During the time I was doing the 800 mile round trips to Petoskey, I began to get muscle memory of little places like Cranberry, PA, and Strongsville and Elyria, OH, as refuges from the Turnpike. It was always a relief to get clear of those pesky low Appalachian mountains, punching through Hole in the Wall at Alleghany Mountain and starting the long downgrade to the Buckeye State from the Piedmont of Pennsylvania.

And the weather. Good God.

We are in it, now. A pal is getting four inches on his driveway this morning, and starting to watch with alarm the front coming east. He is doing now what I was doing the last five years: looking in on his Mom.

I shudder when I recall the imperative of the holidays, and travel when things are at their worst. I recall a trip when the Big Left Turn East after the long leg south from Northern Michigan coincided with a violent ice-snow-wind front that left semitrailers pitched over, and tense, white knuckle driving at ten to twenty miles speed of advance, and doing the math.

Home in as little as twenty hours- much faster than horse and buggy.

God.

No big drives now. It is too late in the season, even if the Panzer does have on-demand four-wheel drive. Even the little jog down to the Virginia Piedmont is fraught with peril. I was talking to the guy at the table next to me at the Raven’s Nest yesterday morning about a front coming through, maybe with ice. He was using the Raven’s wifi hot spot, enjoying a croissant and some sort of latte.

Me? I was alarmed in equal parts about alarming reports of violence in a town where a pal lives, and out of whole-bean coffee, and now about the weather report.

(The newly updated interior to the Moving Meadows store on East Davis Street.)

I had left the farm with a low-caffeine warning light flickering in my central nervous system. Fifteen minutes later I was parked in a “free” two hour parking place on E. Davis Street looking blankly at the storefront at number 253 where Raven’s Nest Coffee used to be.

If they had closed up since my last visit in the summer I was doomed- I would have to trek to the Starbucks inside the front door at the Super Target, and get that awful disoriented feeling I always get there.

Now, the space was occupied by an enterprise called “Moving Meadows Farm,” which purports top “offer the ultimate in good taste! From locally grown produce to While Grain Baked Goods and Spa Chicken, Salad Bar Beef and Gourmet Goat. Sold OUT.”

They look like direct competition to Andrew Campbell’s Croftburn Farm Market, so I wanted to check them out. As a local food consumer, I am in favor of competition, but I have my loyalties, you know?

I stuck my head in and introduced myself to Wally Hudson, who was prepping for weekday business after the Thanksgiving weekend. Sure enough, the usual story. He and his wife Amy had been residents of Alexandria a decade ago, when the world changed and airliners started flying into buildings, and they decided to get out of town.

(Wally and Amy- fellow refugees).

“Started in Fairfax,” Wally mused. “But we finally wound up down here on 47 acres. Built our own house. If you had told me I was going to wind up with a store in downtown Culpeper and a heard of short-poll cattle I move to new grass twice a day with free-range chickens, I am not sure I would have believed you.”

“Exactly how I found myself down here,” I said. “Weird. Feels like home, though.” I asked if Raven’s nest had gone out of business, and Wally laughed.

“Nope, she moved across the street in July.”

I thanked him and hurried across the street. Looking to my left, I saw a knot of people at the depot, waiting for the Amtrak train that goes to Union Station in downtown DC. Damn, I thought. This could actually work without the drive. I am going to have to check it out- bike in from the farm?

(The classic Depot at the foot of East Davis Street where the Amtrak train can take you right back into the madness inside the Beltway each morning).

Davis Street is a trip. There’s a restaurant to tempt every taste- from the pastries at Raven’s Nest to fine dining at the Copper Fish and It’s About Thyme and the real down-home comfort cooking at the Frost Café. If I had a need for a three-egg omelet or a fried bologna sandwich on white, that is definitely where I would start my day.

I needed coffee, though, and grabbed a bag of Dead Man’s Reach whole bean as I moved back to the island where owner Jessica Hall was hanging out. I showed her the bag of beans and asked for a large coffee.

“For here, or to go?”

I considered the options, and said “The heck with it. Here, please.” She produced the largest mug I have seen- it would have accommodated a half a box of breakfast cereal- and doctored it up with half-and-half and some local honey.

When I took up position at a table in the alcove behind the comfortable front room with the cozy chairs, I was fairly sure I would never get to the bottom- and as things happen in Culpeper- got to talking to the man who introduced himself as Danny- a retired psychologist who had decided it was too nuts back up there. Another refugee from the City.

We naturally started talking about the weather, since that is much more important than what we used to do, or the political tempest of the moment.

“Weather supposed to be coming in Thursday.”

“Crap, I was planning on traveling Thursday or Friday. I may get pinned down up north.”

“Can’t drive in snow?” he asked.

“No, no. I am a Michigan kid. I can drive anywhere. It is just that the Virginians on the road can’t.”

He nodded sagely. Hearing about the weather expected to come in was a sobering realization that the Winter is here in the Piedmont. “Of course, why would we pay any particular attention to a prediction more than five days away? That is from the same people who claim to be able to predict the weather fifty years from now with precision.”

“Hubris,” said Danny. “You start to lose that when you cross out of Prince William County and hit Fauquier on the way down.

“Man, you got that one right. It is a madhouse up there, no offense to your former clients.”

Jessica offered to top off my cup as she bustled past. She is a nice and enterprising lady, one of the dozens of entrepreneurs who are making something out of nothing with the fruit of their labor. Completely unlike people back in the capital, who are living off the labor that other people do.

“Thanks, I would love some more. I have to ask you the question, though. Why did you move?”

“This Building became available. They had been planning on making it a conference center, so there is an executive kitchen on the second floor and updated electrical. I bought it, and now live upstairs.”

“Hah,” I said. “Living over the store.”

She smiled. “Yeah. The commute is fantastic.”

We laughed at the notion, and I sipped the rich coffee and thought about snow and ice on the roads. I think I would rather be pinned down here than back up north.

I wondered how I could structure a decent swim at the Powell Wellness Center and get coffee each morning at the Raven’s Nest. Even coming in from the farm, the commute is not that bad.

We will see- I have to look at the weather.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303