In the Beginning There Was the Great Smoky Mountains

Why on earth would I want to go out into the woods, alone, as a woman? Because I've had my Junior Ranger Badge for decades, people!!!

I wish I could upload memories and print them. My hiking, camping and general mountain love affair began while I was still in the womb, a tradition I proudly imparted on my three unsuspecting progeny. It's almost like I sprouted straight up out of the Great Smoky Mountains. My mind is full of childhood tent camping trips with the family station wagon stuffed so full with gear and mildewy foam mattresses that my sister and I were smash-faced into the windows staring into the midnight sky as we made the red-eye drive across the state...on a whim of a random Friday night. There were many planned trips too, but oooh the excitement of deciding basically at bedtime that the mountains were calling... There is simply nothing better than to wake up to the sun peaking thru the fog over those peaks. Those were the days of striped knee high socks, scrunchies, and jellies...before Ripley believed it or not, before Dolly was in the woods, when a pop-up shelter was a tarp and a rope.

Oh the things I've seen...black bears rocking cars back and forth hoping to shake the funny looking vending machine lose of it's goods, a bicycle around the Cades Cove Loop with no-joke ONE speed, jumping off the cliffs at the Sinks, earning my Junior Ranger Badge, skipping endless piles of rocks, walking hundreds of half miles at the Little River wye rapids chafed with a black ring from a tractor tire inner tube because my father was NOT paying to rent a "neon colored pool float", hikes to every single trickle of a waterfall, Clingman's Dome in every variation of fogginess, the mange bear in Cherokee, NC and nature talks lit by fireflies.  I guess you could say I came into a young womanhood while playing in the mountains, or at least I graduated to Teva's and puca shell necklaces. I still love campfire smoke, ears popping, the smell of hot brake pads, and honking in tunnels.

Despite the changing seasons of life, the mountains continue to call. Thank you for reading, and I hope my little adventures inspire you to leave your could-have's, would-have's and should-have's behind. Come get lost in the would's with me...

Yours,
Chicken