“I don’know. Whatcha wanna do?”

“Let’s go backpacking!”

An hour later, my husband and I were in the truck headed toward the Blue Ridge. That’s the beauty of Virginia. Only in the extreme eastern part of the state is it a long road trip to the mountains.

In less than two hours we were parked off the Blue Ridge Parkway some 20-plus miles south of Rockfish Gap, loaded up and headed down the Mine Bank Trail into the St. Mary’s Wilderness. The first flush of autumn: dogwoods, some oaks already turning wine red. Chestnuts, other hardwoods turning yellow. Sassafras under shade, just glowing like phosphorous in that green-to-yellow state. Hemlocks, mountain laurel thickets, fern clumps, the whole forest floor and ceiling rampant with the diversity that makes our mountains so verdant.

We descended steeply along Mine Bank Creek under a canopy of rhododendron, gray stone ledges still trickling with the last water of summer, a thin cascade over their moss-carpeted faces. Trail littered with quartzite. (Look closely—it’s called Antietam quartzite and features parallel lines along the sides, fossilized tubes left by sand worms from inland sea times, about 500 million years ago.)

Two miles down, the forest changed abruptly. Welcome to the remnants of clear cutting. The forest height drops substantially, as well—mostly scrub oaks mixed with the laurel and azalea. This is the valley or gorge of the St. Mary’s River, an area mined heavily for manganese from early 1900—extensively during World War I. Mining stopped in the 1950s, and the region was declared a forest wilderness area in 1984. There was once a rail spur built to carry the ore out. So many vestiges of mining operations still remain to the east and west of the St. Mary’s Trail, all worth exploring. And the Falls Trail is a popular destination as well.

Given the popularity of this region on a beautiful weekend as well as our desire for solitude, we bushwhacked to an ‘Eden’ of a spot along the river—moss-blanketed ground with a fern field underneath large rhododendron. Found a fire ring from previous like-minded folk. Someone had even started constructing a lean-to.

We set up tent, fixed a beverage and sat out on the rock ledges overlooking the St. Mary’s River. Quiet—no wind, no people. As if scripted for seasonal effect, a tall, skinny tree fell about 100 feet downstream. An entire tree, from base to crown, fell straight down from nowhere, across the entire stream. Even though it wasn’t a giant, it could have done major bodily harm or worse. We fixed another beverage, sat there thinking, and finally returned to fire up the camp stove. Supper? Okra and tomato time. A dee-licious, not-to-be-forgotten chicken gumbo.