Monday, September 25
Along the Blue Ridge Parkway…
I spent the past weekend near Providence, North Carolina. I was speaking at a retreat for the campus ministries of North Carolina.
The theme of the retreat, believe it or not, was ‘Standing on the Desk’, (so I now have a t-shirt with my blog’s name on it). It was a great time with the students and campus ministers.
The route I drove, about 325 miles, took me up through Virginia and then down into North Carolina. On my way home, as I have a tendency to do, I ventured off of Mapquest’s recommended route and somewhere near the town of Meadows of Dan, VA, I got on the Blue Ridge Parkway.
What a great stretch of road...Driving through valleys and up and down mountains, with very few people on the road, and a few trees showing the first colors of fall.
The best part, the part that caused me to laugh out loud for about 30 minutes, was the radio stations I kept picking up. Even though I didn’t change the radio dial, the stations would go in and out depending on which way the road turned.
I considered myself fortunate to pick up Prairie Home Companion (oh, to tell a story like Garrison Keillor), but right in the middle of one of their characteristic radio dramas, the station would cut to worship song by Caedmon’s Call, and then back to Prairie Home, and then, around another corner, to NASCAR racing and the Dover 400 (I’ve never quite understood the phenomenon of listening to auto racing on the radio. I just find it difficult to listen to 3 hours of multi-colored racecars turning left)...then to a David Crowder song, then down in a valley and it was back to Prairie Home and someone playing the Minnesota Street Rag on the piano. It kept going like this for almost a half an hour. It was crazy funny...NASCAR fans, Crowder, & Keillor altogether...now that's a party I'd like to attend.
It felt as though, when I turned off the main highway, that I drove into an episode of the Twilight Zone, one of the funny & quirky ones.
It felt good to my soul.
Mark Nelson at 3:19 PM 0comments