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The sign read, "A short walk on this easy trail offers close-up views, subtle aromas, and the serene quiet of a protected woodland. You will be walking in one of the last great wildland areas in the East, but you won't need a backpack or hiking boots. Have a seat on a rock or a log bench. The trail has no particular destination, so walk as far as you like and then return." Southern hospitality at its best, even in the middle of a national park with no one else around, welcoming us into the house of the woods. It was a mild enough invitation that beckoned us to the realm of nowhere while knowing that you could forgo it at any time. We heeded its call and took its path as it wended through Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Despite all of the people we had seen coming in and out of the park, the sign was right. It was quiet. No one else but the three of us, a dog and two humans, was anywhere in sight. But as far as views, it was hard to see much of anything other than reams and reams of trees that seemed to have no end. Not that I minded so much about that; the trees themselves offered a view that was not so common in my everyday life back home, which was life devoid of human presence. I don't know how much human influence affected the place through forestry management, man-made wildfires, or pollution on the environment. There probably would be some kind of footprint in there somewhere. But if it weren't for the trail and for the sign, it would almost seem like man had forgotten about this place while conducting business in nearby Gatlinburg. It felt like someone blazed this trail and left the sign as a business card, and that was the last this place had seen of any human beings until we came along and graced its presence. Although I enjoyed hiking, I wasn't much of a naturalist. So it was hard to really place what kind of tree was what. I knew enough of botany to recognize that this place was still deciduous, and that by coming here in early May we were reaping the bounty of full spring bloom at its blazing peak. The area was neither too dry nor too wet. It neither felt like the place would go on fire with one spark from a car nor did it feel like the hills would collapse in a mudslide because it was so wet. The leaves, in this baby bear happy medium of just-right moisture looked full, buoyant, and happy, just like the stereotype of the bright and shiny healthy boy and girl that you'd see advertising any one of many products on an American television commercial. In the mythology of the seasons, the nature around me was still a preteen youth, living out the springtime of its days. Despite that view, this was one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world, in one of the oldest parks in the United States. The leaves blew gently, whether sage in this wisdom of contradictions or naive to them, I didn't know for sure. This was a measure of my own ignorance of what the life around me experienced in its own way, outside of my interpretations. It was interesting, this idea of just having a seat and making yourself at home in the middle of a forest. Walking on the path, which was just as easy as they said it would be, it seemed further away from any kind of home that I had actually lived in. Home in my world meant vehicle traffic, lawn care, and someone, anyone, and everyone complaining about bills. Even the most remote home I had in rural New York had more to do with this kind of concern than getting lost in the hinterland while still feeling at home. In most places I knew, trees were benevolent trinkets until they become annoyances when they fell across power lines and highways during storms. They were the kind of things that neighbors bickered about because roots were on one side of the fence and the tree on the other, or branches crashed from a tree on one property to the garage of the next door neighbor's. Sure, they were part of home. So were ants and property taxes. Trees were only any good when they behaved and stayed in their place. Despite this heritage of trees being something ornamental and necessary only for utility, I felt at home whenever I ran into a copse of trees just about anywhere. Regardless of a culture that told me that life is best lived in buildings doing indoor things that would encourage more indoor things, life felt best lived to me when surrounded by trees or drenched in water. It didn't matter that I was miles away from the place that I called my abode, because I sought refuge in the trees that surrounded me. I don't know what subtle aromas I was supposed to be smelling, but I felt the breath of freedom as I inhaled the oxygen given to me from my surroundings. There was only the silencing of the technology that had transported me here in a matter of days from my home over seven hundred miles away. Seven hundred miles from home, and I felt at home here. A short walk to home is just what I needed to feel the life I was living in. |
