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.
