What's in Dave's Head

Memorial Day weekend in 1981 I proposed to Donna, in Virginia’s beautiful Shenandoah National Park (she said yes). We stayed at the rustic Skyland Lodge, between mile markers 41 and 42 on the scenic 105-mile-long Skyline Drive that runs along the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains through the park. Recently we decided to return to that romantic spot and a momentous time in our lives. Donna booked a room at the still-standing Skyland Lodge and we began our online search for the place where we started our together lives. The spot where I knelt those 45 years ago was by the base of a tall waterfall. We couldn’t recall its location or name but thought that with a little digging we could find it. There are dozens of trails in the park with varying lengths and levels of difficulty, and more than a dozen named waterfalls, and many more smaller, unnamed falls. Back then we were not hikers; we didn’t own hiking shoes or backpacks, so it couldn’t have been too far off a parking lot or pul...

Donna and I closed out the summer of 2026 with a Labor Day hike on the Appalachian Trail. We drove to Washington Monument State Park near Boonsboro, Maryland to start our trek at the stone tower atop South Mountain, which abuts the AT. We had visited the tower, linked to abolitionist John Brown’s ill-fated attack of the armory in nearby Harper’s Ferry, on a previous trip ( here’s a link to my blog about it ). Hiking on any part of the AT is magical. There’s a community of  through-hikers who have trekked the entire 2,200-mile Appalachian Trail, either all at once or in segments. (A college buddy and I briefly considered taking it on after graduation, but nothing ever came of it.) While Donna and I are certainly not members of the AT through-hiker community, there’s a thrill even at hiking on the same path where those heartier souls have trod. Dale “Grey Beard” Sanders, at age 91, last month became the oldest hiker to traverse the entire length of the Maine-to-Georgia trail. (Yo...