We went to visit Graveyard Fields on the Blue Ridge Parkway last week.
The map at the entrance shows a loop with the first site to enjoy being some falls, at 0.2 miles downhill from where we start. The stairs lead down to a paved path, which also goes down at a steady pitch. It didn't take us very long to walk down a fifth of a mile, and before reaching the second and third sets of stairs, we heard the water gurgling over rocks. I wouldn't call it a falls, but a cascade, actually.
Of course going back up was quite a task, and I huffed and puffed and stopped to rest as much as I needed to. Helen was keeping pace with me, and she's (ahem) 3 years older than I am, and in better shape.
Some young boys were actually going into the water off down the river a ways.
I did walk out on that spit of rock to do a small ritual, the one where you throw a rock into running water and give away anything that is no longer of use to yourself. It's similar to the Jewish cleansing gesture to give away sins. As a Pagan, I don't believe in sins, but certainly have a lot of things that I accumulate to carry around psychologically.
It was easy enough to get to my rock by crossing the bridge and going down those steps.
From the bridge, I loved seeing the water flow and the colors of rocks it had carved through many years. I have more photos of the water and rocks to share another post.
We both noticed the little white area of water through a hole in the rocks in the distance to the right. There the water was perfectly still and white. But we didn't go any further along the path, which loops around behind the trees to the left. Maybe next time...
A young woman volunteered to take our picture, so we posed...but it's a bit hard to see our smiles! I'm on the left, and Helen is on the right.
It was great to get back to the top and finally get to the car, and we wished we had brought water bottles. But we didn't, and thus just rode home along the parkway and managed to keep on talking. Remember we wore masks in the car as well as hiking!
