Almost Heaven

Hand Selected

Knocking off another state in the quest to see all fifty, I enjoy the views of the West Virginia slopes as I gently sway through the roads over the Labor Day weekend.  Unlike the jagged rocks of the western states, the ancient Appalachian Mountains curve gently over one another, all covered with trees and growth and greenery.  The sun casts down through the leaves, but with the road so close to the narrow valleys, the mountains often block the direct sunlight.

I depart Pennsylvania and scoot through the oddly shaped tip of Maryland, cruising into the cozy hillsides of my destination.  And after peaking over a mountain top, I find myself in the footsteps of a giant wind turbine.  I love these guys (see “Breathing Windmills” from December 2011), so I pull over to take in its enormity and its clever ability to hide behind a mountain.  The tranquil sound of the rhythmic, powerful mechanism touches me, inspires me, and as I glance up toward the sky, blows me away.  When I finally pull my gaze away from the window, I reach down at my side, pick up my iPod and scroll to the last few songs to find “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”  Of course I plan ahead to have this song at hand, but I had no knowledge that I would find such technology on these country roads.    When I pull away continuing down the winding pavement playing the song to fit my surroundings, I think life isn’t so old here.

An Added Bonus

Practically, I rent vehicles in conjunction with the duration and complexity of my expedition, and this single overnight excursion certainly doesn’t merit a high-end vehicle.  But when I pick up my little blue mobile, I delightedly discover the economy car has an extra bonus: a sun roof ideal for the bright, sunlit, weekend drive.  When I leave Pittsburg, I make a point to have the ceiling window open and the midday sun streaming through the car’s roof.  The only previous time I enjoyed a similar perk, a sporty convertible upgrade, I drove it for two days in the Maryland rain and never enjoyed the sunshine on my shoulders.

Back in the car and weaving between the hills, the sun roof loses my affection.  The homes of West Virginia, nearly at the road’s edge due to the deep slopes immediately behind them, dart in and out of my line of vision as the bright sunlight alternately streams in the sunroof and then hides behind the mountain sides.  I squint and lower my sunglasses, then less than a mile later, raise them back into my hair as the sun ducks behind a mountain.  Additionally, the trees blink and flash the sunlight through the sunroof so I finally decide to turn off the natural strobe light and close the extra window to the sky.  If West Virginia is almost heaven, I’ll need to get better sunglasses before judgment day.

Breathing Windmills

Blowing through Texas

No one prefers the middle seat on the airplane.  Most adults will tell you their preferred seats are the aisle options.  When traveling with kids, grownups put the little ones in the middle seat between two adults, but if given their choice, most kids want the window seat.  Most kids and I.  Looking out the airplane window resembles life-sized Google Earth, and I pride myself on my ability to insert my own mental markers for waterways and highways, dams and deserts, and large landmarks, dozens upon which I have gazed from ground level.

On the dusty fields of Texas, windmills silently perch above the valleys getting the privilege of facing and enjoying an expansive view of the sunset.  While driving US Highway 62, the slender white pillars appear small, peaking high above the eastern horizon.  These massive industrial turbines thrive on the powerful, hot winds off the Guadalupe Mountains and give back their energy to the communities over which they stand watch.  As stately and statuesque as the sentinels appear in the distance, my point of view from seat 12F altered my perspective on their height.  They remind me of strategically positioned pinwheels across the brown landscape, playing in the breeze and tickling the sky while the pumping Texas oil wells drill and scratch against the earth’s belly.

Charging Against Windmills

Wind drives across the continent, howls over its western mountain tops and up the open Plains through Tornado Alley.  Yet in the peaceful, gentle autumn of Connecticut pre-fab signs banged into yard after neighborhood after subdivision rallied against wind power and its toxic influence on its environment.  As I passed these twelve-by-fifteen individual protests, less than three months after the Deep Water Horizon spill thrust its watery environment into a streaming webcam of streaming oil, I imagined those guards along the Lone Star rims sagging in sadness at the objections planted against them.

Just a month prior I sneaked around a curving corner of the smooth Appalachians and surprised myself when peeking out from the top of the hillside, visible out the rental moon roof, stood a white industrial turbine.  Unlike their ten-gallon cousins, the West Virginia windmills, while equal in height, dotted the occasional dulled mountain peaks, rather than an energy-generating army lined up militarily along a ridge.

Lulled in by their individualism, I pulled up next to one, gazed up through the automotive skylight and watched its gentle, slow rotation.  Turning off the engine, I stepped out of the car, stretching my legs in protest against the drive from Pennsylvania (and the jaunt across northwest Maryland).  The full height of my arms reaching above my head still minimalized me against the coal-free energy giant.  With each rotation, the immense blades pushed the air with a soft, deep woosh, woosh, woosh that breathed life into the simple structure, and into the world around it.  And more than a year later from thirty-thousand feet as I gaze at the line of playful pinwheels, I imagine their gentle inhaling and exhaling across the dry, drifting Texas landscape.