I am not an "outdoorsy" person
, really. I
like to be outdoors when the weather is nice, but I'm not at all athletic and I don't particularly enjoy "roughing it." Which isn't to say I never have. I spent my teenage years living with my family in West Africa and there were a number of, shall we say, off-the-grid experiences. I wasn't always happy about them. Correction: I was almost never happy about them. As it happens, I married a guy who spent his teenage years camping with friends, sleeping on the ground, under the stars. Who would have thought that those
forced marches family hikes and roadside "bathroom" breaks would continue to inform me, all these years later?
Trav and I have been camping with friends every spring and fall for our entire marriage. We don't camp when it's hot. I don't, for the life of me, understand why anyone would. Until now it's always been car camping. Meaning we load every imaginable thing we could possibly want for a single night in the woods into the car, drive to a friend's parents land, load all that junk onto a trailer hitched to a 4-wheeler, hop on and hitch a ride to our long-established sight, which has seen so many campfires that we basically have only to toss on a few branches and light a match. There's no bathroom, but it could hardly be considered primitive. In the morning we cook a big breakfast over the still-blazing coals, load up, and head home to take a shower and a nap.
How then, you ask, did I come to be wearing a 19-pound pack and standing on a bluff on the Cumberland Plateau? The short answer is I love my husband, and he really wanted me to go. Also, while I also love our children more than words can say, I needed a mommy-break. We left early Saturday morning and, after picking up a friend and our brother-in-law, we drove about 2 1/2 hours east to
South Cumberland State Park. We hiked a couple of miles to our campsite, pitched our tents, and then set off to see what else lay along the trail.
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| They are not kidding. |
Travis pulled out his water-purification system and refilled his water bottle from this stream. It was so cold and clear and tasted so clean. My chlorinated tap water from home was far less appealing afterward. This was, by far, the most engineered portion of the trail. There were guide-markers on the trees alongside the path, but not much else in the way of bridges or guard rails.
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| My Indiana Jones moment. |
We walked under so many of these little bluffs with HUGE stones lying beneath them that had fallen. Slightly unnerving, but what are the chances that would happen just as we were passing by? If you know what the odds actually are, please don't tell me. I'm not sure I really want to know.
There were three waterfalls on the trail we hiked on Saturday. Actually, I think there were four, but I was too tired to trek down to the last one. It wasn't a hot day, but the temperature dropped noticeably as we neared them and the spray blowing off the falls was amazing. I was slightly fixated on the variety of mosses clinging to the surrounding rocks and trees. I counted at least 5 on a single tree, each one distinct. I really like moss.
We hiked about 6 miles total on Saturday before returning to our campsite. The immediate area had been picked pretty clean of firewood, but we managed to collect enough to build a small fire to last us a couple of hours. Trav boiled water on his tiny propane stove and prepared a couple of freeze-dried meals for our dinner, we sat around the fire and talked for a while, but we were exhausted, and the fire was dying, so we didn't stay up late. I think we were asleep by 8:30.
Next morning we got up, ate some breakfast (instant cider and Pop Tarts -- the breakfast of champions), broke camp and hit the trail again.
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| I don't know what he is pointing at, but isn't it just what you are supposed to do in this situation? |
This is (at least we think it is) the
Stone Door, one of the most significant features of South Cumberland, and one of the things we were most looking forward to. However, we got confused by the signage at the end of the trail and wound up going on to the Ranger's Station, where we had parked the day before, without seeing it. By the time we saw the sign that read ".7 MI STONE DOOR" with an arrow pointing in the direction from which we had just come, we decided it could wait for a return visit. Which I have no doubt will happen. At one point on Saturday, as I was standing beside the falls, with the mist cooling my face, and the roar of the water in my ears, I turned to Trav and said, with a bit of a lump in my throat, "This is good for my soul." It's a beautiful place, and there are many, many more trails to hike. I'm in. Maybe I am outdoorsy after all?
