Thanksgibbying 2013

                November has been my least favorite month for some time now.  Classes come to a culmination during this time with the end not yet in sight, and the late nights feel later as sunlight becomes scarcer.  Cold weather takes root for winter and for some reason my love life always seems to as bare as the trees (I partially want to get married in November just to send a royal gesture to the pagan god of November, who requires a sacrifice of my romantic interests before entering every year).  Thanksgiving has always been a welcome respite as my least favorite month comes to an end.

                This year however, the pattern seemed to be reversed.  The first week started out poorly but suffice it to say that things were not headed in the proper direction, and I felt cornered.  I have learned recently that we are rarely as victimized as we believe and I was able to maneuver into a better place than I likely was even in the golden month of September.  That turnaround is still being written I feel, but I’ll update you on it as I can.  November wasn’t everything I wanted but there was plenty of goodness to be had.  The vigor of the week made the days long, tiring, and rewarding. My only hard moments would come during the weekends when I often found myself alone.  There was of course ward activities and basketball games and plenty of fun opportunities to be had, but I still felt alone, especially on quiet Sundays.

                Along with the reversal of November fortunes, there came a strange dread of the Thanksgiving holiday.  I love where I work and my co-workers and classmates.  I love the projects I am working on and the new experiences I have near-daily.  I didn’t want to have a holiday.  I didn’t want to feel alone.  This dread built as the holiday got closer, and in the end I decided to do what all of us want to do when confronted by something difficult.  I decided to run away.

                As if to throw any ghosts that might trail me off track, I posted on facebook earlier in the week that I would be going on a trip to the Carolina Coast over the holiday and would love any suggestions.  I had full intention of going to the Coast at the time but the night before I heard a voice telling me “Go West, Young Man”.  Thursday morning I packed three sandwiches, one ham, one pb&j, and one more containing the only turkey that this Thanksgiving would offer.  I got in the 4Runner and armed with an iphone and desire to unturn a few rocks I headed off.

                I had previously googled hiking trails near Asheville and Grandfather Mountain popped up.  I thought I had heard of that before so I typed that in my GPS and was off.  After listening to the radio and a normal Simmons/Kerr NBA podcast I soon found something that was perfect for the spirit of distraction and randomness that I hoped would pervade the trip, a two part podcast by Bill Simmons and friends discussing conspiracy theories in honor of the 50^th anniversary of the JFK assassination.  I learned so much that I immediately forgot with the exception of the fact that we live in a strange, strange, world.

                I approached Boone NC, home of Appalachian State University, and turned onto the Blue Ridge Parkway because I had heard of that before and it was in the general direction I wanted to go.  I soon found a winding mountain road with a light dusting of snow just worrisome enough to make me switch into four-wheel drive.  I travelled along this mountain highway and came on my first stop because it was there:

The fire hydrant is a case of anachronism but the Western Carolina mountains were the Loire Valley of the early 20^th century American elites.  Houses such as this one with their own private lakes

Dot the mountain roads, some are maintained by the families and some are maintained by the state.  Others simply fall into disarray as I witnessed as well, fragile and firm reminders that all that is wealth passes on.

                Not much further down the road the parkway was closed due to weather.  This forced me to improvise I travelled in a generally eastward direction with the intention of making it to grandfather mountain but in no particular hurry.  I found myself driving along a river and decided it was worth getting out and admiring.

The river was cool enough but there were some particularly cool icicles that formed from water dripping off of low lying branches and forming broad frozen surfaces across the slow moving water along the banks.  Here is a branch I broke off,

And here is one of those icicles that I decided would make a good first Christmas ornament for a nearby fir tree.

After this carefree diversion I decided it was best to get on the road again.  I drove past dozens of mountain homes with smoke exiting from the chimneys and what I presume were family members entering into warm Thanksgiving dinners.  It looked very nice and desirable, but was not what fate had allotted me this year.  Fate had brought me something different.

No not that. (The sign was referring to ski rentals fyi)

That.  It turns out that my destination based on some vague recollection of something I had heard about once upon a time was THE top scenic destination for the Carolinas.  Don’t you just love the quotation marks?  How did I ever get to be so lucky?  Who needs turkey when you can BE the turkey?  I pulled up to the mountain and it was closed.  How you close a mountain is beyond me but they did it.  Normally one needs to pay at the entrance and then is able to drive up this mountain and see a view and a few other manmade attractions.  Normally this would pose a moral quandary for me, do I support the dilution of natural beauty by inappropriate commercialism, or deprive myself of what could otherwise be neat experience?  (For the record, I only pretend to be this opinionated.  Maybe this would have been a dilemma in the past but now it is just a fun act, kind of like hating Nickleback.)  For future travelers, there are trailheads that go to the same locations that are part of the state park service and free, but they are accessible by the Blue Ridge Parkway as far as I could tell, which, as aforementioned, was closed in this area due to weather.

Fortunately the park was completely closed for Thanksgiving and in the Pilgrim spirit I decided to forge ahead into lands that I probably didn’t belong in.  The gates were locked to cars but I was able to walk around the gates.  Shortly after entering I encountered a sign that said “No Walking”.  I decided that they were right.  I had spent a lot of in the car and it was probably best that I get a little exercise.  I ran up to the top of the hill.  Along the way I passed a sign that said elevation 5000 ft.  I almost decided to take a picture and send it to my family with the emotional caption, “I’m making my way home one vertical foot at a time!” My phone was almost dead however so I decided to hold off on pictures until I made it down again safely.  I got to the top of the parking lot where there was a lovely view of the mountain, the “World’s Largest Swing Bridge!” and the start of the trail head.  There were several signs that warned how difficult the trail was.  I pshhed them off.  I am an experienced hiker and no liability deferring sign was going to tell me otherwise.

I made my way along the trail moving slowly over icy boulders in traction-worn running shoes when I came upon a sign telling me I had gone a whopping 0.4 miles along the trail.  Not deterred I moved forward until the trail became a solid sheet of ice going over rolling terrain.  I used my last bit of battery to record this picture so that people would understand that this was not a case of me being a pansy but a deliberately calculated assessment of the risks involving no phone, little food, limited clothing, and the fact that I probably wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place.  I turned around and my difficulty moving back up the icy slope confirmed that I had indeed made the correct decision.

I reentered the parking lot with the intention of going and checking out the swinging bridge when to my chagrin I saw a car idling in the corner of the parking lot.  I turned immediately downhill and just started walking.  As soon as I left the line of vision of the car I started to run.  Partially for fun and partially because I was afraid my car would be towed at the bottom.  People who make a living off of attractions are understandably very protective of their property.  On the way down I passed an overlook that was fittingly named “Forrest Gump Overlook”.  I also passed by a rock that a sign said was 640 million years old!  According to the first google hit that is perhaps as old as animal life itself!  I decided that I needed to take a break from my run in order to leave my mark.  I mean I don’t want some future species thinking that dinosaurs had the last say!

I got back down to my car and headed on out.  I decided I needed to find a power outlet before I could continue on my journey so I headed to the nearest town which was named Blowing Rock.  It was a nice tourist stop with a well gardened city hall, a nice park full of families taking a traditional Thanksgiving stroll, and shops closed for the holiday.  I was strolling through and noticed that the city hall had some Christmas lights, and where there are lights there is…

An outlet! We are back in business!  I let my phone charge here for a little while and wandered, within eyesight of my phone which was hidden in the tree, looking at the shops.  I soon discovered to my surprise that one shop was open!  I soon found myself sitting in a candy store with my phone plugged into the wall greeting customers as they perused the novelty sodas I was sitting directly in front of. 

As one could imagine business was a little slow and one of the workers started making conversation with me.  Turns out this was a family business and they were keeping the doors open until 5pm before having their Thanksgiving dinner.  I told her where I was from and she responded, “That explains your accent!” In want I would describe as a Georgia drawl.  This caught me off guard despite the fact that it makes perfect sense that I would be the one with an accent in these parts.  We talked about life and her family and a little bit of nothing.  I enjoyed the company but after a while started to feel as if I ought to move on.  Of course it would have been rude for me to simply get up and leave after the hospitality so I bought some malt balls.  I kind of like malt balls, they are delicious at first the flavor gets overwhelming a little fast in my opinion.  My mother really likes malt.  I guess it made me feel just a little bit closer to home to have some malt balls.

The plan was to head to Asheville, catch a movie since there wasn’t much else to do in the dark anyways, and spend the night.  I got to the theatre in time to buy a single ticket to Catching Fire and promptly turned around in search of Thanksgiving dinner.  I had already eaten my sandwiches and packed items and needed something more.  I ventured into Wal-Mart which was boiling in Black Friday excitement and had a McDonald’s open.  I ordered a chicken wrap and sandwich as those seemed closer to turkey than anything else and left the hectic mess to make it back to the movie just in time.

                I enjoyed Catching Fire.  There are plenty of good reviews online by people much more film savvy and intelligent than I so I won’t say much about that and no plot spoilers.  In the beginning of the movie however, I couldn’t help but watch Petah and wonder what he was doing.  Yes Katniss is awesome, but well just let by gones be by gones. I mean you don’t have to be rude to her, but really why should you care what her favorite color is? (Weird thing about that scene is my two favorite colors are sunset orange and forest green, and I always describe them with those noun modifiers.  I guess I’m just a cliché.) Petah you are an awesome guy and you should just accept that, as outwardly cool as Katniss is, and as cute as she looks in those braids, she is the one missing out, not you and if she doesn't want to be with you it just isn’t worth all this stress.   Somewhere through this internal dialogue I reached in my pocket and pulled out a malt ball and cursed the god of November under my breath.

My night ended in the Econolodge not far from the Biltmore estate.  I don’t have much tradition attached to Thanksgiving, but pumpkin pie is one of them.  I wasn’t especially hungry but tradition is tradition, so I ended my day by sticking a couple of fingers in a store bought pie before collapsing into a deep nonfood-induced thanksgiving slumber.

                I’ll finish off this by backtracking a little.  Most the time it is useful to live in the present, but there are times when it is best to live beyond the present. Thanksgiving is usually about family and I have to say it was a little hard to be out there on my own, but towards the end of the day I was able to transcend that. The day had been wonderful and the only way it could have been better would have been to share it with someone that I have a family and grow old with.  I know it’ll come, and I’m in no rush but the eventuality is comforting.  Maybe next year, or the year after that, but for sure someday, I’ll have someone in the passenger seat (Or she can drive if she wants) belting out the words along to some song with me, or just laughing at me as I turn up the music to cover up my utter disregard for harmony.  And knowing that moment exists at some point in time was enough to make this moment,

be a taste of that moment.