The Commonwealth of Virginia has wisely elected to the U.S. Senate two men with good minds, good values, and good instincts. Neither Mark Warner nor Tim Kaine receives or deserves mockery on late-night television. (Eat your hearts out, Tennessee with your Marsha Blackburn, Texas with Ted Cruz, Louisiana with John Neely Kennedy, Missouri with Josh Hawley, and South Carolina with both Tim Scott and Lindsey Graham. And I’m just concentrating on the Senate. If I were to include the House, then the list would grow much longer. I’m thinking of you, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz.) And now, to bolster my case for the Virginia senators as people to admire, Tim Kaine has written a fine book: Walk Ride Paddle: A Life Outside. It’s not your typical political biography and does not belong in the haystack of vanity projects written by so many participants in public life. Rather it’s a celebration of three of the many outdoor recreational opportunities offered by Virginia, and it’s also a candid, unsentimental reflection on the life of the author, the history of our commonwealth, and the people who live here.
The title comes from a series of journeys Kaine took between May of 2019 and October of 2021 to celebrate his turning sixty. First he walked the Appalachian Trail from the northern border of Virginia to the southern; then he rode his bicycle long the entire Skyline Drive and the Virginia portion of the Blue Ridge Parkway; and finally he paddled the length of the James River, which runs completely within the Old Dominion. Much of the first two trips took him through territory I have roamed myself, and I particularly enjoyed reading about his experiences at the Peaks of Otter and McAfee’s Knob. (The technical name for the latter is McAfee Knob, but we locals have always made it a possessive, and I’m going to claim squatter’s rights.) Kaine’s trip down the James, broken into a series of short trips, might have become the dullest part of his book had he not been so acutely observant about the people he met along the way and the insights he gained from having time to muse on the sites he passed. One of my favorite anecdotes included his discovery of the North Fork Plantation Bed and Breakfast and its devout proprietor. But I really sat up when he began to discuss the role of Virginia in creating slavery as a national disgrace. After all, he argues persuasively, when those first Africans arrived at Jamestown in 1619, English law did not permit slavery, but only allowed indentured servitude for a specific term, after which the servant was free to pursue a life of his or her own. But Virginians decided not to grant the same privileges to Africans, and over the next several decades our legislature enacted more and more onerous laws to assure lifetime bondage for anyone born of a Black mother. The Virginia history book I used in the 4th Grade, which showed well-dressed African immigrants cheerfully shaking the hands of those who were about to enslave them, was a work of undeniable propaganda. Kaine pushes the culpability into several generations beyond 1619. But the prosecution of slavery is, in the end, only a detour. Primarily Kaine reports the contagious joy of traveling with his wife, Anne, and with his many friends who joined him for various legs of his journeys.
His paddling and portaging reminded me of a trip I took 51 summers ago with three people who remain among my best friends today: Bill Nash, Billy Wallace, and Bud Wright. The three of us drove my mother’s yellow Ford LTD from Roanoke to Ely, Minnesota, where we acquired two canoes, loads of freeze-dried food, four fishing licenses, one outboard motor, a half-dozen cans of gasoline for fuel, and two sturdy poles with abundant rope for lashing the canoes into a catamaran when we were on open water. We had brought with us from Roanoke tents and sleeping bags and rain gear, and from the outfitter in Ely we set out into the boundary waters of Minnesota and the Quetico recreation area of Canada for eight days of camping, fishing, portaging, and listening at night for the cry of the loon. At times we were carrying upended canoes on our shoulders to portage from lake to lake. At other times we were wading through chest-deep water to find our way clear as we hoped that the aquatic leeches would leave us alone. We got rained on, and we saw rainbows. Some of us caught fish; I dropped my pole into the lake, where it undoubtedly remains half a century later. We fought black flies and mosquitoes with something called Fly Dope, a viscous liquid that dissolved the ink on our freeze-dried food when I accidentally spilled some. We admired cosmic sunsets. We were proud of ourselves when we returned intact.
Today the rules of that area are strict and restrictive: only a certain number of people may enter the parks on any given day; drinking water should be filtered; no bathing is allowed within 150 yards of the lakes; camping is permitted only in designated spots supplied with latrines and fire grates. In 1973 we dipped our cups into the lakes and drank freely and fearlessly, swam and bathed wherever we wished, and camped in any spot we found suitable. I’ve never done anything so outdoorsy since then—about the closest I’ve come was to sit in the rain for an outdoor performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Regent’s Park—but I still draw on the memories for stories I write today. And when I was in the wedding parties of all three of my companions, who all got married within four months of each other in 1975 and remain happily married today, I celebrated as somebody who had shared with each groom a journey far outside my comfort zone, and who was grateful to each for their reassuring company along the way.