Big weekend! First
real backpacking trip with the boys. My
and Lesley’s packs have laid wait for this for nearly 10 years. Pulling them out, we realized the last time
we used them was in CO, when Alder was but a pinto bean-sized newbie,
unbeknownst to us. We have long looked
forward to getting the boys in the woods deep.
We have considered car camping as prep.
But this was much more.
Laurel Fork area, George Washington National Forest, among
the VA and WV border. We arrived on the
end of a downpour and hiked in till dusk, to find a nice open site on Vance
Run. Set up, cooked, ate, laid down to
the sound of a rushing Vance Run. The
hike in included a shoe-changing icy-cool (albeit end-May) stream crossing which
brought some tears, but we made it. However the next day, a much more demanding
(i.e. deep and wide) stream crossing brought us to our wall. Our six mile loop became a 3-ish mile
out-and-back. I have to admit, barefoot
through cold water brings tears to me as well.
NONETHELESS!! It was
beautiful. A taste of something we wanted our boys to experience early. A taste of reminder for Lesley and me, of
something we loved to do together in our early days. We are so happy that, though with challenges,
this first time was a fun, dry, safe and a rewarding go at it.
We took it easy: one over night in the backcountry. And, we didn’t see another person, we hung
food in tree from bears, we minimized to get in, we filtered water from stream,
and we took our time and stopped for any and everything we needed and wanted to
take in. The trail was rather unkempt,
so we did some cutting along the way. It
was work. It was fun. The boys were troopers. Moments.
Memories.
So taking it easy meant driving a little more and spending the next two
nights in an off-grid lodge. Lesley and
I, via connections, have access to this Nature Conservancy cabin. This cabin served as the home base for a
hunter/trapper in the 1920s who supplied the game for the Homestead Resort in
Hot Springs, Virginia. We stayed there
for two days and two nights with rare reference to a clock, taking walks,
reading, drawing, throwing football and Frisbee, cooking, eating, fire, playing
games, many miles down a high-clearance forest road. We slept on the porch under a tin roof and
got enough rain to get the most of that.
We heard all the night sounds, all night. And all the early Spring sounds all day.
We are so grateful for these few days to press the reset
button – relatively hard. Time together
with little else. We believe that, in
this time of fast-paced do do do, and hyper communication, it is so important
to remind ourselves of the reference point of what we are all rooted in: simple
wildness and quiet. In just three days
we felt a re-calibration in all of us, which was a refreshing thing to notice
and take in.
