Reality Check - Camping in the Smokies

I was restless yesterday.  Some sort of psychological thorn was festering in my brain and I just had to get out.  So I packed up the car - camping gear, kayaking equipment, etc - ready for the big adventure, and headed out.  I had no idea where I was going.

I pointed the car west - towards Tennessee.  There had to be something exciting there.  I passed the exit to Hartford TN, the whitewater capital, and took the exit for Foothills Highway.  There should have been alarm bells chiming by that point - TURN BACK.  Tourists!!  But the alarm must have been in for repairs, because antisocial me was headed for Gatlinburg.  On a Saturday.  In summer.  Oh God.

I had decided that I wanted to camp at Elkmont campground in the Great Smokies Mountain National Park - very much like the ill-fated decision of two years ago, when I went traipsing off to Yellowstone without reservations.  I drove through the parking lot that was downtown Gatlinburg, got to the Park, only to discover that there not only were no campsites at Elkmont, but for a good 30 miles around.  "It's firefly mating season" they explained.  Oh.  Okay.  That certainly would account for the 25,000 or so visitors that crammed the streets of Myrtle Beach west.  Sure.

I drove to Elkmont anyway and wandered through the campground just to see what it was like.  Very nice facilities, well appointed spaces, very tired concessionaires.  They've been sold out since school let out and have no vacancies until August.  That's a whole lot of fireflies.

As I wandered around the campground, I realized something. For all of my excitement at the prospect of going solo camping in the Smokies, I didn't really want to go camping.  I just wanted to be the person who liked to camp. I wanted to be the family with two kids who reveled in the outdoors.  The solitary woman who you see sitting at the door of her tent, calmly reading a book and sipping a large glass of tea. That guy with the awesome dog standing by the stream poised to toss a stick.  I wanted to be those people.  What I wanted was to be a picture straight out of Outside Magazine. 

In my mind, I want to be the outdoorsy type: kayak the falls and camp at the rim of the Grand Canyon, and run a triathlon looking stylish and healthy.  I want to be the person who loves that life.  What I am, however, is an out of shape 56 year old with serious health problems and a stellar imagination.  Rafting causes blistering headaches.  Kayaking leaves me crippled for days.  The last time I went camping, I lay awake all night in my tent listening for bears or mountain lions or errant psychopaths who may have singled out my tent for their next crime.  The next morning I couldn't get out of bed because both knees are damaged from frequent falls. They don't mention that part in the Outside magazine ads.

So, I left Elkmont and my dream of camping, and decided to drive the highway between Gatlinburg and Cherokee.  That beautiful stretch of land that winds past the Chimneys and over the ridge.  It was packed with motorcycles and construction and a whole lot of tourists who had never seen trees before.  You could not even hear the wildlife for all of the vehicular calls of the wild.  I turned back.  I'd had enough of wilderness for one day, so I drove back home, discouraged and out of sync.  When the interstate is a more pleasurable than the back roads, it's time to change your route.

The good news is that the restlessness had subsided.  I had plucked the thorn from my festering brain and returned to my cottage calm and content.  I was happy to crawl into my makeshift bed, watch reruns of Wander Woman (sic) and let the sun sink slowly over the mountains.  Eat your heart out, ye model from Backpacker magazine.  I will be drinking espresso from my Keurig machine this morning while you are looking around for firewood and all the pieces of the coffee pot that you packed away last fall.

Try not to kick the cat

Sleep is a precious thing, for it is during sleep that we rejuvenate aging minds and heal aching bodies. We allow our overactive brains to wander through the landscape of dreams, unfettered by rules or reality.  In many homes, sleep is defined by time and place. You go to your bedroom, crawl onto what you hope is a decent mattress, pull up the covers, turn out the last bit of light, then nod off into luscious slumber.

In our house, the usual rules do not apply.  Each evening, we go about the usual business of preparing for bed. The ritual goes like this: sometime around 7 pm, we lock the pet door so the cat can’t go outside.  This keeps him from bringing in live playmates after dark, and prevents him from getting into territorial wars with the feral cat community up the hill.

At roughly 9 pm, all outside doors are locked, blinds are drawn, and the dog is allowed to go outside one more time.  This step is critical; the dog has no particular desire to go out, but if she does so, she knows she will get one more treat for the evening.  So she dutifully goes out the door and stands on the deck for the requisite amount of time, then comes back in for a little snack.  So why go through the ritual? By feeding the dog at night, we are allowed to sleep until at least 4:30, when she starts to get hungry. Or wants to go out. Or gets bored.

The cat, on the other hand, abides by no such rules.  He wanders around the house looking for the warmest bed to sleep on, then settles in for the night – usually in the exact spot where you would place your feet when you sleep.  Cats can be rather perverse in that way.  If you are reading, they sleep on the paper.  Laptops are particularly comfortable when you are trying to write. And beds (or chairs) must be chosen according to the most likely place someone will want sleep or sit. 

After the doors are locked and the dog has been bribed for another night, the house settles down for what we hope will be a quiet night of sleep.  Mom crawls under her covers, often disturbing the cat from his perch on her small twin bed.  After some complaining and a few dirty looks, the cat jumps down and wanders into my room.  I choose to sleep in larger bed, so there is a chance that our feline fiend can go unmolested there.  Not so, as this devil incarnate inevitably chooses to sleep exactly where I put my feet each night.  Rather than anticipating a night of joyously peaceful slumber, I steel myself for what will most likely be a long, arduous, and often bloody battle for space.

When I prepare for bed, I usually have to move the cat to the other side. He grumbles and jumps down.  In a few minutes, he jumps back up, only to lie on my feet. This irony is not obvious, unless you know from experience that the cat will not abide any movement while he is trying to rest.  “Skittish” pales against level of reaction this cat can show when he is startled.  [Think cartoon cats with claws imbedded in a cellulose ceiling.]  I move him again.

Once dethroned from my feet the second time, the cat goes on the offensive, claws extended, eyes wide, imagining that under the covers lie monsters or villains or really large mice.  He pounces, attacks with bunny kicks, rolls in his best Monday night Smackdown moves, trying to remove my feet from his bed.  In the end, he tires, and settles down on the other side of the mattress until time for his 3 am ablutions.

You would think that the simplest answer would be to close the door against invasion; the house shows scars of our attempts at exile.  The carpet under each door is worn from the insistent clawing, scratching, and mewling of our nocturnal nemesis.  So we sacrifice sleep, silently hoping that the house will still be standing the next morning, rather than in tattered shreds.  We each find a place where our dreams come freely, and our bodies can rest. We fluff our pillows, adjust our sheets…and try not to kick the cat. 

Not your average kid

I wasn't your average American kid.

I never had the happily ever after family

With 2 parents, 2.4 kids and a dog.
There was never a white picket fence,
And Saturday birthday parties were never filled 
With crinoline and lace and party favors.
Most of my friendships were short lived.
We moved a lot.

Every year was a new face and a new place; 

A new space to call our own.
By the age of six I was a foreigner
Living in a foreign land with foreign friends
The child of war and a product of the 60s.
Living in Post-war cinderblock compounds 
With a Thai maid and modern conveniences
In a country where half of the houses had no running water
And the other half lived on riverine cesspools

I joined the military and saw the world

Surrounded by young men with rifles
Juke joints and head shops and tattoo parlors.
Every Navy base in the world looked the same
Except for the signs, which were always written
in a language I had to  learn.
I can order beer in 7 languages,
And find the bathroom in 6.
I try not to drink beer in the seventh place.

I still haven't learned to settle down.
When it’s time to transfer, I pack up my dolls and my teapots

and my photos of places long forgotten
And move from town to town
Trying to outrun my demons and my fears
and the ghosts of Christmases past.
 
Like Scrooge’s dreams, I carry the unsettling  memories of life
The back of a hand coming out of nowhere
The unprovoked, raging scream over spilled milk
The bombshells of divorce and separation and reunification.
The terror of a brain I could not trust
The neurosis and paranoia and fear
That only the unfettered mind can produce.
Artillery and terrorists of my own making.

Homeless couture

I saw a homeless guy today wearing a university sweatshirt, and it prompted some questions.

(1) If he went to that university, how did he end up on the street? What circumstances landed him there?  I know that without family, there are a few times I would have been homeless because of my illness.  It is a sobering thought. Was he once a "player" who lost at the game?  I never assume that because someone is homeless that they are incapable of being anything else.

(2) If he didn't go to that school, did he choose that shirt on purpose?  Would he have worn the sweatshirt if it represented a rival for his favorite team?  How choosy would you be if it was the only thing you could find to wear?  Would you turn it inside out so the logo didn't show?

Come on, UNC fans,  Would you rather wear the Duke sweatshirt or freeze?  :)

Archaeology, genealogy, and digging for the wrong truths

One of my guilty pleasures is watching reruns of old documentaries. My particular favorites include Time Team (UK) and Digging for the truth (US), both fun to watch and remarkably campy at times. I don't mind a little frivolity in the name of commercialization, but bad data really bugs me.

Recently, I watched an episode where Josh Bernstein, supposed archaeology wunderkind, tried to track down a connection between Jesus Christ and the Merovingian royal line - a premise first introduced to the American public via The DaVinci Code (Dan Brown). The idea of a connection between the two lines is interesting, and Brown wrote a convincing story.  But when "Digging for the Truth" went looking for verification, they dug in the wrong spot. 

Bernstein went jetting all over Europe and Middle East to get DNA samples for comparison.  He chose a number of people from present day Galilee and Jerusalem, then went looking for the Merovingian connection.  The only identifiable body from the Merovingian crypt was that of one Queen Aregund, wife of Clotaire.  "Digging for the Truth" spent a lot of time and money getting DNA samplings and testing for this project, but I could have told them not to bother.  Aregund married into the Merovingian line. She was not a descendent of the line, but a spouse.  So of course, her DNA did not match.  Apparently "Digging" didn't have anyone on the staff who knew anything about DNA, genealogy, or common sense.  But then, it's only  meant to be entertainment, right?

Life interruptus. Chiari Type I. Symptoms/More information

As you can imagine, I have done a lot of reading since I got that call from my physician. There are so many symptoms associated with a Chiari Malformation. Over the last few days, I have made my own list of weird complaints that had no apparent cause. Here are the symptoms I suspect are related (in no particular order):

Memory loss
Difficulty completing sentences
Garbled speech
Attention issues
Sensitivity to light and sound
Double vision
Vertigo
Tinnitus
Unexplained pain in hands
Headaches
Optical migraines
Neck pain/stiffness
Scoliosis
Sleep issues
Irregular heartbeat
Slow heart rhythm
Frequent falls
Unable to stand being too cold or too hot

There are probably more. To find out more about Chiari Malformation, check out some of these websites. I have found them very helpful.

Patient Handbook. Chiari and Syringomyelia Foundation. http://csfinfo.org/education/patient-information/cm-and-sm-handbook/

Conquer Chiari. http://www.conquerchiari.org/index.html

Mayo clinic.  http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/chiari-malformation/basics/definition/con-20031115 

National Institute of Health.  http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/chiari/chiari.htm

American Syringomyleia & Chiari Alliance Project. http://asap.org/

The Chiari Institute (New York) http://www.chiariinstitute.com/chiari_malformation.html