Once Upon a Time ...

I used to hike ... a lot. Nothing too hardcore, backpacked a few times, picked up a few items here and there that are only useful for hiking, but nothing too over the top. I just liked walking in the woods, or fields or anywhere "away" from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, enjoying whatever nature chose to present me with that day.

I hiked a lot with my mother. We used to make an annual trip to the Smoky Mountains National Park every year, usually in the spring. It started with a photo on a calendar of a burbling stream flowing over smooth, moss-covered stones. I showed it to my mother and told her that I would really like to see that in person, and she asked, when did I want to go? Just like that, we started planning a long weekend in Tennessee that turned into an annual trek. The caption on the photograph was just Smoky Mountains National Park, TN, so our excuse for going back every year was that we hadn't found the place in the photo yet.

My father once asked why we kept going back to the same place. With over 850 miles of established hiking trails, it wasn't necessary to set our feet down in the same place twice, but we often did. Either way was enjoyable - discovering new things, rediscovering things we had forgotten, finding new things in old places. I like waterfalls and my mother enjoys big rocks and since these two things are usually found in the same general area, we didn't disagree much about which trails to follow.

Twelve straight years we made the trip, until life got a little too complicated. Which is a bit ironic, considering that the point of hiking is to get away ...