M.A. Kleen

Skyline Drive curls ahead in a smooth double yellow line, slipping around a rocky cut where the mountain has been peeled back to let the road through. The slope is draped in late autumn color—burnt orange, russet, and the last bright reds clinging to the trees—set against a hard, flawless blue sky. Sunlight rakes across the stone face and the thinning woods, picking out cracks in the rock and the tangle of branches. It feels like one of those quiet, in-between days in Shenandoah, when the crowds are gone, the leaves are past their peak, and the parkway belongs to anyone willing to follow its bends a little farther into the hills.