best-laid plans

When I told my co-worker Rani about my situation, she smiled and said, “What is that saying? ‘If you want God to laugh at you, make plans’?”

I’ve been saying that for over a week now as a form of comfort, or explanation, or excusal, for what happened.

Backing up a bit, the basic fact is that my trip, as I knew it, is canceled. I was going to make the drive with Patrick, the man who inspired me to do all this in the first place. But on April 27, about two weeks before we were to leave, he had to leave New Mexico attend to a family situation in Tennessee, which would keep him in the Knoxville area probably indefinitely. I was either going to make the trip by myself, or not make it at all.

My first thought was to call it off all together. I can’t do this alone, I thought. More importantly, I don’t want to do it alone. I figured I would just head straight home to New Jersey and convalesce at my parents’ house in Morris County.

But then a few days went by and Patrick and I spoke and we decided I should go to Knoxville. If he has to stay in Knoxville, and if we decide to try to make our relationship work, I may look into moving to the area, so I figured I should at least get a feel of the place before I commit or don’t commit.

So here I am. I am presently in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, sitting at the trailhead of the Chimneytops trail, hanging out in Patrick’s car while he and two of his kids hike. No dogs are allowed on the trails, so rather than leave my dog alone in the car for four hours, I decided to stick around here and get some writing done and sort out my brain.

One thing I can say is, this park is as busy as Six Flags on Memorial Day Weekend. It’s the most-visited national park in the nation (10 million people each year), and on a cool May weekend like this, I believe it. Cars are everywhere. You creep down roads at a crawl. Last night we drove the Cades Cove Loop, which is about 11 miles, in 2 hours or more. Sure, we got out to explore on occasion, but we spent most of our time rolling along slowly behind a line of cars or waiting in a traffic jam where a bunch of idiots were getting out of their vehicles to get a picture of the bear just off in the woods.

Edit: See photos related to this part of this entry here (Pictures 2: Great Smoky Mountains National Park Landscapes).

But none of that takes away from the sheer beauty of the Smokies. Living in Santa Fe for six years and spending the majority of that time amidst juniper and pinon trees, scrubby sage and chamisa plants and harsh desert landscapes (beautiful as they may be), I was totally unprepared for the sight of Cades Cove in early summer. The trees are so green, they glow. Some roads are so covered by foliage that it’s hard to tell what time of day it is. (Driving to the Sugarlands Visitors Center today, Patrick said, “I think it’s nice out today.” I looked up and realized – yeah, it’s hard to tell with all these trees in the way.)

The Smokies aren’t just a forest, like I thought they would be. Cades Cove, where we are camping, in 1900 had a population of 700 people – about 125 families. So sprinkled throughout the valley are graveyards, old houses, primitive churches, rustic barns and cabins. The Cades Cove Loop took us past a few churches, some of which we stopped to photograph, and a walk into a sprawling meadow brought us to a tiny graveyard (maybe a dozen graves) with no other buildings even remotely nearby. Some park rangers say that some of the churches were moved from their original location, and these random graveyards in the middle of nowhere would lead me to believe that’s true.

Edit: See photos related to this part of this entry here (Pictures 3: Great Smoky Mountains National Park Settlements).

I have had a ball taking pictures with my new camera. A few days before I left, I bought my friend Jason’s old Canon Rebel XT. It is heaven. I have been wanting a camera like this since I was a kid (seriously, at nine or ten years old, I was asking my dad for what I called a “manual camera”), and it’s just the greatest. I’ll crouch down by a fence and take pictures focused on the landscape, then focused on the barbed wire. It just doesn’t get old.

On the way out I stopped a few times to take pictures – in Newkirk, New Mexico, Clinton, Oklahoma, Okemah, Oklahoma (Woody Guthrie’s birthplace), and Jackson, Tennessee. There may have been a few other towns in there. Newkirk and Clinton were my favorites. I have always been mesmerized by abandoned buildings, so many of my pictures are of old edifices I stumbled upon (there certainly are enough of them on the High Plains). Now here I am, and I got some great shots of graveyards and churches yesterday.

Edit: See photos related to this part of this entry here (Pictures 1: New Mexico to Tennessee).

I thought driving by myself was going to suck. I was prepared to stop often to rest. But it was actually great. There was no one to tell me to hurry up, no one to complain “But you just peed 50 miles ago!”, no one to say I was taking too long photographing some old broken-down stand at the Casey Jones village. Traveling by myself (well, with the dog) is actually quite glorious.

But one of the reasons I enjoyed traveling, albeit by myself, was because I knew I was moving toward Patrick. When he left New Mexico two Tuesdays ago, I was devastated. I knew I loved him, but I thought I would be able to let him go if I had to. I learned this week that that is probably not true. Being with him again is perfect. This isn’t going to be easy – especially if he decides to stay in Knoxville (judging from the number of McCain stickers and the pickup I saw with ‘Way To Go Arizona’ soaped on the back window, I don’t think I will fit in very well here) – but I am willing to try to make it work. Whether that means dealing with something long-distance or moving to Knoxville or Asheville is yet to be seen.

When it comes down to it, I doubt Patrick will want to leave Knoxville again, as much as he loved living in New Mexico. To see him with his daughter Emily is like watching a bell ring. Emily just turned 3 years old in March, and between loving camping, wanting to go fishing and being game for anything outdoors-related, they are a match made in heaven.

We’re presently out here in the Smokies with Emily and JD, Pat’s son, who is 15. Pat had wanted to (and I suppose still wants to) hike the Continental Divide Trail with JD, but staying in Knoxville would make that difficult.

All told, the kids are great. I mean, sure, the less-than-24-hours I have spent with them is just that – less than 24 hours – but I’ve had a great time. I could see spending an extended amount of time with them, and, if Pat has his way, living with JD.