sounds familiar

Today our first born becomes a teenager.

While it’s easy to believe that the funny, smart, and kind young girl we live in this RV with is is thirteen, I mean most mistake her for older anyway, it’s a lot harder to get my head around the fact that thirteen years of our lives have passed since that day we first met her.

I can see in her a blend both our senses of humor. Can see Sharaun’s kindness, amazing motherly instincts, and altruistic nature. Can absolutely see the stubbornness and machination of my own youth. Can see a budding love for music, a flare for the artistic, and a love of reading and writing. And, best of all, can see a whole unique person forming in there and am excited about who that’s beginning to be.

Anyway, this trip is working, I’m able to be so much more a part of her life this year (OK, so the trip is working for me, at least), and I’m loving it.

Happy birthday Keaton, I love you.

Can still see the last of the coals twinkling from the bedroom window.

Honestly it’s the only decent fire I’ve managed to build this entire trip. Maybe that sounds crazy, given that we’ve been camping now for six months, but we really don’t have much campfire religion. We just don’t do them much, and the few times we’ve set out too, I’ve struggled more often than not getting a good one going.

On the nights when a fire is best Sharaun and the kids usually decline to join me outside because it’s “too cold.” Sometimes that might be OK, like if I’ve got a glass of Scotch and some music on, but usually I’d rather be enjoying time with them than being alone by the fire. This is an RV problem, having an enclosed heated space to keep warm in versus having to huddle around the fire.

We’ve also had bad luck with rain or damp wood, or maybe my fire making skills have just atrophied over time. Either way, the fires, or attempted fires, I recall were smoky messes.

Tonight, though, that was glory. At least I knew I was starting with damp wood and kindling, was able to focus on getting a really hot bed of coals I could toss the wet stuff on and still have it catch. Near the end, when there was no more to burn, the heat was best. Radiant. The heat you want to get closer to because it’s freezing but can’t because it hurts.

Good work, I’m proud of that fire. Built it with my hands and brain.

Later, love you.

Tried to leave Great Smoky Mountains National Park yesterday. Eventually made it out, but not without having to expend a little effort.

We were camped in Cade’s Cove, north and west of, and, coincidentally, in an entirely different state from, the place we wanted to exit the park (near Cherokee, North Carolina). To get back south and east we’d planned to simply reverse the scenic route we’d taken days earlier. However, the universe conspired against us… or perhaps it’s better to say it pushed us in a different direction.

We knew the road out of our campground had been closed our last night there, so I walked up early in the morning to check to gate and see if we could even begin the trip. It was finally sunny after a week of rain so we were looking forward to seeing more of the sights the drive had to offer. When greeted with an open gate and a couple returning front-end loaders, I was happy – we could get get moving and if the loaders were headed back the road was likely clear of any storm debris.

Didn’t see any rangers to inquire about the sections of road past the first gate, didn’t really even think to do so, kind of forgot there’s a series of gates and that the single open one permitting us to start our trip was only the first.

After twenty minutes or so of amazing, gorgeous driving, we arrived at the “Wye,” where two downhill sections of the Little River were angrily crashing together, swollen and churning with a week’s worth of rain. Unfortunately, continued westward passage was not possible, the road blocked with another, unanticipated, gate.

Being a little closer, now, to civilization, though, we could catch enough bits from outer space to check the National Park Service road conditions Twitter feed, where we learned that not only was the section of road immediately before us closed due to downed trees and a rockslide, but the entire southerly section across state lines was also closed due to hazardous high winds in the elevations.

So we had lunch and I played with Google maps. We were intending to get all the way to Northern Georgia, and the route through the park wasn’t just desirable for it’s sunny-day scenery, but it was actually the most expeditious route to boot. Turns out, though, that it looked like we could go north and west, around the outside of the park and down through the Nantahala National Forest, and arrive only about forty minutes later than intended. Not bad.

After a twenty minute delay due to another, thankfully temporarily, closed road, we were on our blissfully ignorant way.

And that’s how, serendipitously, we ended up having two really cool experiences: (1) We got to drive the amazingly scenic NPS Foothills Parkway, and (2) We unwittingly drove our 30ft RV on a section of road called “The Tail of the Dragon.” Sometimes dubbed “the most exciting road in America,” it’s a route we most certainly, had we known any better, would not have chosen.

But, in the end, moving on average about fifteen miles per hour, we survived and, although we ended up pulling into our campsite are dark, it was memorable day.

Hugs and kisses.

Ranger came by while Sharaun and I were out for walk during a break in the rain. Told the kids that they’re closing the road out due to high winds, so if we weren’t already planning on staying the night (we were), we’re stuck now. Said that, with the already saturated ground, there’s a risk of trees coming down in the camping area. Makes sense, there are lots of trees. One of them is this close:

Said that we’re welcome to move the rig to the big open parking lot if we want. I was not inclined to do so, citing statistics, but Sharaun was, also, just as validly, citing statistics. So after lunch I think we’ll pop-in and find a flat open spot away from any potential woody trip-ruiners.

It’s past dinner now. All the dishes are done and the countertops wiped down. We’re in our new spot in the parking lot. The single other camper in the campground (National Park to ourselves) pulled alongside us, I guess also deciding to heed the ranger’s warning. There’s no one else around. They’ve closed all the gates. It’s kinda neat.

Over the past hour we can hear the wind rising. Ranger said it might hit 70mph on the south side of the park, where we camped the first two nights. Dunno about here. River’s topped the road where we wanted to do our bike ride tomorrow so that’s out. Ranger said it’s rising 2.5ft per hour and won’t crest until the middle of the night, six hours after the rain stopped.

There’s no trees around us. It’s not as scenic, but I suppose it’s wisdom.

Peace.

It’s Thursday morning and we are the only people in the only open campground on the North Carolina side of Great Smoky Mountains National Park boundaries. It is a cool feeling, not another soul around. Last night we saw a ranger drive through, but before and after that it’s been entirely our place.

Might have something to do with the fact that it’s been raining for two days and is forecast to continue raining for at least another week. Might be because they had the north/south road through the park closed yesterday due to a high wind advisory. Might just be because we’re lucky.

Yesterday evening it started pouring as I was out getting the RV up on the leveling blocks, and it doubled-down as I walked over to leave payment for our site into the envelope drop. Rain was cascading off me. Off the leather hat that kept my face dry, off the jacket that kept (most of) the rest of me dry, and running away in rivulets on the ground.

I think my typical reaction to this may have been frustration, but last night the solitude of the place, the feeling of sole residency and an imagined primacy of discovery, gave me a very contented feeling. I even opted to walk around and explore a little, in the rain, before heading back to to RV. I was wet already, after all.

Oh, and, no cellular, either. Rock on.

I have at least two or three dreams that I’ve had multiple times.

Sometimes I only realize I’ve had the dream before upon having it the most recent time, and when that happens I usually try to write down what I can remember, especially if I wake able to recall an unusual amount of detail, which is rare for me, moreso, it seems, as I get older. Anyway, it happened the other night.

It starts at “work.” Not my real job, but I know it’s where I work. This time it was a grocery store, but I think it’s been an office before.

I find a trail, leading out from some unlikely location, like at the back of Lewis’ magic wardrobe. This time it was through a freezer case in the employees-only back of the store.

The trail leads outside, but, per dreams, it’s not just outside the building I’m in but some altogether different outside. It’s always the same here, a winding trail through patches of high brown grass. Some up and down and so much wind it feels like maybe it’s a high trail, maybe a pass between mountains. But it also threads between little low, and maybe even swampy, patches. In fact in my notes from waking I called a “moor.” Likely because Doyle’s foreboding description of that landscape in Hound of the Baskervilles has always stuck with me.

Eventually I arrive upslope to the backside of an apartment complex which is sitting below and in front of me, like I’m on the edge of a shallow bowl and it’s at the bottom. What I can see is very much like what Jimmy Stewart sees in Hitchcock’s Rear Window, the backs of apartments in neat little squares, windows and sliding doors on balconies. I can see people going about their lives from my vantage, but I don’t think they can see me.

There’s a thinner, less defined trail that goes down into the back courtyard area for the apartments and I take it.

I encounter two guys who are outside on one of the balconies. I remember I’m still a distance away, maybe they’re even on the second floor and I’m on the ground, either way we’re interesting interacting from a distance.

I offer greeting, saying something about having “just moved down the street,” although I know this must sound preposterous as this apartment complex is literally in the middle of nowhere inside my work freezer. Even though I don’t understand it, in my dream my mind strongly knows these guys are “straights,” “squares,” and that they clearly aren’t my type (taken directly from my waking notes).

They both react to my hello with physical doubt, shaking their heads and looking at each other as if to say, “No, you’re not from down the street and we know it.” In the dream I know that they know I’m not from around here and shouldn’t really be here. I’m an interloper in some other place and they’re privy to something I’m not, like how all the knowing extras act in the Truman Show.

I see a third guy, an Indian guy, enter their apartment through the front door, I know he lives across the hall. As he’s crossing the apartment to join them on the balcony he’s removing bandages from his crotch, loudly making a crude joke in accompaniment. I can tell immediately that this guy is the comic relief to this sitcom ensemble, and I like and trust him much more for it. He sees me and asks, snidely, “What the fuck are you doing here?” You can almost hear the canned laugh-track in the background, maybe it was really there. I like him.

All of the sudden an alarm is sounding from everywhere, out of the sky. They hear it and I hear it. They look at me, knowingly again, like I should have a recognition I don’t seem to have, should be conditioned to do something on response to the alarm that I’m not doing. You know when you open the door for a dog to go outside but the dog sits there so you look at it and think something like, “Come on, animal, don’t you know what’s good for you? You should know the drill by now.” They’re giving me that look, waiting for me to realize I’m supposed to be doing something.

Anyway I think I must assume the alarm means I’m to go back, and so I do. Regardless this is the end of the dream, or then end of what I can remember.

Hugs.

Got our first snow of the trip today.

Was on the road getting here, not far from the campground, just before we got on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Great Smoky Mountains National Park is next, and we’re expecting it to be wet as the forecast calls for rain well into next week.

We’re actually as far north now as we’ll be for a while. Next week we dip back south and head into northern Georgia. We’ll explore the Appalachian highlands for a little more than a week then head into Tennessee. I expect more rain, and more cold, but we’ll deal.

In addition to the first snowfall of the trip, we saw real mountains again today. Made me realize that we haven’t seen any appreciable heights since leaving the Guadalupes back in Texas, what feels like forever ago.

It feels good to see the land change. I was getting tired of the sandy soil of the south and it’s nice to see different trees, rivers, and roadways blasted from mountain rock.

It’s also good to be back in the RV after more than a week spent in houses. I’m ready to get back into the middle of some different nowheres, cloistered with the family, warm and dry in the wilderness.

Goodnight.