Refuge on the Parkway

It was a warm winter, full of rain in place of snow and bulbs bursting forth too early. Down in town, it felt more like a flowerless spring than a mountain winter.

The Blue Ridge Parkway, as always, offered an escape. 

On the particular Sunday in early February when my 11-year-old sidekick and I ventured up the mountain, temperatures in Waynesville, North Carolina, were predicted to climb into the 60s. Winter was the last thing on our minds. And yet, on this absurdly non-winterlike afternoon, winter is just what we found. 

We arrived at our destination trailhead above Maggie Valley to find the entire mountainside covered in snow. Well, “covered” is perhaps an exaggeration. It was more like a generous sprinkle, the patchy remnants of a recent deposit just barely covering about three-quarters of the ground on the more protected slopes and completely absent from any area that was the least bit open or grassy. 

Still, it was snow, and we were both excited—there had been so little of the white stuff that winter. We made snowballs and mini snowmen. We took selfies. We laughed at the dog as she chased the snowballs we threw and then stopped, confused, when they disintegrated upon contact with the ground. It was a good day. 

I had no way of knowing that, less than two months later, the Parkway would offer a different kind of refuge in a world that had changed more drastically than I could have ever believed possible on that sunny day in February. 

As we all know way too well by now, at the same time that Emily and I were throwing snowballs on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, the novel coronavirus was beginning its silent conquest of global society. The day after we discovered the snow above Maggie, President Donald Trump declared a public health emergency in the U.S., which the next month was upgraded to a national emergency amid a global pandemic. 

At the time, I was engaged to be married with plans for a big reception following the ceremony scheduled for April, but as the pandemic unfolded, it became clear that the plan would have to change. We canceled our reservations, uninvited all of our guests, and spun our wheels for a while trying to figure out what to do. The governor imposed a gathering limit of 100, then 50. A stay-at-home order was announced, “nonessential” businesses like bars and restaurants ordered closed. My home county of Haywood enacted a 10-person gathering limit and prohibited lodging services from welcoming guests. Some kind of state-line border closure seemed a real possibility. 

We moved the date up two weeks, winnowed the guest list down to parents, siblings and their significant others, and set about figuring out where to have the ceremony. It was more than a bit surreal, driving around the county with my fiancé and making pit stops at all these places we’d remembered as quiet and pretty, now considering them in a whole new light. Was the ground too soft for high heels? How would the landscape look as a photo backdrop? Was there enough cover approaching the “aisle” to preserve that groom-sees-bride moment? 

Leave it to our photographer (and good friend) Taylor to suggest the perfect spot, supplied—of course—by the Blue Ridge Parkway. From the Roy Taylor Overlook in Haywood County, a short paved path passes through a grove of trees emitting sharp, piney scents before giving way to a boardwalk that juts out over the edge of the mountain, granting a sweeping view of the valley below. The boardwalk consists of a narrow walkway and a box at the end, with benches along the back and sides. 

It seemed made for us. 

A week later, we returned, but this time traveling separately and dressed much differently—he in a suit, me in a white dress. 

Back in February, I’d marveled at how the magic of snowfall had managed to hold on along the Parkway even as things remained out of sync and out of season down below. Now, on this Saturday at the end of March, I promised forever to my new husband and gave thanks that, even as the world of humans seemed locked in a downward spiral of insanity, on the Parkway, at least, beauty could still be commonplace and stories could still have happy endings.