Autumn light, Virginia

If New York failed to cast its spell, I fell in love with rural Virginia at first sight. Finally, I have discovered the England that English people like to tell you that England is like. No crisp packets and scrubby trees and burned out Ford Escorts, but deep gorgeous forests lit by evening light, cut by deep rivers. And roads of course: this is the USA. A long day's work was punctuated by two long drives, one at dawn with a sky red from horizon to horizon, one at dusk with butter slavered on every tree and every glimpse of meadow as smooth and green as a pool table. I drove through the Pocahontas State Park and stopped for a crisp walk, bathing in that light. When no one was around I put my arms around a tree and stayed there for a long while, finally interrupted by a polite cough. An old couple with a small, waggy dog, stared at me strangely. I coughed myself and carried on my way. Rural Virginia is punctuated by real history. Old houses. Failed settlements.  Graveyards.

Travelling without a GPS to save money, I found myself lost on an increasingly rural road. There I found a Civil War cemetary with six thousand graves in it. They didn't invent mechanised warfare in these parts, but they learned its grammar: machine guns, trenches. Big cemetaries. It was noticeable, however, that there were no native American cemetaries. Even Pocahontas is buried somewhere in England, in a lost grave, under a dual-carriageway. As the man said, the last thing a human being needs is a sense of proportion.

Perhaps these beautiful, warm trees are their graveyard, tall and stately, dignified and silent.