i see a cold front rising

[jazzfish]

Clear blue sky this morning, right up until I passed under the bridge to Tysons. At that point I could see the purple-grey cold front lined up like a mountain range.

It made me homesick.

I joke that the only things I miss about Blacksburg are Zeppoli's, Long Shop, and Spiel. Really, what I miss are the mountains, in ways I can't describe because I only consciously miss them when I'm someplace where they are. It's not even like something I'm missing, it's just a blind spot. My brain skips over it and there's just this nagging sense that the horizon really oughtn't be that low.

Ice tonight, and snow tomorrow. It's good to have a winter again.

Comments

[thanate.livejournal.com]

I feel the same way about trees. My father's parents used to live in west Texas, where there was very little but desert scrub and a ring of mountains, and all the buildings were single story. Looking out their back window, I was always reminded of the beginning of The Blue Sword where Harry keeps thinking of running screaming towards the mountains. It would have taken all day to walk that far, if not more, with all the invisible bits of barbed wire fence and people's fields of various livestock in the way, but looking out that big picture window it looked like the mountains were just a brisk walk away because there was no way of measuring the distance.

[jazzfish]

Driving to Origins every year there's always a moment when we come down out of the mountains and are surrounded by. . . corn, as far as the eye can see. Corn and horizon and the interstate just going on and on and on.

It's creepy. Things should not be so far away and still visible!

---

So a guy robbed a bank in Texas once, and not being real good at planning ahead he just ran straight out of town on foot, no horse or anything.

A couple of days later the bank president called the sheriff. "Aren't you going to hurry up and catch that guy before he gets away?" he asked.

"What for?" the sheriff asked. "I can still see him running."

(I didn't say it was a /good/ joke.)

[rbandrews]

When we went to New Mexico after christmas, we stayed in Roswell, which is a tiny town in the desert. We went for a day to Ruidoso, a little mountainous skiing place, and driving there, we could see the mountain range we were heading to on the horizon as soon as we left, nothing between us and it but flat desert.

We also passed a bus going to El Paso, headed west. At first I was like "wrong way, desert bus" but then I realized, we had gotten just west of the panhandle and turned north, Big Bend and such was still west of us.

We drove twelve hours and were still in Texas' bounding box.

[jazzfish]

That is officially Too Much Space. Yeesh.

[rbandrews]

Yeah, it was a week of being immersed in the meaning of the word "wide". I've never gone that far west before, I'd never seen a desert, but I grew up with the mad-scientist-in-the-desert thing. It was a lot of fun.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

Actually, I find the surreality of Alpine, where my grandparents were, enhanced by the fact that the scrub is just tall enough en masse that people, pastures, and even the drab-roofed houses disappear in it.

But yes, that. I have a great deal of sympathy for the prairie homesteaders who started keeping canaries as a sanity-retention measure. (the idea being that one goes from eastern city to middle-of-nowhere, and while a man will take an occasional trip to town, his wife has to sit tight on the land, because ownership is partly contingent on several years continuous occupation, and so she's stuck out there with no one to talk to and nothing to hear but the wind howling over the grasslands for days at a time, and suddenly it's a huge help to have something small and cheerful that's weaker than you are to take care of.)

[meghatronn.livejournal.com]

I understand what you mean. I feel the same way about missing Harrisonburg. It becomes very real to me when I pass over Fairfax Ridge on Rt. 29 to Centreville and suddenly the mountains are There.

[jazzfish]

Going out 66 the mountains just sort of creep up on me, which isn't the sort of thing one thinks of mountains as doing. . . and then I come over a ridge and realise that the other half of the interstate is /down/ a hundred feet.

I don't think I've ever actually gone down 29 to get back to B'burg. I should try that sometime.

[jsciv.livejournal.com]

Icon love!

[salzara-tirwen.livejournal.com]

insert incoherent ramblings here generally agreeing with you... my missing the mountains is too big to fit on a keyboard.

The mountains all around always felt safe. Like being in a walled city.

[jazzfish]

I dunno about "safe" but definitely comforting.

For me it's big enough that I can't even see it unless it's right there. And then I fumble with words for awhile and end up deleting more than I write.

Which is to say, *hug*

[jsciv.livejournal.com]

There are actually mountains near me (San Gabriel or San Bernadino, I forget which) so I have a skyline. Admittedly it's a "young mountain" sky rather than the more rolling mountains, but it's a good horizon on the one side. The things I miss are Spiel (and associated friends, I can't call and have people over for cards in 10 minutes anymore) and weather (though I'm getting a WONDERFUL gift this week in that regard).

I think I (and maybe you) are at that point in life where in some respect we have some good old days in Blacksburg to look back on: it's unlikely that actually moving back would restore them since it's not just a place, but a time that made it (or at least parts of it) special...

[jazzfish]

"Spiel" is sort of a catchall for "a bunch of good gamers in close proximity," yeah. Of which weekly meetings and monthly Game Days were a large part but not the whole thing.

I can just about nostalgi-ize some of B'burg, from this distance. And it was definitely the time, more than the place. Who I was, who other people were, how much free time and shared interests we had.

[vond.livejournal.com]

A big yes to the second paragraph there.

[pictsy.livejournal.com]

One of the things I miss the most about Blacksburg was the lack of crowding. Red lights lasted 10 seconds instead of 90. Lines were never more than three people long.

[jazzfish]

Yeah, okay. That's an advantage to small-town life.

Of course, it presumes that there's anything worth waiting in line for, or anywhere worth getting to on time. . .