One Mile of Ice Intervals and Stride Outs

Streets are slippery in spots and mostly snow covered after just an hour of snow (on top of the 20+ inches we got over the weekend). If we were really dedicated, we'd have run in place, I suppose. Instead we opted to run hard up the hills, do stride-outs on the only small piece of parking lot in front of the elementary school that was not icy, and dance over the icy patches. We did this for 15 minutes and called it a mile.
The chunks of ice that have fallen from the roof and toppled the shrub in front of my apartment.
The maze of parking spots and walk ways.

Flooding in western Virginia

According to news reports this morning, heavy rains yesterday and today of up to 1/2 inch to 1 inch per hour feel causing flooding in the area. Parts of neighboring Augusta County were evacuated. On this morning's run, the ditches were full of rushing water. Streams flowed and springs burst forth where none were before. Earthworms were flushed from their burrows and onto the road where they met their demise. We met a high school runner out running; area schools are cancelled. I smelled the spray of a skunk (did it think it could frighten away the torrential rains?).All reminded me of the disaster in Haiti and the flooding in other parts of the county. Except for thoughts of concern for those less fortunate that floated through my head, the ion loaded, rain-cleaned air and temperatures in the mid-50s made for an especially good run.

More Photos from Old Rag

Second Visit to Old Rag Mountain

Taken in the "rock scramble" section, where we were the only ones over 35 who dared to enter. . . 

Sometimes a boulder; sometimes a stone;

Sometimes a high one wouldn't let me climb on;

Sometimes a chill of fear blew on my bones;

Sometimes a boulder; sometimes a stone.

(written to the tune of the song, "Sometimes a diamond, sometimes a stone.")

Thanks to a few pushes and pulls from Butch and one from a kind, fellow climber, though, I made it through the "scramble" and on to the beautiful mountain summit. Total hiking, climbing and running time = 4.5 hours.
View from the summit. . .

Precipitation. . .most likely rain.

Seven-year-old Eliza Grace carried a hand-made paper wind sock as she walked home from school yesterday. She, Magdalena and I stopped at my apartment, adapted our attire, and met up with Butch. As we walked to the track for a one-mile run, she talked about the wind sock and how it measured the wind.
I pointed at the clouds and asked, "What do you think those clouds tell us?"
"Precipitation," she answered. "Most likely, rain."
And here in Virginia, that IS true. But yesterday, the clouds apparently warned of our first snow.

The Community of Zenda & Long's Chapel

Butch and I took the long way home from Saturday's race, going through Keezletown and the Community of Zenda, near Fridley's Gap and Brethren Woods.

Funds to restore and preserve this chapel are being raised in the valley, thanks to, as I understand it, a black from the south who visited the area and became interested in the history. This chapel was built in 1870 in the Community of Zenda, a community established by former slaves Henry Carter, Milton Grant, William Timbers and Richard Fortune. Each of the four families owned two-acre home plots. William and Hannah Carpenter, and the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, "deeded the land 'here to colored people. . .for. . .a church, burial ground and a school house.'"

The community of Zenda grew to 17 households and 80 people by 1900. And it was here that blacks were finally able to exercise their new rights to worship, marry, attend school, own property and be buried in a marked gravesite.

The school closed in 1925.

Historic New Market

Pedaling through New Market yesterday, battle field monuments and a battlefield reenactment site recite the history of the Civil War.
"That was 200 years ago. Get over it," I used to think. But now I see things differently.
Butch knows someone whose grandfather fought alongside Stonewall Jackson.
And on the weekend, the Daily News Record (Harrisonburg, Virginia) told of Carrie Allen McCray Nickens (94), the black descendant of John Robert Jones, a Harrisonburg man Jackson had nominated to become a general. Though Gen. Robert E. Lee and President Jefferson Davis endorsed the nomination, the Confederate Senate never confirmed Jones. Captured in 1863, he spent the last two years of the war in prison camps.
Two Confederate soldiers. Two Virginian's grandparents. Suddenly 200 years ago just doesn't seem that long ago.