The Smokies redux

Well, once again Adam and I headed to the hills for the Second Annual Adrenaline Weekend, continuing the tradition started by Mr. Daniel Crabtree wherein the participants all travel to some remote location and conduct daring feats of physical exertion. And sit around campfires and tell « stretchers » as Huck Finn call ‘em. Anyway, we got off to our customary early start on Friday, which was sometime after dark, and took the North Carolina route toward Cataloochee ranger station for three days of hiking. The drive up was uneventful, except that we saw a grocery store in North Carolina and decided to turn around and pull in, unaware that we had pulled a U-turn just before reaching a police road block at the intersection ahead. Sure enough, a police cruiser followed us into the parking lot. Since we were actually shopping, they just asked where we were headed and left, although probably keeping an eye on us from an undisclosed location. Who buys milk and eggs (or trail food and pepperoni in our case) at midnight on Friday night? The road block must have had every cop in the county there, probably 20 cars all flashing blue lights--it reminded me of a scene from The Blues Brothers. One of the cops we talked with thought he was pretty funny; too. "Watch out for rattlesnakes up in those hills. They’ll sit there quiet and come after you. Ain’t nothing you can do--they’ll just wait for you and bite ya." Yeah, real funny. And not true. This guy was so used to wallowing in authority that he forgot how to turn it off. Whatever. So after a too-long drive through a dozen winding foothills roads, we arrived at the park and slept in the car for a few hours before waking up and hitting the trail. It was a beautiful day. The mountains were lush, the streams all full and sunlight splashed across the hills. As usual, the rain started that afternoon and soaked us, but by the time we reached Laurel Gap shelter it had stopped. There were two groups staying there, and we decided to set up our tarps outside in case someone with reservations (required at all shelters) showed up. It was a nice evening, chatting with a family from Ohio of all places, while we ate our dinner. Adam and I were nipping on a little whiskey and enjoying ourselves thoroughly, I must say. I think we managed not to alarm or maim anyone, so everything went off well. The next morning it began storming just as we woke up, so we stayed in our tarps and dozed the morning away. Let me just say that it is indescribably pleasant to be tucked into a warm sleeping bag with a good book while mountain rain taps on your tent. I felt lucky to be alive. It wasn’t the last time I would feel that way. Eventually we emerged, had breakfast and headed down the trail toward our next camp, somewhere at the bottom of the mountain. Another stupendous day. We hiked through misty, grass-covered forests, tall fir groves dripping with new rain, along bubbling brooks and mud-filled bogs. At intervals little junkos (birds) would explode from their grass nests at our feet and chide us from nearby branches for invading their turf. We spooked grouse that flew away with strange helicopter-like noises, or someone starting a Harley. We dodged millipedes, snails, newts and slugs that had been using these trails since before we were born. The breeze would pick up at intervals and stir the forests into whispers. Well, when we arrived back at the car that afternoon we decided we weren’t ready to leave. It was just too nice, and we felt too good. We picked out another trail and headed down it, but not until we had spent quite a while ooing and ahhing over spotting several elk that had recently been reintroduced to the park (apparently they used to be abundant but were overhunted in the late eighteenth century). The last four miles of the day were muddy and uphill, and we were glad to arrive at camp, which we did right at dusk. I seem to recall looking up into the night sky as we cooked our noddles alfredo with summer sausage and commenting how it looked like it was going to be a nice night. After all, the stars were out. Upon hindsight, I should have been struck with the irony of that observation, if not the omen-like nature of its utterance, because in the Smokies it always rains, and the frequency and extent of the rain is always in direct proportion to how much gear you have to get wet. Sure enough, about three in the morning the bottom dropped out. I mean dropped out Chicken Little style. I woke up to a crack of thunder, and the sky was like a whirl of strobe lights, lightning flashing every few seconds and the following thunder booming above us and rolling all over the mountains. And then the rain started. I tried to crawl down in my sleeping back and go back to sleep, but it was hopeless--as soon as I shut my eyes another BOOM would resound and shake the campsite, and the rain would pick up and literally beat my tarp senseless. At one point it was like someone was throwing gravel on top of me, the rain was so hard. Luckily none of the lightning hit anywhere near us, but with the howling wind and the torrential rain, I was sure on more than one occasion that either I was going to get swept away by the flooding creek or crushed by a falling oak tree. It was a harrowing evening. And as calculated, the rain poured across the ground under my tarp and I got wet. In fact, it didn’t stop storming until I was good and soaked. Such was my penance. Adam got wet, too--our tarps looked simply pitiful that morning. So we laughed and loaded up and hiked the last mud-soaked five miles out, wishing we had another day. Though I was glad to get back to the car and let my feet dry out from three days of wet funk, I could have easily walked on down another trail, slowing down to try and understand how beautifully time washes across these mountains, covering them in incredible life. We’ll be back soon.