Place – Page 2 – An Outdoor Life

August 11, 2023

Why I Must Travel, Finding Home

I bought a few plane tickets and booked a couple car rentals this week. I can’t remember when I’ve felt so excited. Well, at least in the last year.

See, the last year has been filled with moving plans, buying furniture, adopting a dog, buying a house and starting a new job.

While all of these things are exciting in context, at my age they have produced unwanted anxiety to the level that I’ve never felt before; although all self-inflicted. While anxious, travel and and seeing new places is the last thing on my mind.

However, as things have settled down, one of the things that makes me want to travel is reading. After a period of stress and watching too much television, I have a thought about a book. I find a book on my bookshelf, or in a random online search and I’m suddenly reading for hours – I’m back to the self I like.

The reading frenzy started with Thomas Wolfe and Look Homeward, Angel; a book I read 20 years ago and fell in love with. I live 90 minutes from the setting of the book and where Wolfe grew up. I drove over to Asheville and walked around Old Kentucky Home.

I started reading his biographies and literary scholarship. I fell in love with him again. But reading Wolfe has led me back to my favorite author, Wallace Stegner. Reading Stegner makes me want to travel west, and so I booked my flight to Phoenix and can’t wait to see the desert, Grand Canyon and Tucson.

Right now, I’m on a reading frenzy. I have books lined up: The Secret Knowledge of Water, Following Esabella, Dakota, Marking the Sparrow’s Fall and more.

I’ve also started listening to audiobooks while driving. This was suggested to me by my friend Missy. I’ve mostly listened to music while driving all over East Tennessee. I live in the country so it’s a 15 minute drive minimum to anywhere I want to go except for the grocery store which is two miles down the road. YAY. I’m listening to Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner. Next up: Angle of Repose. I didn’t think I’d be able to concentrate on the words while driving but I can now lose myself in his descriptions of the midwest and west, his characters and their lives.

Reading and traveling make me question everything, and that is always good for me. It makes me reevaluate my choices and where I live. I live in the south and after one year, I truly like living here and enjoy learning about this region. I’m reading books about its history, about Great Smoky Mountains National Park and nonfiction from local writers.

As much as I like living here, and feel at home here, it’s always been a pattern of my thinking that I need to go away from a place, even if it’s just for a few days, to really appreciate it. I need that distance to think about my feelings towards a place I chose. Yes, I like living here but why do I really like it? One of the hard things to get used to living in East Tennessee is how far west in the eastern time zone it is; it is so dark in the morning. Right now, the sunrise is at 6:45 am and can’t walk dogs or run in pitch black for safety; from wildlife or crazy people.

Distance helps me sort out complicated feelings of home, place and choices. In the last 25 years, home has always been where my dogs are. Could this be my forever home, a place I own and where all my stuff is?

I’ve been told that if you don’t own a home you are considered homeless by the government. All these years I’ve been homeless while searching for my forever place. So there is this to think about while traveling and walking around the desert.

I do know that as soon as I start writing packing lists and preparing dogs for the kennel my travel anxiety will begin. As much as I love being away from home, or the place I live, I will miss it and can’t wait to get back home again.

July 11, 2023July 11, 2023

Review of Murder at the Jumpoff

I like how the story includes chapters that take place in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. I also like how I found this book after hiking many of the trails in Greenbrier in GSMNP. I’ve been on a lot of the trails in the book except for the manways. As I read the book I just kept thinking what a funny name to call the bushwhacking trails since I’ve always known them as organic trails; trails that the Forest Service despises in NH. I think it might be a Smokies thing.

I’m not a big murder mystery reader but the landscape of this book held me close. I couldn’t put down the book. I really enjoyed how each chapter switched back and forth from each character’s perspective. I liked the characters especially Hatsy, Sally and Hector.

Before and after reading the book I kept Googling the author, wanting to find out more about her. I wondered which character she was like; probably Hatsy. But I wondered why the author committed suicide? She had such an interesting life and lived in many different places, and was such a talented writer. The mountains called her, and she moved around a lot. She travelled and lived in beautiful places like Colorado, New Hampshire and Vermont – all places I’ve lived and loved, primarily for their mountain landscapes.

This book found me after I’d stopped hiking in the park for a bit, getting distracted by other life things. I was frustrated that I couldn’t hike with dogs on trails, plus it was getting hot and humid. However, the last few weeks, every weekend I went to Greenbrier on a different trail. It was easy to get to – I didn’t have to drive through Gatlinburg on a weekend. And I was always on a time limit since I didn’t want my new pup to be in his crate for more than 5 hours. When I started reading the book, I wanted to hike more and get to know this park.

I don’t have a desire, even after finishing the book to hike off trail – I like hiking and trail running on trails; this book was just a new perspective on the park. The characters in her book loved the challenges of the mountains and exploring the landscapes I love, too.

In an interview the author said, “To me, off-trail hiking is a magical journey, a quest to discover incredible places that practically no one ever sees.”

I like reading books that take place somewhere I know. Scenes in this book took place in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Sevierville and Knoxville. It allowed me to enjoy the book more that the story took place here. Plus, the final chapter takes places in the White Mountains and the scene is a mountain I know.

Excellent book. Here is a link to a story about her and her death:

The Last Stream: Unraveling the Mysterious Death of Smokies Hiker Jenny Bennett

Jenny’s obituary

April 1, 2023April 1, 2023

Tennessee Update: dogs, running and views

It’s been a crazy few weeks where I’m trying to figure out what I’m suppose to be.

Am I an ultra runner?

Well I ran today and back on a training plan.

Dog lover?

I’m taking care of my dogs and wanting a third dog so my young pup has a playmate.

Worker bee?

I love where I work and that is always a good thing for me.

Friend?

Kassandra is visiting in a few weeks and I have a bunch of things to do such as buying a bed for the spare room. I can’t wait to see her and show her my place.

Kassandra at Nubble Light in Maine from her trip first trip to visit me.

Hiker?

Now that I don’t live in Gatlinburg it’s tough to hike in the park. Ugh the traffic but I have to get in the park and hike/run to get ready for my ultra running season.

It’s been such a transition this last 45 days and I’m finally figuring everything out.

Here are the things that make me happy and know I’m going to get through everything to meet training goals, have fun, do what I say I will do and explore the world.

October 16, 2022October 30, 2022

Places I’ve Lived, Ranked

As I was driving over Loop Road to avoid traffic on the Parkway, an idea came to my mind to rank all the place I’ve lived.

When I got home I made my list and ranked the best places I’ve lived. As you can see there is a bit of a pattern of living in places where training opportunities are good. I’ve also searched for photos to accompany these best places.

I’ve decided not to rank Gatlinburg since I’ve only been here three months.

Concord NH: The city trail systems was one mile from my house. The perfect place to get some vert hiking, trail running and mountain biking. Average Rank: 9.

Hot Sulphur Springs, CO. While I only lived in the town for 6 months, the trails and mountains were very close.

In Tucson, the Friend Factor was high. Making a life-long friend in this hot place was special. Training, specifically winter training, 10.

Granby, Training Factor is high here with Rocky Mountain National Park close to home.

Friend Factor is High for HSS and Granby. My BFF George.

Steamboat Springs, CO. Training Mecca 10. This is where I became a triathlete, trail runner and mountain biker. This is me and my first dog, Abbey at Fish Creek Fall – our go-to everyday hike or snowshoe.

September 19, 2022September 20, 2022

Travel Bug and Seeing New Places

I bought this poster in 1988 when I traveled out west after high school.

Once I got back to NH, after I thought I’d live forever in Colorado, I framed this poster and it has traveled with me every move.

I’ve always loved the quote, and after spending time in the Tetons, and the Jackson Hole Hostel I get it. Keep Wyoming Wild. Keep all beautiful places wild.

I love the composition of the photo: dark clouds over the Tetons, a little bit of light.

There are no beautiful blue skies and pastoral landscapes on my walls. I’m no decorator but the wall hangings in the countless homes, apartments and condos I’ve lived in New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Colorado, Arizona and now Tennessee, all mean something to me. I seem to love dark-ish, black and white photos and illustrations; yet somehow I’m still hopeful.

Tonight, for the first time, I research the writer and the quote and find out this:

“God bless Wyoming and keep it wild” was written in the last entry in the diary of 15-year-old Helen “Becky” Mettler, a Bar B-C guest from New Jersey in 1925. She fell 100 feet to her death in Taggart Canyon.

Ouch.

A girl from New Jersey – out west. Sounds a lot like Pam Houston. A writer who wrote about growing up in New Jersey and couldn’t wait to get out west.

My favorite story from Houston is the one about her dog Jackson in the book: A Little More About Me, the essay Home Is Where Your Dogs Are:

https://www.amazon.com/Little-More-About-Me/dp/0393343464

“My dog Jackson died today. He was my first dog, and I bought him at a pet store when he was only eight weeks old. We’ve been together more than fourteen years, which makes our relationship the longest successful relationship of my life.” I get that.

She also writes in this story about a place they lived in Fraser, Colorado. Fraser is a place I know pretty well and it is known as the “icebox of the nation” until a city in Minnesota won a court case. But I digress.

Houston fell in love with the west and wrote about it for years.

I get that, too.

But the poster makes me long to go see the Tetons again. I skied Jackson Hole during my Steamboat stint but haven’t hiked those mountains since 1988. It’s time.

While 2023 is still going to have many racecations, it’s time for some old time hiking and driving the west to see things.

I love the west, the stories, travel, the adventure.

This week, my NH hiking buddy, Ross is out west taking photos of Yellowstone and the Tetons and it got me thinking.

I need to go see these places again.

If I’m not living there I must travel there and be a part of it so I called Mark and made a plan to go there. I told him tonight, let’s go in the next two week or next May. He said without saying it: let’s go next year.