My turn to Thru-Hike!

It's my turn to thru-hike! Finally!

zip-lining at Banning Mills

You might say this has been a dream of mine since I was about 10 years old - In 2014, when I start my hike, I will be 60. So that's about 50 years or so. Way back in 1964 (or thereabouts), my mother and father took me and a friend on a vacation to the Smokies. We rented a trailer and stayed at Smokemont and drove all over, visiting Cherokee and Gatlinburg, Maggie Valley and the Blue Ridge Parkway. But what my friend and I really wanted to do was hike, see some bears, and pretend we were really mountain men.

So when we visited Clingman's Dome, and discovered that there was an actual trail that went from there back down to Newfound Gap (the Appalachian Trail, naturally, although that meant nothing to me at the time), we begged and pleaded and used every excuse we could think of to be allowed to hike the trail. It was only 7 miles! We could do that easy, we walked further than that at home all the time. Right?

Of course my mother was dead-set against it. No way could we do that alone. I'm sure that my father, bless his heart, secretly wanted to go with us. Of course, nowadays, no parent would consider letting their ten-year-old do such a thing, but it was a different world back then. So Kenny (my friend's name - where are you now Kenny?) and I set out from the top of Clingman's Dome on our epic trek down to Newfound Gap. We saw bears behind every tree. We stumbled and slid down the rocky back side of the mountain. We discovered that it was not down all the way, but went back up sometimes. And seven miles was a lot longer than we thought.

So, at least on that day, God was looking out for idiot kids and their parents. Maybe He wanted to be hiking too. Somehow we made it down to Newfound Gap right as darkness was settling down in the valley. My mother was frantic, my father swore that he knew we could do it, no rangers had to be called to rescue us.

My love of hiking was born.