Some of my fondest memories of my childhood was the long bike rides along dirt roads and single-lane blacktops with my brothers, cousins and other neighborhood kids. Of course, our family couldn’t afford to buy brand new bicycles for us so most often we would go to the local landfill and look for assorted bicycle parts and then we would try our best to piece together a whole bike. On these bike rides I’d always enjoyed seeing a part of Spotsylvania County that I’d never visited before…sometimes it might’ve been just a particular road in which I’d never traveled before that made these bike trips so memorable. The idea of exploring and briefly escaping was absolutely fascinating to me, especially as a child. Looking back, it seems as though I was always, in some type of manner, trying to escape my immediate surroundings. As a kid and even as a teenager, I certainly remember sitting on the bank of the Rappahannock River and just watching the water flow away. I would sometimes sit there for hours just gazing at the flowing water, and I would wonder and think about where the water was actually going to…and as I got older, I also began to wonder about my own life…wondering where my life would take me. When I began to jot down notes, write out poems or short stories as a young boy, it seems as though I really became obsessed with the Rappahannock River….for this was the period of my life when I would often think about where my words and stories might eventually take me…just like the flowing water of the Rappahannock…where is it going?…where will it end up? — Randolph Randy Camp
More at http://www.goodreads.com/randolphcamp
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