Virginia

Virginia is that other D.C. suburb, the one I didn’t live in. It’s where I took a semester of graduate-level courses to reassure myself I had a brain.

In my youth, it was the site of annual church retreats and all-nighters.

Virginia is the Blue Ridge Parkway.

But mostly, for me, Virginia is Chincoteague and Assateague. It’s camping there with Tim and Chuck and Marty and asking Chuck, when we arrived after dark, what a barn owl sounded like, and him saying “Like that,” as one screamed overhead on cue (Chuck’s high-powered torch catching a visual). It’s that weekend with gal-pal yh, foraging for food and drink at Kentucky Derby post time. It’s weekends birding and biking with Tim and my first look at roosting baby black-crowned night-herons. It’s me tearing up the last time we left there together, before Vermont, knowing we may not get back, at least not anytime soon.

And it’s that crazy blizzard at the beach, which is a great story all on its own.

Been there?: Yes