The Last Lecture...

Mary and I decided to extend a business trip into a little vacation last week. I had to be in Covington, KY and I had this nagging urge to get on the Blue Ridge Parkway again. I wanted to be somewhere quiet, somewhere with little cell phone coverage, somewhere where commercial traffic and commercial establishments are not allowed. I wanted to take the new Mini out somewhere and get lost with it. I did that...and some of what I wanted to achieve was out there, but a lot of it was not possible. The worst of it was that Randy Pausch died while I was gone.

Like millions of others, I felt like I knew him from the "Last Lecture" he gave that attracted so much attention over the last few months. He was such a beautiful soul...well worth saving, yet he was not saved. I cannot explain why this man and his words and his premature passing have had such an effect on me. Maybe it is because his story is all of our stories...it is just that his video of our life was, perhaps, on fast forward. And, in a way, his story is also applicable to what I saw and experienced on my recent journey.

The Blue Ridge Parkway is in Virginia and North Carolina. It is sort of a road, sort of a National Park, but much more than the simple combination of the two. The construction of the parkway started during the depth of the Great Depression. FDR hatched many ideas in his effort to save democracy from itself during the 30's. While I am particularly fond of another of his ideas, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Blue Ridge Parkway is certainly the most beautiful of all of them. BRP was not built by professional road builders. It was actually built by folks of all walks of life who had one thing in common; they needed a job and they needed hope that the ravages of capitalism run amok would not mean that they would be standing in bread lines for the rest of their lives. In eternal thanks for the jobs that came with the parkway, they built something that transcends the plans they were executing. They built a work of art that you can experience in a car or on foot instead of in a museum. They built something that expresses their thanks for saving their lives.

The route of the parkway is simply the Jugular vein of North America. It runs down the spine of the Appalachian Mountains, and, most importantly, is protected from all that is modern and flashy and glitzy. Traffic moves slowly there, the speed limit is 45 MPH, but you really never notice that, for even though modern vehicles normally strain to go that slowly, on the parkway the veil of quiet and peace (only interrupted sporadically by occasional immature motorcycle riders who still feel the need to alter the exhaust systems on their rides so as to attract maximum attention and wreak maximum havoc on the rest of us), acts as sort of a semi-solid medium that impedes the progress of all vehicles...and no one seems to complain. Like Randy Pausch, it is a beautiful place, with a supremely valuable soul, and, like Randy, it is sick and needs redemption.

I don't know the politics of funding for national treasures like the parkway, but I can tell you that something is wrong there. Miles and miles of the most beautiful portions of the parkway are now closed due to landslides, rock slides, and general failures of roadway. The Jugular vein is clogged. To navigate around these closures, those seeking the comfort of the parkway's last lecture are forced from the embrace of the parkway into the obscene cacophony of trucks and fast food joints that makes up the world outside of the parkway. A conspiracy theorist might conclude that the parkway is being persecuted for its aversion to commerce and that the folks seeking refuge in its arms are being forced out into the commercial world where certain forces feel we all belong...oh well, that is what an conspiracy theorist might say.

All I know for sure is that the parkway is in need of better funding and more work. It is a soul worth saving. It seems that all the king's horses and all the king's men were not able to put Randy Pausch back together again, but I know we can save the Blue Ridge Parkway. It has many more lectures left in it for all of us, and I hope all of us are willing to communicate with our elected leaders that we want this little sliver of heaven saved and we want it fixed and we want it open to receive us now. Tomorrow is too late.