Tag: Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Finally Lost

Finally Lost

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Living near the Great Smoky Mountain National Park gives many opportunities for walking, for hiking. One of the trail apps on my phone lists over 500 miles of trails within an hour’s drive of home; however, I admit I’m quite fond of one section of the park only eight miles from my home. 

Two or three times a week I explore trails at this popular area. Tourists visit for the three easily-accessed waterfalls and most do not stray from those areas so a solitude-lover can find peace by walking past the waterfalls…usually. On busy weekends there are those tourists that feel the call of the forest beckoning and walk deeper into the woods.

On multiple occasions people have stopped and asked me, on these back trails, if the path they were walking on lead back to the parking lot. Some have small children with them, others are adults out for a ramble. It always concerns me that people wander past a chosen destination and keep walking without knowing where they are going…how long or steep a trail is, where it goes, if it loops back or continues 15 miles to the other side of the park. I cannot imagine heading off on an unknown walking trail with no idea where it led. It seems a bit dangerous and careless.

The other day I was on a new trail and found the signing was not that great. I knew the area but not that particular trail. There were intersections with no signage and the trail was not a gentle trail in places. I pulled out my phone and thankfully the Gaia trail map app gave me the exact location and I navigated with ease. The arrow showed me where I was and when I came to an intersection I could effortlessly choose the correct way forward. Because the trail was only about 5 miles in a loop, I could have easily backtracked out if I had taken a wrong turn–had the app not worked. 

Years of cave diving taught me to notice every turn, every intersection and that training comes in very handy when navigating any adventure. And like diving in a cave, I want a map so I know where I am and where I am going.

That’s the ideal, right? Multiple times I have given directions to people who have no clue where they are and my judgmental little head shakes after we pass and they walk on, assured by a random woman that they weren’t lost. I did have a bit of fun recently when a couple asked where they were and I said, “Oh, you’re halfway to Gatlinburg now.” Their faces dropped and their eyes got big. “No, no!! I’m just kidding. Just take a right at the next two intersections and the trail will take you to your car.” I don’t think they appreciated my warped sense of humor.

In the greater scheme of life, how well can we know where the path of life will lead? Some people chart their path early on and deliver a neat, forward progression that fits their early goals; but, I suspect for most of us, the adventure of life can be rather messy at times with no real guarantee that the final destination will be the hoped-for ‘parking lot.’ 

Other folks might hear the call of life but feel too afraid to risk being lost. What if the path they take leads to an unknown intersection. Then what? What if they take the wrong path? So they never listen to the call of adventure, of life asking them to take a risk. They stay in their nice little ruts and are happy. And that’s perfectly okay. It really is.

And then there are those who live in a place of listening and act from that place. These are the ones that wander down life’s trails not knowing where they go. It seems a bit risky but if they stay present, there will be guides along the way. Signs, maps or a person who can give direction. 

In an outdoor shop in Sylva, near where I live, I recently saw a tee shirt with a graphic of a hiker and a dog and the mountains in the distance. The wording was simple–Finally Lost. Inside myself I heard profound silence as I felt the reverberation of that message.

On trails I am careful and like to know where I’m going, thus the phone app and collection of maps on my bookshelf. In life, there’s one guiding-light-question that I depend on in my journey–Where is my soul calling? Do I have the courage to trust the answers that come and trust there will be signs and guides along the way? If so, I am perfectly okay not knowing how this adventure ends, where it ends and in fact finding myself finally lost. 

When we surrender to the Unknown, we allow the unlimited potential that infuses life to be fully available so we creatively build a life that sparkles and vibrates with amazing richness. It’s our choice. Always.
The Magic of Memories

The Magic of Memories

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The other day a friend of mine commented how a video on the Fontana Lake Cleanup brought back such good, childhood memories for him. As my canine companion, Buddy, and I walked at Deep Creek today I reflected on my happiest childhood memory.

My immediate family, mom’s sister and her family, grandparents, aunt and uncle and another extended family went to the Smokies together…14 of us in total. One day in particular was amazing. My cousins, brother and I went tubing on Deep Creek. The water was so cold yet I couldn’t bring myself to get out. Our parents were watching from the picnic tables and we were having a big time.

Before my dad got sick and before all of the adulting there was this magical time in the mountains that became my most treasured memory of family.

When I was feeling the pull back to the mountains, I was trying to find a place around Asheville, where I had lived before, or Black Mountain and there was absolutely nothing that worked. My house in Alabama was getting attention but nothing was working out for a sale. For over 18 months I looked and looked and couldn’t believe the dumps with high prices for sale around Asheville. 

So I finally got a contract on my home and had to find a place. As I drove past the sign for Dillsboro, Sylva and Cherokee on my way to Asheville, I heard a question: Where did you always want to live as a child? But I was worried that living an hour away from Asheville would be difficult and too scary to start over…again…far from everyone I knew. But as it happened, a cousin saw my social media post about looking once again in the Asheville area for a home and he said, You gotta meet our cousin in Sylva. And in the end, it was that question I heard that opened my mind to hearing what my Sylva cousin had to say about the area.

Yesterday I sat at the dining table in my little cabin and gazed out at the mountain ridge of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. I live here, I said aloud. My childhood dream realized. Eight miles via the back way into the Deep Creek area from my door…that’s how close I live to my happiest childhood memory.

It’s hard to always know what calls us to certain places. But this time around, I felt I owed it to myself to align with the happiest place I remembered. My love for the area grows as I celebrate my one year anniversary here in five days. There are other reasons I’m here and I’ll share those in another blog, but for today I’m smiling at those treasured, magical memories. 
the simple things

the simple things

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When life is finished for each of us I predict the simple things will be what we treasure. The time the sunrise was pink and lavender; the morning the clouds were cotton candy pink; the time the spotted dolphin brought her baby up to me and used sonar to vibrate my headache away; the humpback whale that did yoga with me before sunrise 90 miles off the coast of the Dominican Republic; the moment I held my daughter for the first time; that time I lived through what I thought I couldn’t.

I wonder why we tend to make life much more complicated than it needs to be. Why we accumulate ‘stuff’ and work so hard to get more when the accumulated ‘stuff’ isn’t what builds the real foundation of a full and amazing life. At least it isn’t for me.

The bull elk stood and made eye contact with me…or was it the cow in the meadow? It doesn’t matter….all I know is how my heart felt when we were face-to-face.

That time the manatee rolled and farted…who could forget that? I snorted so much water in my flooded mask from laughing and this dead-pan ‘little’ friend just carried on gazing into his own beautiful reflection in my dome port. Now that’s a good memory.

The accumulation of stuff requires so much energy that there’s little left over to actually enjoy life.

The investment I’ve made has been more in travel and exploring. My grandfather told me a couple years before he died that his one regret was not traveling when he and my grandmother were healthy enough to go. So I took his advice to heart and used money he gifted me through his death to travel to many places. That has brought joy and filled my heart with gratitude.

I remember sitting at a burial tomb in Ireland with nobody else around because it started raining. I sat there and played a newly-purchased Irish low whistle with gratitude to the ancestors. I witnessed clouds roll around the small area and the storm parted as if in response to my acknowledgment. I won’t ever forget that.

It was worth arising long before sunrise to drive to an overlook in the Smoky Mountain National Park to witness pink and lavender skies. As I invest in connecting with Nature with my heart and whole self I find richness filling my life in ways a fat bank account never could. It’s really that simple for me.
The Sound…

The Sound…

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The sound of water flowing over rocks was the first thing I noticed as I opened the door. Before I put my foot on the wet pavement the wonderful sound ahhhhhhhhhhhhhgreeted me and began to unwind me from the inside out.

It had been nearly two weeks since I walked at this water-place, this sacred place. The things that kept me away from this flow seemed important. I had been working election setup in my county, working in my yard, going to Asheville to walk at Biltmore gardens, attending online yoga teacher training…all great things but I was starting to become tight and felt my body gripping and unhappy to be boxed in.

As I walked I wondered…is the water making the sound as it contacts the friction of the rock or is this the sound of rocks laughing as water tickles them as it rushes down, down, down.

Walking nearly every day at a place it’s easy to allow the sounds to blend into a background hum but when we are absent and return those things that stand out to new visitors greet us again and we are re-aquainted with their wonder.

In this area of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park the sound of water is never far away. In fact, you have to really work hard to find a place where there isn’t some sound of water….rushing, roaring, dripping, tinkling, booming.

As the trail moved away from the creek…all the crescendos and percussion and the ahhhhhhhhsound of water faded a bit and then there was birdsong. Birds were awaking from slumber and sweetly welcoming the day with singing and insects of the night still vibrated and sang under the dense cloud cover and mist. All these sounds touched some part of my being and created an invitation to relax.

When I lived in coastal Alabama I had a front porch that was my yoga practice space. At night I would go outside and sit in the darkness and listen. Chirps, drones, peeps of tree frogs, pond frogs and toads vibrated the space along with crickets, cicadas, grasshoppers and katydids. The chorus would immediately put me in an altered state of calm and stillness. During my nightly sessions I heard an inner voice remind me that these sounds help balance humans and when we cut ourselves off from the sounds of nature we become out of whack–off center, off balance.

Finally, after the vibrations and sounds helped unwind that inner spring, I noticed I was smiling. It wasn’t a smile simply on my face but my heart was smiling and every cell of my body was smiling. To be in this rich symphony of nature sounds is healing.

The sound of water rushing over rocks….purveyor of bliss.