by Malcolm Culleton
Through the forest threads a low roll, a grumble, a click-click-click. Two tires, your tires, unfurling.
The goal: trace every mile of crushed, white gravel—all 330 of them—between Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Washington, DC. First on the Great Allegheny Passage, formerly known as the Pennsylvania & Lake Erie Railroad. Then on the eroded towpath of the former Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.
You’re used to city riding: the smooth slap of asphalt, the stand-and-wiggle, the mash of crankshaft through traffic, the frantic staccato, the balancing act between bike lane and door zone, the wet shriek of brakes. Out here, though, those brakes are barely needed. It’s a weekday, and on the long stretches between towns the GAP trail is mostly empty. You grind and grind, pump thighs methodically, fixate on each tiny, repeated sound emanating from your gears, your gearsets, your chainrings.
Click. Click-click. Click-click-ding; click-ding, click-ding.
Thump, sometimes. The whisper of nylon on rubber. A scratch, a squidge.
Like me, you might detect patterns in how sounds match up with rotations of the bicycle’s pedals, cogs, or wheels. Soon I fixate on worst-case scenarios. Five minutes ago, I was convinced that click-click-click was just tiny pebbles, kicking up against the mainframe. Now, though, I’m convinced it means something worse.
I’m most worried about my gearsets. I ride a Schwinn Impact; it’s a steel-framed, 30-year-old touring hybrid, tough as nails, but both of its derailleurs are fussy. I can patch a flat, or fix a brake cable, but Nick and I will be stranded, at least for a while, should something major happen to one of those derailleurs or the chain. Every bike mechanic I’ve ever consulted insists that chains don’t snap, that it’s not really something I have to worry about. The Schwinn’s chain did snap, though, on my last tour, as I crossed the Raymond Wieczorek Bridge near Manchester, New Hampshire, so that advice is not reassuring.
My partner Nick’s bike is another concern entirely. It’s a vintage Fuji road bike, a city machine not designed for long-distance touring. Even after jettisoning half the gear he’d intended to carry, he’s struggling to match my pace. There’s a slow leak in one of his tires, and he’s pulling over every few minutes to replenish it with a few shots of air from our hand pump. We could just change it; we have plenty of spare tubes. Nick himself, though, might prefer the frequent breaks.
It’s early August, 2022. We just set out, are already way behind schedule, and the sounds are getting worse. The clicking. The dinging. The thumping. That dreaded ficketty-facketty noise. Maybe we packed too ambitiously, are hauling too much. When will there be time to stop and talk with people? We’re stopping too much, for ourselves, as it is.
The next morning, in Connellsville, we’ll pass a man in an orange jersey, white helmet, and grey push-broom mustache. We’ll see him kneeling at the side of the trail with his bike flipped over, pressing the pedals forward with his hands.
“Need help?” I’ll ask him. “Everything okay?”
“I’m good. Fine. It’s nothing. I just thought I heard a click-click-click.”
* * *
David whoops and curls his front wheel off the crushed white gravel and onto the slouched grass of Cedar Creek Campground. It’s 5:58, two hours before sunset, and the end of his first day on the GAP Trail. Time to set up camp and eat his planned dinner of tortillas, peanut butter, and honey. Go to bed early, get an early start tomorrow. It’s usually easier that way.
Cedar Creek is one of about four dozen primitive, hiker-biker campgrounds that are scattered at semi-regular intervals along the GAP and C&O. The consistent availability of free camping is a main reason why this is one of the most popular touring routes in North America. The layout here is typical: a few picnic tables and fire pits scattered across a clearing in the thin sleeve of forest that runs between the levelled trail grade and the steep bank of the Youghiogheny River. Cedar Creek also offers two wooden lean-to shelters, however—clutch, since there’s rain in the overnight forecast.
When David scopes them out, though, they’re both already taken. One by a whole family: a middle-aged woman, her Boy Scout son, and her Scout leader husband. The other by Nick and me.
“Mind if I share this shelter with you?” David asks us.
Why not? The lean-to is more than large enough to accommodate three people, and he seems like a good person to interview.
So David unloads his bicycle and—with little prompting—tells us all about his journey. Up until a few weeks ago, he worked as a sales manager for a residential solar panel company in Asheville, North Carolina. It was a small company, family-run but chaotic.
“From the minute I took the job, I knew I was inheriting a massive shitstorm. Took it anyway, though. Decided okay, I’ll bide my time. Stay on for six months, and then get out. Six months later, here I am.”
From there he unspools details quickly: immediately after quitting, David slid off into the forest, hiked alone for awhile, and eventually ended up in Pittsburgh, where he crashed in a friend’s apartment while figuring out what to do next. A few days later, he found out about this trail.
There are details I miss, questions that I have, I guess, but why break the pattern? I scribble frantically in my notebook, trying to get it all down. When there’s a natural break, finally, I manage to ask him a question.
“Is this your first bike tour?”
“Nope,” he says. “I biked from Greensboro, North Carolina to Seattle once. Then down the coast to San Francisco.”
“Whoa. That’s a hell of a long way.”
“Yeah… it would take forever to tell you about that one… let’s just say that during those for month I had, like… by far the most density of life experience.”
Shortly thereafter, the conversation fizzles. David unpacks his peanut butter, and his package of tortillas. Nick fires up his tiny, propane stove. I clamber down the steep, brushy riverbank to wash off in the Youghiogheny.
Dusk shawls in, unceremoniously. Bats and swallows swoop at mosquitoes. Freight trains clatter, rolling their slow girths around the mountains on the other side of the river. Clear skies, so far, despite the forecast. Winking stars; big, pulsing moon.
We all awaken by six, which is sunrise.
“How far are you going today?” I ask David.
“Well, I hadn’t thought about it. But it looks like there are less options, in terms of campsites. So probably exactly as far as you.”
The three of us load our bikes up. Working silently, side-by-side.
No one asks the obvious question, though. David finishes first, swings his hips up onto his loaded bicycle, and crunches back onto the gravel.
“Nice camping with you guys,” he calls back to us. “Maybe I’ll see ya later, further down the trail.”
* * *
Early morning is distant traffic, bird yawns, high boughs rustling in wind. It is pumping legs, fresh from sleep, trying to make time.
A loaded bike rides lightest in the morning. Tires hard, gearsets quiet. There only constant is the crisp drone of your treads on the gravel. It’s a sound like a campfire, crackling and snapping. The tires provide friction, your pumping legs the energy, the heat. That’s the beauty of cycling, you think. Your body itself is the engine, the fuel.
Nick and I barely encounter anyone for the day’s first ten miles—one early-morning runner, one local walking a dog. So there’s plenty of time for me to think about the writing project that is, ostensibly, the reason we’ve embarked on this journey. Though I have no journalistic background, I’m trying to interview other cyclists because I don’t want to just write another bike trip narrative about individual experience and self-discovery. Who wants to read about another white guy hauling his baggage around on a trail?
Due to its popularity and reputation, I’d thought that the GAP trail would be the perfect place to encounter, and talk with, loads of other cyclists from diverse backgrounds. I only have two interviews so far, though, if one could even call them interviews. The trail hasn’t been nearly as well-trafficked as I expected. So much to listen to, so little of it other peoples’ voices.
Freight trains moan across the Youghiogheny at regular intervals. When we stop for a water break I take the handheld recorder out of my fanny pack to record one of them. Then I’m no longer thinking about my project, but about old-fashioned freight trains—how the GAP is a rail trail, built originally for fire. I envision engine boys hoisting shovels, piling heaps of coal into the furnaces of the monstrous locomotives that once broiled eastward, here, across the crest of the mountains. Wail of whistles, hiss of hydraulic brakes. Piston-muscles, pulled and stretched. I drive on, daydreaming about wheeled bonfires loaded with coal and iron as the gravel crackles beneath me. Fuel hauling more fuel, across a network of cities that wouldn’t stop growing.
* * *
“Oh, man! You’ve gotta stop at Bill’s Place, Little Orleans! It’s this tiny, divey place that’s, like, full of bikers. Meaning, like, bicyclists, motorcycles—whatever!”
Jeff’s excited now. He leans forward, presses his breastbone against the bar.
“They had the Ridge Riders there last weekend,” says Sherri, his wife. “I think that’s what it was. I drove the van out and got there early. Oh, I had so much fun, talking with those motorcycle guys!”
“Cool,” I say, unsure of how to change the subject. “We’re actually planning to stop there tomorrow night. I’ve heard good things.”
“Tomorrow is… Thursday? You’ll probably be good, if you get in early enough. There are only two times when Bill is open: on the weekends, and whenever he feels like it!”
“The guy who runs it now isn’t Bill,” Sherri corrects him. “He’s Bill’s son.”
“Before you get there, though, you gotta get through the hard part. You’re switching from the GAP to the C&O, which isn’t really a rail trail—in fact, it used to be a mule path. Which means it was never graded, isn’t maintained as well.”
“Really?” I ask, as if I didn’t know this already.
“Yeah. Which means: you’re gonna hit mud. Deep, thick mud. The worst is between here and Hancock. And you’ve also gotta get around the Paw Paw Tunnel. You heard about that?”
Jeff gives us all the details, describes how the 3,000-foot tunnel, which carries both trail and canal bed straight through the middle of Paw Paw Mountain, emerges through what he calls a “human-made canyon” on the eastern side. There were landslides there, a few years ago, which has closed that section of trail indefinitely. There’s a detour, but it’s arduous; it involves walking your bike up a rugged hiking trail and over a mountain. That hike could take 45 minutes, or it could take two hours. Steep as hell, and you’re carrying all your gear.
That last part throws me off, maybe.
“So you two are headed westbound?” I ask. “Towards Pittsburgh?”
“No. Well, yeah—but not in the way you mean. I actually just finished the whole trail, but rode it Pittsburgh to DC. We’re driving back now to return the van.”
Sherri explains: a few years ago, the two of them rode the Katy Trail together, in Missouri. Jeff loved the experience, and Sherri loved it, too, but it turned out to be a little too much for her. So this time they rented a minivan at the Pittsburgh airport, and while Jeff rode the trail Sherri followed behind him, carrying all of his stuff.
So right now they’re driving, not biking. With dark clouds piling over Cumberland, they decided to swing off the highway and get a drink at this brewpub, which is called Dig Deep and is located in a former dye works building. If it weren’t for the storm, Jeff remarks, they never would’ve encountered us. Nick and I ducked in here a few minutes before them to get a drink, discuss our next move, and hopefully wait out the rain.
Then Sherri cuts in to recommend another dive bar: Third Base, in Williamsport. “You know,” she says, “like the last stop before home.” Jeff gets excited, again, as he tells us how they’re open until two in the morning and will give you a special, complimentary shot of something-or-other if it’s your first time there.
Here’s the other side of bike culture, I realize. Ride all day, unloaded, to the next dive bar or brewpub. Meet your wife, and your luggage, and tipsily recount your minor tales of glory. Bikes and beers, a fun hobby for middle-aged alcoholics. I’m 33 now; Nick is 32. Are we, in fact, pathetic?
Nick and I will avoid the rain tonight by splurging on a room in the Fairfield Inn and Suites in downtown Cumberland. I’ll reflect on how much time I’ve spent, on each of my three bike tours, tying and re-tying gear and equipment onto the same beat up, rickety-sounding bike. How it had never even occurred to me to go on tour with a minivan.
There will be other things to fixate on, though. By eight o’clock, thunderstorms will be battering the hotel parking lot, and I’ll be thinking about how the mud that Jeff just mentioned is about to get a whole lot worse.
* * *
At first the puddles seem innocuous. They sit side by side at predictable, near-regular intervals, pairs of calm brown patches dotting the double-rutted trail.
With thick enough tires, you can take them. It’s fun, in fact, to saw straight through, to rupture the quietude of the dark, pensive water. Stop pedaling, stand up on the saddle. Enjoy the satisfying slicing sound.
Here’s the thing, though: after an hour or so of skidding through puddles and assuming we’re moving quickly, I glance at a trail marker and realize that we’ve only travelled about seven miles. Despite our early start, we’re behind the clock again. The puddles and mud must really be slowing us down.
Meanwhile, my chain makes a new sound—tinkle-crinkle, tinkle crinkle, like tiny bits of something caught up in gear teeth. The sound of mud, I guess. So instead of blasting through them, I start to swerve around the puddles. Meanwhile, my chain makes a new sound—tinkle-crinkle, tinkle crinkle, like tiny bits of something caught up in gear teeth. A few miles later, the puddles spread and deepen into wide, muddy depressions. When I turn my handlebars, even slightly, my bike starts to wobble. The weight in my panniers and on my rack seems like it’s pushing me down.
I could probably jog the ten miles or so to the Paw Paw Tunnel at this speed. And where is Nick? He keeps disappearing behind me and then emerging several minutes later, apologizing, muttering about twigs caught in his chain. There’s no time for this, and no time to stop and interview anyone—as if anyone else is out riding in this mudhole, anyway. Jeff told us to leave up to two hours for the tunnel detour. I’m not looking forward to hauling our heavy bikes, on foot, over some steep, muddy hiking trail.
The scenery is beautiful, though. Sunlight veils in through branches at the top of the canopy; the scum-green canal is freckled with lilies and algae, rife with ducks, bullfrogs, and turtles, stalked by great blue herons. We pass a dry section and a fawn with a snowy, upturned tails bounces quietly through the hollow. A Druidic omen, I think; in medieval ballads, a single deer, deep in the forest, often turns out to be the ghost of someone. I’ve almost forgotten about that tinkle-crinkle. But then: Crack-crack-THWACK!
I push my right foot forward, but the crank stops abruptly.
The pedal isn’t moving.
* * *
Mike leaves things up to chance… sort of. At 25, he’d planned to hike the entire Appalachian Trail with his girlfriend. It was her dream, she made it his, they broke up, and now he’s spent half his life imagining the journey that never was.
“About a year ago,” he tells us, “I hung an AT map on the wall of my bathroom so that I’d have to look at it, every day, until I turned 50. But I hung up another map beside it: The Great American Rail Trail. That’s the cross-country bike route, from Seattle to DC. I kept going back and forth, every day, and hoped that eventually fate would tell me which one to do.”
Fate—through a Facebook group—decided to connect him with two internet strangers who were searching for a third companion to join them on the Rail Trail. They set out together from Seattle, in June, though they still barely knew each other. Two months later, in August, Mike’s the only one who’s made it as far as Bill’s Place, just three days from DC.
“We had different travelling styles,” he tells us, opening his second can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. “One of the guys had like, a friend following in a vehicle who offered to take our heaviest bags. That seemed a little weird to me, though. Suspicious. So I just threw together a duffel with like… extra clothing, rain pants and shit. Stuff I could do without, you know? And sure enough, that guy and his friend were the first to bail.”
Mike’s booking it now; he has to get to DC by Sunday, he says, or he’ll miss his flight home to New Hampshire. Like Nick and I, he spent all afternoon hiking over that steep-ass Paw Paw Mountain and getting both himself and his bike filthy on the C&O. He’s already set up camp at the Indigo Hiker-Biker Campground—about half a mile downtrail, he tells us—but decided to come back up here to eat at Bill’s because the half-full bag of grocery store bagels that’s bungeed to his handlebars is to be saved for emergencies only.
Bill’s Place consists of two log cabin-like structures that straddle a narrow road just before it ducks under a train bridge, intersects the C&O Trail, and threads through the state-managed campground where Nick and I plan to squat tonight before dead-ending at a boat launch into the Potomac River. One of the two structures is basically just a covered patio that offers dry, shaded parking spots for motorcycles and bikes. Mike saw us locking up there and recognized us almost immediately. He’d passed us a few hours ago, on the trail, while I was waiting under an old train trestle for Nick, who had stopped to investigate a noise that turned out to be nothing but a stick in the gears. It was the same problem I had this morning, when I thought I had snapped my chain. Maybe that’s the theme of our trip—getting rattled by sounds, by vibrations.
The three of us crossed the street and walked into the other building—the restaurant—together. The bartender (Bill’s son, presumably) told us that we could eat in but could only sit at one specific table. “You’re all dirty from your bicycles,” he explained. “So you gotta sit over there, in my section for dirty people. I don’t want you tracking mud all over my bar.”
So now we’re all having dinner together and chatting. Or at least, Mike is chatting, still complaining about his companions.
“Once we hit Illinois, Indiana,” he says, “I could tell those guys were fading. We’re all sitting around at camp one night, talking about our next few days of riding, and suddenly they’re both all like, ‘I dunno, where we gonna get water? Where we gonna find something to eat?’ And this is after we’ve already been through, like, the Rockies. Montana. Fucking… Wyoming. And now we’re in the Midwest and the weather’s nice and there are towns everywhere. This is the easy part! Thirsty? Just find someone watering their lawn and ask if you can drink from the hose.”
He’s wound-up, giddy, with an edge to him. How could he not be? He’s spent weeks upon weeks on his bicycle, clicking and grinding through landscapes of silence. The drone must get truly maddening. It’s no surprise that, before long, you find yourself talking too loudly to strangers in bars or restaurants, telling long, detailed stories just to hear yourself speak. I’m not annoyed, though; in fact, it feels special to encounter Mike at this moment, on the cusp of successfully riding a bicycle across the entire continent. Hauling all his own stuff, too, except the junk he was willing to leave behind.
When Mike leaves, eventually, Nick heads to the bar to order us another round. I scribble down notes about our conversation, which included Mike mentioning that he had a seventeen-year-old son, and suddenly feel stupid for not asking him more about his family. I set out to be an interviewer, after all, and after four days of riding all I’ve done, essentially, is collect the road boasts of other men I’ve met in bars. How can I possibly mold so many rambling stories into a single, even remotely interesting narrative?
A minute later, Nick returns and pushes a fresh PBR across the table.
“Hey,” I ask, “can I run a writing idea by you?”
“Sure.”
“I’ve been thinking about how it’s actually turned out to be pretty difficult to interview people on this trip. Partially, that’s because I’m not a very good interviewer. But also, it’s interesting how so many of the people who we have talked to are these guys who just sort of… approach us.”
“Yeah,” Nick agrees. “Lotta middle-aged dudes out here who like to hear themselves talk.”
“Right? And basically, they fall into two categories. There are the guys who are out here on their own—camping a bunch, roughing it, carrying all their stuff with them. And then there are like… the older, richer guys cruising around on light, expensive bikes, staying in B&Bs and having someone—either a touring company or their wife or whatever—drive behind them with all their stuff. So basically, I think I could make that into some kind of metaphor. Like, you don’t really need to ask someone why they’re on the trail. You just have to find out who’s carrying their gear.”
“I think that could work,” Nick says.
“You don’t think it’s too cliché? Like in a The Things They Carried kind of way?”
“Well… I mean, maybe you dig a little deeper than that. Like, which type of guy are you?”
Nick knows my answer already, because I’ve told him: no matter how old or achy I get, there’s no way I would go on tour without hauling my own stuff. It just wouldn’t feel right—the point of adventure is self-sufficiency, isn’t it? Not to mention that a gear van completely negates the environmental benefits of going somewhere by bicycle and acting as your own, sustainable fuel.
The question is rhetorical, then, and I meet it with silence. I take a sip of beer, thinking my indignation without saying it. Nick breaks the silence.
“Bicycling is a male-dominated sport,” he says.
And who are we? Two more white guys amongst a long tradition of white guys, with materially comfortable lives, who want nothing more than to do something the hard way. Maybe that’s why we project meaning onto every sound, every nuance, every rustle of movement—even though we know we’re not really that far from civilization, and we’ll almost definitely be able to find help if we need it.
Grind-click, grind-click. It seems that, after all this, I’m merely writing another road boast. That we’re all too happy to worry ourselves for the sake of adventure.
* * *
The next day Nick and I ride as far as Williamsport, Maryland, where we again follow Jeff and Sherri’s recommendation and visit Third Base. It’s a local dive indeed: deep, dark, narrow, and crowded. For a while, I think we might be the only cyclists in here. Then I notice about half a dozen women, clustered around a corner booth, wearing red, black and yellow jerseys based on the design of the Maryland flag. Ladies Bike the GAP” are printed on the front of them. The Ladies are all whooping, knocking back shots.
We hit another detour the following morning. Near mile marker 89, the C&O is fenced off and bright orange signs point us up a steep, winding road that leads away from the Potomac, whose banks we’ve been hugging since Cumberland. We follow a network of narrow, rural roads for about three miles, then turn back towards the towpath. Before we get there, though, we’re directed onto a rugged hiking trail that meanders through a reedy meadow and then, without warning, plunges over a precipice in a series of sharp-angle switchbacks. I slam on my brakes and barely avoid crashing, at the bottom, into a chain-link fence.
“That was close!” someone says.
I look up and see two middle-aged women. They probably just came down, too; they’re taking a water break, leaning against their bikes which are leaning against the fence, beyond which is the river.
“Yeah,” I mutter. The woman who just spoke smiles.
“That’s a tough way down.”
“They really should warn you about those switchbacks,” I agree. People must eat it there all the time.”
The three of us spend a few minutes chatting. The one who spoke first is Julia; she has dark brown hair, cropped under her ears, and wears a powder blue T-shirt and a baseball hat. The other woman, Deb, wears a button-down flannel. Her hair is shorter, and blonde. They’re both relatively new to cycling. I ask them why they’re out on the trail today and Julia shrugs like it’s a stupid question. “I’m just happy I can be out here, at my age. Just happy to be enjoying this.”
Nick appears, wisely walking his bike down the cliffside. A few seconds after he’s joined us at the bottom, though, we hear a jumble of upbeat swearing and watch a fat tire bicycle skid down the steep dirt trail, followed by a tumbling rider.
“Shit!” she yells. “Mother-fuck!”
I recognize the faller’s red, yellow, and black jersey—she’s one of the Ladies Bike the GAP team. She picks herself up, wiping dirt from her legs and forearms. She’s fine, it seems. Her bike, though, might have snapped its chain.
“Thought you could take it with those fat tires!” one of her companions teases as the other Ladies walk their bicycles, single file, down the hill behind her.
“Way to make me go first,” she fires back. “It’s so nice to always be the goddamned canary.”
One of the Ladies has a repair bag. She flips the fat tire over; she and the faller examine the crankshaft and gearsets together, then make some adjustments. The other Ladies wait impatiently. “The sooner we get to Shepherdstown,” the taunter reminds them, “the more we can drink!”
Deb and Julia watch them apprehensively.
“Have you done this whole thing?” I ask them.
“Not quite,” says Julia, “but we’ve done a lot of it. Pretty much all of the sections in Western Maryland. Piece-by-piece.”
“I moved pretty recently,” Deb tells us, “And now I live near here. She’ll come up to visit me and we’ll drive out to one section or another, just do it for the day.”
When I ask if proximity to the C&O Trail had been a factor in her decision to move, Deb gives a vague answer. Soon she, Julia, and the Ladies Bike the GAP team all move along.
Nick and I rest for a few more minutes. We’re at a beautiful spot; the canal has vanished, merged into the river, and the next two or three miles of towpath stretch before us on a concrete gangway, wedged between the water and a series of vine-shagged limestone cliffs. A sign informs us that this is Big Slackwater, where the combination of gentle current and dramatic topography made the prospect of canal construction unworthy of the expense. Boatmen would unhitch their mule teams here and let their barges float freely downriver. We get back on our bikes and coast, a hundred and fifty years behind them, working no harder and moving no faster than we absolutely need to.
I’m ahead, as usual, when the gangway ends and the trail becomes a ragged line of gravel tracing back into the woods. Trees close around me; gravel crackles beneath my tires, the woods collar in. I hear: the warm, familiar crackle of gravel, the click-click-click. But then a voice is shouting. A body runs onto the trail in front of me. One arm and then two arms wave.
“You guys have got to stop for a minute!” It’s Julia. “Look—there’s a cave!”
I skid to a stop beside her, then follow her arm as it points excitedly across the withered canal bed, towards the overgrown cliffside that’s shrunk back from the river. I see it: a gaping hole at the base of the rock, shaped like a tipsy flying saucer, almost perfectly door sized. It’s neither marked with a blaze nor explained with an interpretive sign, though it’s in plain view.
“You guys should go in there,” Julia says after Nick arrives. “Check it out.”
We’ll take turns, we decide. I go first. The rocky floor is uneven; I drop to my knees, scramble over shadowy boulders. I’ve detached my bike’s headlight; its narrow beam guides me around one and then another corner. I expected the cave to be shallow, for some reason, but instead it goes back and back and back. The arc of sunlight behind me gets smaller, then dimmer, then disappears entirely.
After five minutes—ten minutes?—I decide not to go any further. Instead, I flick off the headlight. After two hundred miles spent hauling, watching, and listening I am standing unburdened, surrounded by complete silence and utter darkness. Is it possible, I wonder, to ever let go of anything? To attune oneself so fully with the landscape that one starts to become it? To just roil along with space and time?
“Caves are her thing,” Deb says, once I’ve reemerged at the trailside and Nick’s taking his turn.
“Sure are!” Julia says. “There are caves all around here. I’ve been exploring them since I was a girl. Once I got myself lost in some cave for hours. It was on the West Virginia side, near Shepherdstown. Suddenly, in the darkness, I felt a pair of eyes watching me, so I aimed my flashlight at them. Turns out it was a single bullfrog. Way down in there! he looked me right in the eye and gave a single croak! As if to say, ‘What are you doing? This is my cave!’”
Julia chuckles. She implores me half-jokingly to write this down, to not forget to mention her in my book. I am trying my best to pay attention, but I can’t stop staring into the black maw of the cavemouth, wondering when Nick will come out.
© 2023 Malcolm Culleton All rights reserved.
“Road Boasts” was first published in Floyd County Moonshine.
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