A little before 5am on the morn of my 42nd
birthday, I left the Cataloochee Valley. The Catalooch, as it is locally known,
is in Great Smoky Mountains National Park and, moreover, it’s where I currently
live. This secluded valley is visited by a tiny minority (~thousands) of the
million-strong throngs who explore more well-known sites along the main thoroughfare
of the park.
I wanted to honor my tradition of getting high (uh, in terms
of elevation, that is) on my birthday, and doing so meant that I would have to
venture to those locations more familiar to the tourist crowds. In fact, the
high point I sought is one of the most famous places in the Smokies, aside from
Dollywood: Clingman’s Dome.
I had hoped to watch the sunrise from Clingman’s, which
explains why l strove to reach the trailhead before 6:45am. Alas, although the
2+ hour drive to Newfound Gap was bathed in morning glow, the Dome was shrouded
in fog so thick that I couldn’t see across the parking lot. I drowsed in my
truck for an hour waiting for the fog to show some hint of surrender, but it
only seemed to grow heavier. The booming, disembodied voices of obnoxious
groups of college kids and families pierced the gloom. Touring motorcycles
appeared and disappeared, trailing the musical choices of the Harley-mounted dentists
and contractors through the mist. Some people appeared to be hiking up the
trail to the dome itself, a structure known for both its position on the
mountain and its gaudy tackiness. I don’t know what those intrepid day-trippers
expected to see; I suspected that the experience of being in the dome would
have been akin to being wrapped in wet cotton.
I finally gave up and drove away from the parking area. As I lost elevation, the dripping fog began
to lessen. I stopped briefly at the dedication site, where Franklin D. Roosevelt
officially proclaimed the existence of Great Smoky Mountains National Park back
in 1941, watching tendrils of fog drift among the green ridges visible all
around. I wound my way ‘down the
mountain’, as we say here in the Smokies, stopping at a few short nature trails
and spots of interest. I relaxed next to a stream, watched a man back his F-150
into his wife’s minivan while trying to park in a picnic area, honked in panic at
inattentive people drifting into my lane over the double yellow line – in other
words, I had a typical national park experience.
Having entered the park at the south end of 441, in the casino-funded
town of Cherokee, NC, I decided to exit in that most ‘gatewayish’ of the infamous
gateway communities, Gatlinburg, Tennessee. I had an ulterior motive in doing
so – I could stop in and do some quick shopping while most people were still
standing in line at the pancake houses. One
stop was the Nantahala Outdoor Center. Without going into icky details, I had
realized that one of my hydration bladders was supporting what threatened to
become intelligent life and I planned to pick up a cleaning kit from the NOC.
While in the NOC, I fell into discussion with an older
staffer about various gear and gizmos, as we men of the outdoors are prone to
do. As we talked about the usefulness of various devices for designed to signal
for help, this fellow chanced to mention that he was careful about such things,
because he sometimes guided less-than-capable folks into the woods and he had
to be conscious of his MS.
I was intrigued by his mention of our shared disease, and we
talked more. He was a former attack helo pilot (he flew ‘snakes’, which I
suspected meant AH-1 Cobras or variants). His tours in Vietnam and that
technology likely put him a little beyond my father’s age; he was also an ‘SF’
medic. That means Special Forces – I presumed Army – in the acronym-filled and
often unpretentious parlance of the infantry-based Spec Ops community. In sum, then, this old guy was a badass who
had seen and done a great deal but didn’t see the need to brag too much.
I told him that I was in the same boat, medically speaking.
We chatted about this confusing, crippling disease for a few minutes. He said
that he was a ‘reader’ – he started reading about MS after his diagnosis but
almost immediately stopped. I call myself a ‘researcher’ – I too, delved into
the research about MS, but quickly quit:
there is, simply put, not a lot of good news out there. Neither of us
wanted to read the obligatorily horrible stories of tragedy and disability, and
lives destroyed.
His combat medic background allowed him to rationally dismiss
the MS theories about milk allergies, plastic exposure, or bee sting cures,
just as my EMS training led me to do. He’d been diagnosed more than 30 years
ago, and he just kept doing what he wanted to do and hoping for the best.
Jesus, I thought
as I stood there leaning on the GPS cabinet, surrounded by wealthy tourists
buying over-priced backpacks and bear bells. This man is the only other person I’ve met with this damn disease who’s
acting like me.
Two . . ahem . . mature men who’ve spent our lives doing
things, sometimes tough things, outside the norm. No picket fences, no IBM or
WalMart health plans, no 401k. More than that, we continued this wandering life
in the face of the staggering uncertainty that MS uses to crush many people.
We each ignored the wacko theories, tried to dismiss the ubiquitous bad MS
news, worked to stay in good health, and kept on pushing ourselves. We had a
good bit in common, this stranger and I.
We said farewell and I went on my way. I reflected that our 10-minute
conversation had taken place amid kayaks, backpacks and compasses, parts of a
lifestyle that some people tell me I can’t have any more. Well, they told this
man the same thing – decades ago. His plan worked for him into his 70s, and so
I take this random, unexpected experience as validation of my hopes that my
plan will work for me. I listened to Kasey Chambers on the way home and decided
to squeeze some more travel into my future.
