Sentimental Sunday- Hiking no more?

OK, I bought into the Sentimental Sunday posts by the Geneabloggers group. I don't know how I am going to transfer this post to the list of entries by other bloggers, but I will eventually find out- one of these Sundays.

I spent a couple of hours this morning reading the Sentimental entries by other geneabloggers and they were great reads- a little bit different from some of the drier entries about genealogy and family history. They seem to focus more on intimate memories of persons and events. As I read, I kept looking in the back of my mind for some of the events in my life which are sentimental to me. The thought of hiking came to mind- actually of the time when I might have first fallen in love with hiking. I had to dig way back into both my memory and my photo albums. And I came up with the following image of some of the neighborhood kids and I hiking in the big woods near our homes in suburban Maryland. It was 1954, over fifty years ago. In the picture, we are hiking along a nearly dry creek bed. It was in the scattered puddles, that we crept up on frogs, salamanders, box turtles, and captured them for a closer look. I remember one time collecting at least 20 turtles which we took home and started a little zoo- until our parents made us release the reptiles back into the woods. That was when I first fell in love with the natural out-of-doors. However, I get sort or sad when I look at this photo, because the opportunity for this particular hike is no longer possible. A wide swath of the woods was paved over for the Beltway (I-495) of Metropolitan Washington, DC. More land was taken over for apartments and condominiums.

Hiking! I love it. I was born to hike. But the overall sentiment about this life-long love, is that it may be a thing of the past- no longer possible for me. For y'see, I have to walk with a cane now. My hiking legs have become so weak. And this is difficult to write about. I have been taking anti-androgen hormones for about 5 years now to suppress the proliferation of prostate cancer cells. Testosterone is a great hormone, but the lack of it means wasted muscle tissue and its replacement by fat cells. I sometimes wonder when the time will come when I advance from hobbling on a cane to a wheel chair. But even then I believe that some adjustments can be made so that I can still "go hiking" in my beloved woods.

This summer, I was camping in the Jefferson National Forest in Virginia at a place called White Rocks primitive campground. On the way to the campsites, I passed a short trail named Cherokee Flats. I pulled into the parking area and took a short walk- with my cane. The trail was quite flat and paved for most of its distance. The trail passed through a pristine forest among Rhododendrons, still showing the last blooms of late summer. The trail ended too quickly at Stony Brook creek, but long enough to experience THE HIKE.

Image: Walking slowly through the Cherokee Flats trail in Jefferson National Forest, VA

A walk on the beach at Oak Island, NC

A beautiful, breezy day on the beach in early Spring. Walk a little ways down the beach to an isolated stretch of sand. Lay down on a sand dune which has been swept up by the wind. Pull the hood of my sweat shirt over my bald head to keep the stinging sand away, and close my eyes while the sun warms my face.

I'll be working away from home for about 4 weeks at Brunswick Nuclear Plant located in Southport, NC, near Wilmington. I really hate to come off retirement for this spurt of an intensive work schedule (six 12-hour days per week). But I hope to collect a little travel money and keep a budget as balanced as possible. So, forgive me if I can't recall some of the names or places in these blog entries, especially the historical ones, as my books, notes, and journals are still at the house. However, I will add more information or make corrections later on. Please return for a visit. Have a great walk and a great day wherever you are.

Savage Gulf Natural Area, Tennessee, 1977

Looking through my photo albums, I found a suitable image to put on a DVD cover for a slide show I recently created. The slide show includes pictures I took between 1975 and 1983. This photo was taken in a wilderness area called The Stone Dor, in middle Tennessee. "Dor" is a geological term for a large crack in a cliff in which one can bodily pass through. This particular Stone Dor was used by indians for many years to pass from the top of the Cumberland escarpment to hunting areas below the rim. The low-land area in this location are called "gulfs".

Since I hiked in the Savage Gulf over 30 years ago, I wondered how the place had changed and of course hoped that the primitive nature of the wilderness had been preserved. Actually I had forgotten the names of towns and markers in the area. Fortunately, there were several references to the Stone Dor and Savage Gulf on the Internet, and I stuffed the web sites into my Favorites. It was interesting to see how the images on the Internet matched my own photos taken many years ago- even to the tree that somehow grew up in shadows of the Dor (see below).



For more on Savage Gulf, go here and here. The last site will probably change one day, but it concerns a hiker, Jeffrey Hunter, who led a group of Chattanooga Hikers to the Savage. From Jeffrey's web entry, I surfed to another interesting web site for Appalachian Trail hikers.

Back in 1977, I was teaching a Sunday School class of teenagers at Bellvue Methodist Church in Nashville. Everyone knows most teenagers need a challenge to stay interested in anything. Nearby the Savage Gulf area, in Beersheba Springs, there were some retreat cabins owned by the Methodist Conference. The Sunday School class decided to hold a weekend retreat at Savage Gulf. I forget the details, but I will never forget the thrills and chills of the teenagers when we climbed down through the Stone Dor; walked under a waterfall; and truely experienced God's country. One morning we met near the ridge of the Gulf and opened our day singing Cat Steven's "Morning has Broken". I wish I could start everyday like that.