive paneled back crowned by a broad sounding board suspended overhead. Oneness.

It started to fade. All I had to do was listen. The voices—mine, Gary’s beside me, the priest’s and choir’s in front, the congregation all around—rose higher and higher, louder and louder, fell lower and lower, softer and softer, in sweet, sweet harmony. Amazing Grace. We Are Not Alone. A Mighty Fortress. Oneness.

It all started to fade. All I had to do was breathe. The present. All the artifacts of worship surrounding me. It all faded into the moment. The present became the past and the past stood still in the present and ricocheted into the fullness of forever. Oneness.

Oneness ended. Abruptly.

A low mechanical rumble sounded somewhere beyond the open doors, distant at first, then nearer, swelling until the engine suddenly revved—an explosive, throaty roar that flooded through all three doors and filled the chapel.

A motorcycle.

Oneness. Broken.

Suddenly, all the component parts returned. Voices. Pulpit. Priest. Choir. Pews. Congregation. Me. Gary. Stones—the very eighteenth-century stones the farmers dragged to build Old Chapel. Preserved. Keen awareness erased the fade. Oneness shattered into parts.

In that instant, I realized my loss. Oneness was gone through no one’s fault. The motorcyclist was on their own journey. Old Chapel—faithful to its past with no electricity—could not have closed its doors this hot and humid Sunday morn. But I also realized my gain. The insight came without sermon. Whenever we hope to step into moments of cherished Oneness, we need to close fast the doors of our attention to all that might intrude and steal away the prize.

Close fast the door of our attention so that we are completely present with someone we love. Listen to the story we’ve heard before as though it’s being told for the first time. Or better still, as if it’s being told for the last time. Notice the face across the table, as if we’ve never seen it before. Or better still, as if we’ll never see it again. Sit beside someone without needing anything else to happen. Or better still, as if nothing will ever happen again.

Close fast the door of our attention so that we become fully aware that beauty is transient and ever changing. We’ve seen autumn for years immemorial, but we’ve never seen its September glory through today’s eyes. We’ve seen hibiscus blossom, but we’ve never seen its yellow petals flaring from a crimson heart through today’s eyes. We’ve seen sunlight all our lives, but we’ve never seen this shaft of afternoon light spilling across the polished wood of a grand piano through today’s eyes.

Close fast the door of our attention so that we can know ourselves. We’ve known ourselves for a lifetime, but what do we make of the gray in the mirror, the roads already walked? We’re with ourselves today, right now, but what do we make of these hands on the wheel, this breath in this chest? We’ll be with ourselves tomorrow and the day after and the day after that, but what will we make of the road unwalked? The hands unfolded? The breath unbreathed?

Close fast the doors of our attention and let the world within and the world without fade into Oneness.

Alexander Gordon Goes to Class

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For more than 270 years, Alexander Gordon’s The Humourist sat largely unread in the pages of the South-Carolina Gazette.

I recovered the essays. I identified their author. I published the definitive edition.

But from the beginning, I have wanted something more.

I want Gordon in the classroom.

So today I’m releasing a free classroom teaching packet featuring two complete essays from The Humourist, with historical and literary context, discussion questions, assignment possibilities, explanatory notes, and complete citation information.

Even better, the essays are designed to slip readily into courses instructors are already teaching.

One pairs Gordon with Anne Bradstreet’s “The Prologue.”

The other pairs him with Benjamin Franklin’s Silence Dogood.

No new unit required. No syllabus overhaul.

Use them tomorrow.

Explore the Free Classroom Resource →

Gordon waited more than 270 years.

Now, he’s going to class.

There It Stood

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“Past, present, future, all appeared
In harmony united…” (“Yarrow Revisited”)

—William Wordsworth (1770–1850). English Romantic poet who saw profound meaning in ordinary life, memory, nature, and place.

There it stood, heavy with decades of growth. Ten feet or so tall, even when arching gracefully under its own weight. Five feet or so wide, triumphant on the forest edge. Fargesia Jiuzhaigou. A shade-loving, cold-hardy bamboo that could manage ten below zero.

There it stood, sentinel over the koi—swimming the depths of the little pond—whose mirror-surface broke over and over again as water cascaded down the fall’s mossy stones.

There it stood, softening the massive sandstone rocks that gave the waterfall its heft and that teased the dwarfed hand-hewn, lattice-windowed granite lantern at the top.

There it stood, blocking the view from where we sometimes sat on the little patio facing the pond and everything that stood beyond where it stood on the other side.

There it stood, hugging the flagstone pathway beside it, and bringing into question the path itself and any destiny to which it might lead.

It had not always stood thus.

I remember when it arrived, black-bucketed, six scrawny canes spanning six inches.

I remember when I troweled out a hole beside the koi pond and planted it in the hope that over time its greenness would tower and soften the stone-edged waterfall, the bank down from the forest floor, and even the pathway leading to uncertainty.

I remember when it stood there, dwarfed by Quan Yin—the goddess of compassion, mercy, healing, and peace—standing tall on the ledge jutting over the water’s edge.

I remember when it stood there, intimidated by the jade chīshǒu—a Chinese dragon-head–spouting its melody against the pond’s splashings.

I remember it through all the seasons, through all the glorious and trembling growth spurts and even through all my timid prunings.

And I remember it exactly as it stood on the morning of the very day I came to know it could stand there no more.

“Gary, it’s got to go.”

“What?”

“The bamboo standing there.”

He looked at it, then at me, understandably as reluctant to nod agreement as I was hesitant to undo what had been there for so long.

Gary and I both knew what stood beyond the bamboo and beyond the pathway whose inward curve lay hidden by the outward arching clump.

He and I had spent weeks landscaping all that was unseen on the other side of the bamboo. We extended the dry-stacked rock wall. We pruned the rhododendrons. We mulched the sloping bank beneath and the ground behind, curving the edge and weedwhacking all the way to the woods behind.

We knew exactly how all those changes looked–once we walked our way past the bamboo. And we loved its open spaciousness.

But sitting there on the little patio by the koi pond where we sometimes sat, the bamboo seemed to wrap us—cocoon us—in the protective cloak of a well-established past.

What would it feel like, sitting there without the bamboo?

What would it look like sitting there, without the bamboo but with all that lay behind it and beyond it, exposed and in full view?

“Maybe just prune it back a little?”

“I don’t know. I’ll see once I get started.”

My mind was made up, I thought, and early morning proved it. I set about the task with fierce resolve. Before long, my legs could not be seen beneath the cut canes that surrounded me.

Each time I carried a load to the Gladiator, the bamboo lowered itself closer and closer to the ground. Lower. Less. Nothing.

And in the moment of my final return to where it once stood, the landscape opened before me alive with unexpected potential.

I could see the first stone wall I built there, toppled in part from time and winter’s heavings but still secure in its footing.

I could see the pond’s block foundation stretched over with liner.

I could see tubing snaking its way up out of the pond, up the bank, behind boulders, and into the base of the waterfall.

I could see all the inner workings of a past that had served well but that had, at the same time, outgrown the landscape it was built to enhance.

I could see what needed to be done.

I kept what remained strong. The footing. The block foundation. The boulders too massive to yield to whim. I pulled away what had failed, reset what had shifted, and rebuilt the old wall stone by stone.

The work moved quickly now. Four long slabs of flagstone reached out over the pond, parallel to one another but each at its own height. The exposed tubing disappeared behind stone. Two copper cranes stepped onto the lower ledges. Quan Yin and the granite lantern, no longer dwarfed, took their places in the open landscape.

Then the water ran again. It slipped over mossy stones, fell into the pond, and broke the mirror surface just as it always had. The waterfall was not new, but now I could see its sound.

More than that, I could see where a rich and aged past met a shiny and reimagined present.

I was confident that time’s inevitable patina would marry both.

Standing near where the bamboo once stood, Gary and I could see through the garden now, through it all. All the way through. Clearly.

There it stood.

Always an After

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No “after” has ever failed to come.
—Brent L. Kendrick

And did they know that darkness would fall upon the land and that stars and moon would shine and day would break come morrow?

And did they know that day would become darkness again?

And did they know that clouds would one day cover the sun and rain would fall and the sun would shine again?

And did they know cold and drawing together for warmth?

And did they know hunger, that first emptiness within?

And did they know the first fullness that followed?

And did they know thirst and the sweetness of water?

And did they know weariness and sleep and waking?

And did they know pain?

And did they know fear?

And did they know safety?

And did they know loneliness before they moaned its name?

And did they know the comfort of another body near?

And did they know the wonder of touch?

And did they know desire before they knew what it wanted?

And did they know the heat of flesh against flesh, the urgency of bodies discovering what bodies could do?

And did they know afterward the quiet of lying together?

And did they know love?

And did they know that love would make one human being need another?

And did they know anger and the turning away?

And did they know the silence between them?

And did they know the reaching back?

And did they know laughter?

And did they know tears?

And did they know joy?

And did they know sorrow?

And did they know the swelling of a belly and the waiting?

And did they know the first cry of new life?

And did they know the astonishment of seeing themselves somehow continued in another?

And did they know youth?

And did they know age?

And did they know health and illness and the watching through the long night?

And did they know that sometimes morning would bring healing?

And did they know that sometimes it would not?

And did they know death?

That first stillness.

That first body that would not awaken.

That first calling of a name that brought no answer.

And did they know what to do with the body?

And did they know what to do with themselves?

And did they know that darkness would fall upon the land that night just as it had fallen before?

And did they know that stars and moon would shine?

And did they know that day would break come morrow?

And did they awaken hungry?

And did they eat?

And did they walk again upon the earth?

And did they ever believe–even once–in all their knowings, that there would always be an after.