The Blue Ridge Parkway:

A Mountain Solilioquy

Part IV of

Sonic Highways: Musical Immersion on the Roads of America

**It's Blue Ridge Parkway Week at Stage Traveler! Along with the following post, I will posting special videos, images, and other goodies related to my favorite local/national byway! Stay tuned to our Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and of course right here on the site to catch all the sights and sounds. LezzzGo!

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Please keep in mind I wrote the following essay in 2013. So if some things seem dated or timelines are wacky, that's why. I tried to add footnotes so it made sense ... but I'm only one man; I can only do so much!

I think it’s safe to say I caught the travel bug from my father.

He has always been a man with an incontrovertible taste for adventure, and as a parent he felt it both necessary and rewarding to share such urges with his children. When my parents were still together we would take the more standard kinds of trips many families would take (Disney World, summer cottages in Maine, trips to Grandma’s, etc.), though when their marriage dissolved it felt somewhat odd taking separate annual trips with each of our parents. For many years these yearly journeys didn’t differ much from the kinds of vacations we once took as a family, though as my sister and I got older, and since my father is a man of considerable means, the trips we took with my father started to get more and more fantastical.

The first big trip my sister and I took with our father alone was a two-week long odyssey through much of the American west back in 1997. In the past, we rarely took road trips as a family, unless it was the six plus hours to drive to Maine or Nova Scotia, or our yearly trips to New Jersey for Christmas, which at just over three hours, hardly counted as a road trip. This was our first several-stop road trip, as we toured through New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah and Wyoming in a 1995 Red GMC Jimmy, hitting all of the major state and national parks as well as some lesser-known gems hidden throughout. This was supposed to be mostly a camping trip, though my young age and inherent fear of bears and mountain lions mixed with a few unfortunate weather incidents forced us to find alternate lodging on more than one occasion (I developed a somewhat unhinged obsession with Best Westerns on this particular trip). The nights we did camp out, however, remain the most vivid in my memory, as we snuggled up in the tent and night and my sister and I would drift off to sleep, listening to my father read The Hobbit out-loud, watching the silhouettes of night bugs bounce across the nylon ceiling of our tent.

That trip really changed me. It’s perhaps when the fever for travel was awakened inside me, as I really felt it for the first time that summer. It was so much different than staying at a Caribbean resort for several days or shacking up on the New England coast for a couple of carefree, board game filled weeks. On those occasions we would take day trips, sure; but nothing was quite like that experience of going to different places each day, not knowing what to expect when we got there, or what we’d see on the way—which was my favorite part: the actual physical journey from place to place.

In the many years since then, my father, my sister and I have taken several such trips. A few years ago we took a trip through California, hitting Death Valley, Sequoia, Yosemite, Point Reyes, Big Sur, and San Francisco over a couple of weeks, and before that we’ve been to Italy and England and did the same kind of spot-hopping. Perhaps one of the most memorable times we did a long road trip was back in 2001, when the three of us drove my grandmother’s car up to Connecticut from Florida for the summer. That year we stopped in Savannah, GA (where we almost got caught in a tornado); Asheville, NC; The Homestead Resort in Lexington, Virginia, and Gettysburg. Perhaps the most memorable part of that trip, for me at least—besides the tornado, and my insatiable appetite for Taco Bell—was the part between Asheville and The Homestead, when I got my first taste of the breathtaking beauty enraptured within the fabled Blue Ridge Parkway.

The Blue Ridge Parkway is heralded as one of the most beautiful scenic byways that our fair country contains within its humble borders. It carves a concise, winding path southwestward from north-central Virginia all the way to its endpoint at Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Western North Carolina. The parkway – whose total length measures just under 470 miles – was built as a part of FDR’s Works Progress Administration, a vital part of the New Deal in which several thousand infrastructure jobs were created to bounce back from the Great Depression (similar projects include other scenic byways such as Connecticut’s Merritt Parkway which slithers through southwestern Connecticut from just south of the capitol of Hartford to the New York state border). The ever-winding roadway meanders through perhaps the most beautiful and scenic parts of the lower Appalachians, carving a snaking path through much of southern Virginia and western North Carolina as it trickles silently through the melancholy wilderness.

On this particular trip, we only were able to barely sample the roadway’s inherent beauty, as my father has somewhat of an obsession for timing and did not want to arrive late to the Homestead, our destination, which is a sleepy location nestled in the mountains northwest of the junction of Interstates 81 and 64. From Asheville we were able to take a small detour from the monotony of the efficient tediousness of the Interstate system to check out some nature along our way to Virginia.

I was immediately enchanted by the roadway’s beauty as we climbed the steep onramp from Tunnel Road up onto the byway. It’s a pretty drastic change to go from any road up to the Parkway, as the surrounding sidewalks and strip malls fade into earthy greens and browns in the summer, or explode into a smeared palette of oranges and yellows and reds in the autumn, in which the parkway reveals its truest majesty. It being the summer on this occasion, we were treated to the former, the branches of the trees above weaving an elaborate emerald canopy, shadowing the meandering pavement, punctuated by dramatic bursts of light that cascaded down from the heavens. As we traversed the swaying path, I noticed we were climbing in elevation, as the sleepy towns that peppered the landscape below—visible only from the stretches of ridgeway that sporadically occurred between canopies—began to shrink and dwindle, until they looked like drops of white or black paint on a vast canvas of green. The air began to cool as well, and as the crown of leaves thinned out as we ascended, the azure sky seeped in, bathing the surrounding woodland in dazzling light.

This sort of thing happens frequently throughout the course of the Parkway, as it swirls both up and down the slopes of lower Appalachia, offering breathtaking vistas and a glimpse into upper mountain wildlife. In the autumn, the transition between the full, vibrant deciduous forests to bare trunks and jade-adorned conifers is a remarkable one, as most of the trees on the upper roadways have already lost their leaves due to the higher altitude and chillier temperatures. However, this loss of vivid color is not necessarily representative of any loss of beauty, as the lack of these leaves allows for plunging panoramas into the deep wilderness around you, and endless sea of moist earth and towering trees clawing at the sky above.

I have only experienced the parkway in autumn on two occasions, the most recent being this past fall¹, when two friends and I drove up from New Orleans to attend an annual music festival held in Asheville called Moogfest. Moogfest was named for Robert Moog, electronic music pioneer and inventor of the portable synthesizer. Moog Music, which found its new home and headquarters in Asheville not too long ago, was originally started in the 1960s when Moog was building theremins in New York. He was approached by a musici scientist to help construct a modulator that could create sound using the manipulation of electronic feedback waves. Long story short, the synthesizer was born. Moog is responsible for the popularization of the synthesizer, which was condensed from a towering, one-ton machine into something much more manageable, resembling something more like a keyboard with a switchboard attached to it. Nowadays, synthesizers come in all shapes and sizes, and Moog is still the most popular brand. All of their products are hand-made and rigourously tested at the facility, located just north of downtown.²

¹'This past fall' meaning Fall 2012. Not whatever fall is previous to the whatever time this is being read. Unless you can time travel...

²Go visit Moog if you can. Not only can you tour the factory for free (tours daily Mon-Fri at 10AM and 3:30PM) – which is fun and super-informative – but they have a killer shop too, where you can buy gifts, souvenirs, records, instruments, PLUS you can play all the synthesizers they currently offer, AND the staff will give you a crash course if you need one!

Anyway, we got to Asheville the night before the festival began, so we had all the next day to explore the city and its surrounding natural beauty before the festival began that night. One of my friends had previously experienced the BRP on a number of occasions, yet the other had never seen it, so we decided to take a long leisurely drive up to Mt. Mitchell, one of the more stated peaks along the road. At the end of October, the parkway is alive with color, melting together vivacious oranges and yellows with lingering greens that paint the roadside forests with dazzling beauty.

Our album of choice for the drive was Tame Impala’s recently released sophomore LP Lonerism, a psychedelically charged masterpiece employing heavy bass and brightly reverberated guitar and synths. Tame Impala is the project of Australian musician Kevin Parker, who composes most of the band’s music and fronts the band with his very Lennon-esque vocal stylings. All in all, the album is perfect for such a drive, as the dreamy melodies, relaxed tempos and spectral instrumentation mimic the colorful landscape and swooping nature of the twisting road. Parker’s echoing vocals play along the bounding landscape like a siren song of the mountains, seeming to bounce effortlessly amongst the trees, sliding through the branches and the dwindling sunlight³. Our collective appreciation of both the natural surrounding and the music itself propelled my little grey Ford Focus through a trance-like odyssey through the mountain forest, autumn winds licking at our faces as we held our arms out of the window in a futile attempt to grasp the perfectness of the moment.

³Their 2015 album Currents is also fantastic for this setting (or any setting really, it's a phenomenal piece of music).

It’s always wonderful to share such moments with others, to experience a communal state of bliss with friends or kin, so that it may be reflected upon in future encounters, in which we can all share our individual experiences while finding common ground in certain moments. It is one of my most favorite things about music in general, because everyone has a different relationship with it, yet we can often find common ground on which to stand and find a shared sense of appreciation. Since we all listen to different kinds of music, it can be difficult sometimes to really find such a moment as I have just described with my two friends, yet music plays a very important role in my relationships with my friends. Pretty much all of my friends are music geeks like me, so it really does bring us together, adding to the magic of it all. There are moments, however, in which I relish the opportunity to find my own bliss in music—and in nature—and such opportunities often hold the same amount of significance for me, if not more.

Such an experience happened on this very same road, two years before the Moogfest trip; the only other time I have been on the Blue Ridge Parkway in autumn. My mission: to see Sufjan Stevens in concert on his latest tour, on which he is promoting his latest album, the incomparable The Age of Adz. Yes, I traveled the entire eleven hours through six states to see him. I know this may sound a bit extreme; driving such a formidable distance just to see one concert, so let me defend myself, three-fold:

First of all, it allowed me to see my friend Jamie, who lives in Columbia, South Carolina, a friend who I normally only get to see on holidays in Connecticut, despite his relative proximity to my current city of residence⁴, so that was a plus. Second, I was planning on seeing Mr. Stevens in Atlanta the night before he played in Asheville; unfortunately, the show sold-out so I had no other option other than driving the extra mile (or extra 300 miles, I should say) to see him, since many artists seem to be neglecting New Orleans as a legitimate concert venue these days. The third and final reason was that I was given the rare and privileged opportunity of driving through the breathtakingly picturesque landscape that surrounds the little mountain paradise of Asheville.

⁴ I lived in New Orleans then, I live in Asheville now, which is much closer to Columbia. But he lives in Massachusetts now. Boo.

Unfortunately, as I left New Orleans on my journey to North Carolina, I realized the unthinkable had happened: my iPod had suffered an irreparable demise.

This may not seem as such a big deal to those of you who are used to driving eleven hours without the liberty to choose one's own music (if you are out there...anybody?). My first stop was Columbia, a daunting eleven-hour journey through perhaps some of the most visually unimpressive scenery in the country, and thus I was forced to listen to the radio (thankfully, it was satellite radio, so I got to listen to a plethora of tailor-made, commercial-free stations, so that was a plus).

By the time I was halfway between Columbia and Asheville the next day, I had made up my mind. No longer would I willingly suffer at the mercy of the random selection of songs provided by various radio DJs. It was time to take some action. Since my iPod was out of commission, I was faced with the harsh reality of making ... wait for it ... mix CDs (*cringe*) .

"What started as a simple playlist that would carry me through the mountains to my friend's house in Atlanta on my way back evolved into a three-disc magnum opus of my creation."

At least blank CDs are a lot cheaper than I remember. I was definitely thankful for this realization. I decided the most productive thing to do between my arrival and the show (besides watching some preachy Hilary Swank movie on MTV or getting drunk at a bar) was to make some mix CDs for my ride back. So that's what I did...except I went a little further than I expected I would.

What started as a simple playlist that would carry me through the mountains to my friend's house in Atlanta on my way back evolved into a three-disc magnum opus of my creation. The playlist that follows at the end of this piece is an evolved form of that mix. Since only part of my journey was to take me along the Blue Ridge Parkway, I had to imagine how it would play out if the whole journey were to take place on that road, at different times of day, as if I were to drive the entirety of the road from dawn till dusk. I wanted to capture different times of day and thus different reactions within each disc, as each disc reflects a certain attitude that I have felt personally at different parts of the day. I chose each track due to the effect it has on the natural environment that would surround me at this certain time of day. Though I felt all the tracks speak to me on the natural level, I felt it was appropriate to group these tracks as to what emotions they bring out and what time of day they can be tethered to.

I left early in the evening to test out the first part of the playlist on the BRP, one that I liked to call “Mountain Twilight.” As the sun began to set, the sky turned a sort of orange haze of blue and began to fade, and I felt comforted. I felt a strange sense of welcoming as the light dwindled and the trees became less pronounced. I seemed to accept the approaching night with deep, reassuring harmonies from Fleet Foxes and Grizzly Bear, yet invigorated myself and brought the dusk to life with vibrant, percussive pieces by Animal Collective and Here We Go Magic. As soon as I hit the Interstate, the disc hadn’t finished, and I felt a melancholy that I was leaving something magical behind, and almost turned around just to finish the playlist. With a heavy heart, I trudged on through the night to the distant glow of Atlanta.

A few months ago⁵, I returned to Asheville and the Blue Ridge Parkway as a kind of personal odyssey. I wanted to experience it once more, on my own, because the only time I had ever done so was after that concert a few years back. I took three more drives: once again at sunset, once in the early morning hours, and once in the vivid daylight of the afternoon. It was almost summertime, so the sparseness of green leaves happened much more quickly as I climbed than before. This trip was unlike any other. I felt empowered.

⁵ No, not really a few months ago; a few months ago in 2013. A few months ago is about the time that I moved here. In 2018. I'm trying you guys. Is this too much? I'll stop.

I had altered my playlists to reflect my current tastes, almost subconsciously, and I don’t know if it was the sort of randomness that I had employed in updating these lists, or if it was because I knew I had more time, or if it was because I was alone and had an established connection with this road, but there was a moment when I actually wept. I was returning from my twilight drive, a few miles before the exit that would take me back to my hotel, and Orbital’s “Halcyon + On + On” came on. The air was silky blue, and there were headlights starting to pop up in front of and behind me, and the song’s lengthy, sighing intro brought me back down from the mountains back towards civilization, before bursting into an incredible symphony of breathy vocals and deceivingly soft yet powerful percussion. The wind hit my face with a burst of warmth, smelling of dew and pine, and the tears began to fall.

I’ll never be able to articulate into words what I felt in my head, in my heart, in my gut that made me cry. Maybe I’m just a big sap, but the mountain road seemed to cradle me, rocking me back and forth, and as the trees parted, I looked through misty eyes at the moon, and just as I was about to pull off onto the main drag once more, I could have sworn it winked at me.