Great Smoky Mountains National Park

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park was not the first National Park I ever visited, but it has been the National Park that has had the biggest influence on me. I've visited it more often than any of our nation's Parks, and I have journeyed more deeply into it than any other of them.

Over the years I have been able to travel more widely across the USA and visit many of our big Parks; but the Smokies remains the one with which I am most intimate. I've hiked hundreds of miles of its back-country trails, and I have camped deep in the wilderness areas within it. I have also driven most of its (too many) roads and shared views with obnoxious crowds of idiot tourists who rarely fail to annoy me in their numbers and vile attitudes.

But, I keep going back. My wife and son get a kick out of the Park for reasons different from my own. While I dig plunging as deep into the almost supernaturally diverse forests and climbing the lung-bursting slopes, they like the gentler aspects of the Smokies and the easy access of tourist traps we call Gatlinburg and Pigeon's Forge. Generally, while I'm hiking they will take the 75-cent tram from the campground into Gatlinburg to nosh on comfort food and search for tchotchke.

I'll be there for just shy of a week. Heading out very soon. I'm still considering my options for hiking. It has been a very long time since I've seen the views from Charlie's Bunion, so I may do that hike. I just don't know. Or maybe I'll pick out some trails I've never experienced and see what they have to offer.

I'll let you know.

A field in Cataloochee Valley where we likely won't go this trip.

Years ago when I was running around trying to see all of the hemlock groves before they died. I saw most of the old ones, and now they're all dead.

A 2005 view of the massive wall of LeConte before this plot of land was covered in hotels and shops.

Bull elk and cow (also in Cataloochee) in October 2018.

YouTube.

I use YouTube as a tool and a pastime. A few years ago I began to create videos to promote my novels. Later, I decided to play around with making travelogs of my many hiking, backpacking, kayaking, and camping trips. This eventually expanded to the point where I branched out and started to make some money selling (and leasing) photos of the great outdoors.

And this, of course, got me into browsing through the many thousands of YouTube channels. So many channels. I wonder how many there are, but have never been curious enough to research it. Over the past few years I often stumble upon little independently produced channels that I find interesting or charming or informative and subscribe to them. A few of the channels I subscribed to early on I continue to follow.

But not many of them.

One thing that I find happens with a lot of these little shows is that they eventually become bogged down with soap opera style drama centering on the creators' lives. And, frankly, I don't need that freaking drama. I'm not interested in it. It's not the personal details of their lives that got me following them in the first place, beyond their desire to show how they create things or explore the great world. As soon as they start to whine about their health or their dead dog or how they are being stalked by mean people I lose interest and cancel my subscription.

And other things can happen.

One channel I used to view was created by a married 30-something couple who had once been physically active but who had become lazy and complacent and really, really fat. To help themselves get rid of the vast accumulations of lard on their asses they began to hike. You could tell that at some point the husband had been fit, and that sometime in the last few years the wife had been quite the looker (she still had a pretty face trying to peek out from behind a sheath of pink-skinned blubber). And over the course of their videos they did, indeed, lose the lard. It at first came off slowly, and then more rapidly fell from both. Over the course of a couple of years or so the husband became the muscular athlete he'd once been, and his wife transformed back into what I can only describe as "a ten". She was hot.

But then, the videos slowly became less and less about the adventures of the interesting and beautiful places they discovered where they challenged their rediscovered athletic abilities, and more about posing and preening in front of the camera wearing tank tops and yoga pants. I got sick of it and erased them from my subscription list and haven't been back to look at what they've been creating in about three years. Maybe they stopped with the channel, or came down with terminal cancer and died, or were hit by a Mack truck, perhaps eaten by a pack of rabid raccoons. I wouldn't know.

Because of this tendency to fade into personal subjectivity I end up getting rid of about three-fourths of the channels I follow. They become tedious and maudlin. I suppose it works for them, though, because by the time I end up ignoring these productions I generally find that they have accumulated tens of thousands of subscribers and have become semi-famous and are actually making money from their little videos.

Just without me in their audience.

No, thanks, on the drama. Just give me the views.

On Sitting Bear Mountain.

Well, I bagged Sitting Bear Mountain in Linville Gorge. It was the only major peak in the Gorge that I had not hiked. I think it's also the highest summit in the wilderness. I timed the hike well, being first at the trailhead and managed to have the footpath completely to myself for several hours. I did encounter a hiker and his dog near the summit cliffs--nice guy. Then, later, on the way down, I bumped into a tight-lipped shitheel who wouldn't even return a polite "hello". I'm all for solitude and such, but there's a point where misanthropy reaches the level of pathology.

At any rate, it was a good hike. The trail is very, very steep as you approach the summit. It hits the mountain head-on with no switchbacks. It's roughly as steep as the Woody Ridge Trail in the Black Mountains, but doesn't hold that steepness for as long as the Woody Ridge path manages. Still, I had to very carefully pick my way down as I headed back. A fall there would be dangerous.

Oddly, the rims of the Gorge held onto huge cloud formations with some tenacity, making for difficulty in grabbing good photos. I did manage a few decent shots, but it wasn't easy.

After the hike I went over to the Linville Falls picnic area on the Parkway and had lunch. Then I drove over to Beacon Rock and took a few shots there, but again Grandfather Mountain (aka Tanawha) was socked in by clouds lingering over the summits.

After that I headed home. It was a good day.

 I tried an experiment with time lapse photography with the GoPro camera. I'd played around with it before, but while I was walking or kayaking to show sped up motion progress. In this one I kept the camera static and let the landscape do the moving. I want to do more of these.

I was the only one at the trailhead. Parking is at a premium at this trailhead. Maybe four spots.

View from the first set of cliffs.

From closer to the Sitting Bear summit looking back on the spot where I took the time lapse video.

Now and again the clouds would break. Right after this it got really dark and misty and made photography difficult.

The Linville Falls Picnic Area is amazing. Right by the Linville River.

Then I drove over to Beacon Rock below Grandfather Mountain. Most people don't know there's a GrandMOTHER Mountain. This is it, as seen from the exposed surface of Beacon Rock. It has a horrible radio tower, which is hear mainly hidden by clouds.

Tanawha was a tease. She played with the clouds and refused to reveal all of her beauty. At 5,964 feet she is technically the highest summit in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Less than 40 feet shy of 6,000 feet.

Heading Back.

Well, since I was frustrated in my attempt to bag Sitting Bear Mountain a few days ago, I'm heading back to Linville Gorge in the morning to try again. It's the only major peak in the wilderness that I haven't hiked, so I want to strike it off my list before it becomes a frustrated obsession. In the coming years I'll be hiking and camping and backpacking so much that I doubt it would rank very high on my list, so best to do it now while I still think about it.

I've heard the views from the top are pretty good. I'm always curious if I'll find a grandstand in the Gorge as good as the Hawksbill summit. So far, I have not found a view to surpass with that one.

From a recent visit to the Gorge. Not far from Table Rock.

Taken at The Amphitheater. A grand location.

I took this selfie on Hawksbill. So far, it's my favorite view in and of the Gorge. I doubt it can be topped, but you never know.

Retirement Hiking Trips.

Now that I'm retired I work my part-time job anywhere from zero days to four days per week. It is weird not having to go and punch a clock every day, (sometimes six days a week when I was a letter carrier, and seven days a week when I was self-employed). I sit there and realize that I don't have to rise before the sun to go to a drudge labor job. Yes, I sometimes still get up before the dawn, but that's only because sometimes I want to hit the road early to go hiking or kayaking. Big difference.

I'm still having a hard time dealing with that.

Saturday I drove up to the mountains and did a little bit of hiking before the rainstorms scoured the peaks. I had two hikes planned but only did one, down into Linville Gorge to see the base of Linville Falls which I had not visited in many, many years. The hike was a whole lot easier than I recalled. But after I climbed out of the gorge the rains hit.

At any rate, here are some photos and a video of the hike.

The Little Creatures.

Sometimes when I go hiking I don't find the wildlife that I hope to see and photograph. I've noticed that even the birds I used to depend upon as subjects are fewer in number. These are things that I have noted, so it's not a huge surprise to me to have recently learned that the base populations of birds have died off in North America over the last thirty years, to the tune of three billion less. I used to be able to go to various places to see birds that have vanished; and this has been over just the last ten years.

Mother Nature is dying. There is no doubt of that.

At any rate, I love photographing wildlife. And so what I find I sometimes have to do is look down at my feet or at the vegetation around me to search for insects, arachnids, terrestrial molluscs, and other such little critters if I want to get any photographs of animals at all.

And, once again, I am reminded that I really do need a couple of new lenses for my camera. I can do okay with the lenses I have, but they don't have the qualities I need to record the finer details as I labor to grab some memorable shots. To that end I will be purchasing (I hope) two more lenses next month. We'll see.

In the meantime, I've been reading journals warning that even the planet's insect populations are plummeting.

Yellowjacket, taken on Roan Mountain, Tennessee.

Butterly, Rock Creek Recreation Area. Erwin, TN.

Butterfly. Cataloochee Valley, North Carolina.

New Shoes, Air Pollution.

Carole and I drove up to Asheville on Sunday so that I could find a pair of new hiking shoes. My old reliable Merrell shoes finally gave up the ghost. The treads were worn down to the point where I had begun to feel the stab of rock edges as I hiked. They were a great pair of shoes, but they had to go.

I had done a bit of shopping online to find a new pair of boots and did a lot of reading for some good shoes that would give me what I need in that type of footwear. I ended up settling--at least in theory--on the Oboz Firebrand2. I could have ordered them online, but I opted to go shopping and find a place where I could try them on to see what the fit was like and get the feel of them before committing to a purchase. The only place I know of that carries that brand is the Mast General Store.

Since we generally enjoy trips to Asheville we decided on the Mast store there rather than going to one of the other branches. As usual, we arrived in Asheville to massive crowds. There is always one sort of festival or march or demonstration going on there, and Sunday was no exception. I think the heavy burst of population was due to some kind of gay rights push, but we weren't sure. It made parking a tad more difficult (but not by much) and didn't have any effect at all on our shopping, nor any kind of wait at our favorite pizza restaurant there.

After we made some purchases, got lunch, and returned to Carole's car, we decided to head over to the Black Mountain Campground (National Forest facility) by way of the Blue Ridge Parkway. The views from the Parkway and nearby peaks were hampered considerably by resurgent air pollution--courtesy of our current Mother Nature-raping administration. The weather was warm, but not nearly as hellish as in Huntersville. Still, the high country was a good 10-15 degrees above normal for this time of year.

My intention was to catch the South Toe River Road (Forest Service) down to the campground. But it is still closed due to flooding damage from well over a year ago. Our government can find money to piss down the Pentagon rathole, but not for repairing our parks and National Forests. Instead I went over to the intersection of the Blue Ridge Parkway and NC 80 and took that down to the campground. After checking it out we then headed over to Old Fort NC and to the Curtis Creek Campground which is also a National Forest facility, but which is not blocked by gates due to road damage. We want to plan camping trips to both of these places so we needed to look at them to decide roughly where we'd want to park our Casita travel trailer when we go.

After that we called it a day and went back to the Interstate to drive home. All in all, we accomplished most of what we wanted to do, but the diminishing air quality that we witnessed was yet another reminder that global warming and mass extinction loom over everything. If you like our wild places, my suggestion is to do as we do and see as much of it as possible before it's all dead.

At the hiking shoe department in the big Mast General Store in Asheville.

What I bought there. Not the most attractive hiking shoe, but functionally what I need.

 

The Mellow Mushroom. Our favorite pizza joint in Asheville.

The Blue Ridge Parkway at a point where I pulled off to get a few photos.

Colors starting to change for Autumn. I was able to mitigate the hazy air pollution via editing software.

A small tributary of Curtis Creek.

This little one was in the creek at my feet. Very tiny.

 

Mo' Better Plans.

Now that retirement has fully kicked in I have begun to get my ducks in a row as far as planning trips is concerned. So far, we're staying relatively close to home, but are forming up our plots for trips farther afield. There's Colorado coming up when Carole takes her own retirement. But that's almost two years away. The trip to Italy will precede that (I hope). Until then we're looking at jaunts to Pennsylvania to visit both historic and wilderness sites; and to the Adirondacks in New York so that I can do some trekking in the High Peaks region while I'm still able to do that kind of thing. Also, Carole has mentioned that she wants to see Maine again, so we'll likely fly up for that and rent a car out of Boston. We'll see.

We just got back from Myrtle Beach, a trip I took reluctantly. I have to say that I cannot stand what they call "the Grand Strand". While it may be a strand, it is in no way grand. It is an overbuilt monstrosity of beachfront towers and vile amusement parks and residential areas packed cheek by jowl in front of eroding beaches where all of it is at the mercy of Atlantic storms and unceasing winds and tides. The place has become so urbanized over the years that it suffers full-on traffic jams every morning and afternoon just as things are in places like Charlotte and Atlanta. Screw that. I've never understood the appeal of that horrible blot on the map. While down there for four days I had about as miserable a time as I had feared, and I can here and now promise that my shadow will never again darken the pathetic dirt of the Myrtle Beach area. Sometimes you really can say "never".

As soon as we got back home yesterday I reserved our campsite for a week in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park for the last week of October and the first couple of days of November. The Fall colors will be at about their peak, I would think. But so was demand for camping space inside the Park. So by yesterday afternoon when we unloaded from the beach trip there were only about six spots remaining in the campground we wanted to use (Elkmont). Fortunately, I was able to grab one of them before it was gone.

I'm looking forward to this trip, since we haven't been to the Smoky Mountains in quite a while. I want to hike some familiar trails (I'll probably climb Mount LeConte for the tenth or eleventh time), and explore some trails where I've never hiked. We do have a hay-ride to take in Cades Cove, a place that I tend to avoid because of the crowds. But this will be a different kind of experience with no driving to do in bumper-to-bumper traffic. We'll be on the back of a wagon as it's pulled leisurely along by, I assume, a tractor of some sort. Sometimes I dream that all automobile access to Cades Cove will be banned. A dream, yes, but it would be so nice to see it happen.

For November into January I'll likely be doing a lot of hiking and will squeeze some solo backpacking trips in as we figure out just exactly when we want to see places in Pennsylvania that are on our bag-list. These trips, too, will likely be in the NC/TN/VA mountains, but I have had a bit of an urge to retrace some of the Appalachian Trail in Georgia, which I have not backpacked in decades. So maybe I'll go backpacking down in Georgia when the weather cools off.

I have begun wondering, and have even read, that we are among the last generation of US working class citizens who can honestly look forward to retirement and spending leisure time traveling and enjoying our twilight years. It does seem so, and it's sad to contemplate, but we're going to enjoy what we have while we have it.

A brief moment of beauty near the horrid "Grand Strand". Specifically in Calabash (just across the SC border in NC). We ate supper at this location in a restaurant on the waterfront. While the food was decent, I am pretty damned sure it is the last time I will ever see that place. No more Myrtle Beach environs for this southerner. The rest of you are welcome to it.

Planning.

Carole and I plan our longer vacations meticulously. We don't narrow down our daily activities so that we're stuck to a rigid schedule, but we do make sure of our routes, our campsites and lodging, and our multiple destinations. 

Thus, we've begun the initial planning for our Colorado trip which will take place year after next. Yes, we're going to have many vacations between now and the long Colorado haul, but we're doping out particulars for what will be Carole's retirement celebration-trip to the state of so many 14K-foot summits.

Carole has never visited Colorado. I went in 2012 and have never quite gotten the scenery out of my mind. We want to spend a lot of our time in and around Rocky Mountain National Park, but we've already discovered that reserving a good campsite there might be a problem. We're targeting our vacation for September to coincide with the Fall aspen leaves, so it'll probably be a little easier than booking a site in summer, but you never know. Fortunately, Colorado has a lot of options when it comes to parking your travel trailer in a National Park, National Forest, state park, or BLM campground.

Hopefully, we'll be okay on that count.

The trip will last somewhere between one and two months. It will be, by a good deal, the longest trip we'll have ever taken with our travel trailer as our lodging. We're going to book some train rides (definitely the Durango-Silverton rail), and lots of hiking, some kayaking, and a little shopping.

I'm looking forward to it, and Carole is already excited about this vacation. Hell...she'll be retired before you know it and the trip will be upon us.

On a hike just outside of Durango in 2012. The leaves really were that shade of gold, and the skies truly were so blue they were almost black.

One day in the middle of the Weminuche Wilderness of the San Juan Mountains.

Along the appropriately named Blue Lakes Trail.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, A Review.

Andy, Carole, and I went to see ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD last week. We tried to go see it the week before, but when we got to the theater we discovered that the e-ticket website had given me tickets for a different theater instead of the one two miles from our house. So we got a refund and planned to go seven days later.

As chance would have it, we saw the movie on the 50th anniversary of the night the Manson Family murdered Sharon Tate, Abigail, Folger, Jay Sebring, Steven Parent, and Wojciech Frykowski. This fact of synchronicity made Carole feel a bit weird.

As usual, I went to the movie not expecting much. I rarely see a movie I enjoy, and even rarely walk away from the theater feeling impressed by a film. Over the years I've found that Quentin Tarantino movies sometimes please me, and at other times I find his efforts to have wasted my time. So, I really didn't have much in the way of expectations.

I was amazed when, by the time the end credits rolled, that I had already decided that this movie rates as a classic film for me. I'll stand it alongside the best of the best in my memory of great movies.

Yeah, it was that good.

There are all kind of neat little touches that Tarantino added to the movie to make it a little more enjoyable and interesting than it might otherwise have been, but that's not why I enjoyed it so much. It wasn't seeing Damian Lewis and Mike Moh doing supernaturally good renditions of Steve McQueen and Bruce Lee respectively. (They were both so heatbreakingly good as the two actors that it was almost like seeing them back from the dead.) And it had nothing to do with Kurt Russell and Zoe Bell probably recreating the two characters they played in the execrable DEATHPROOF. Or the generally phenomenal job that both Brad Pitt and Lenoard DiCaprio deliver throughout the two hour and 42 minute neo-classic.

What it was for me was the recreation of a time and place that seemed utterly real, even if the movie was a kind of fantastic alternate history featuring these fictions and true personalities capering about in the compact and separate civilization that we call Hollywood.

And, for me, it was a film about tribalism, nationalism; and loyalty to that tribe.

Some people are parts of tribes. If you're a die-hard Irishman, maybe a Sicilian, you might get what I mean. If you're a Jew you probably know what I'm talking about. If you hail from Japan you likely will understand exactly what I am trying to get across. For Tarantino his tribe are the creative and business folk who were drawn to, and live and work in Hollywood. I get the distinct impression that he loves that place as much as anyone, and adores the folk who live there, toiling away in that industry, be they true artists or loathsome hacks.

This was a kind of love story tribute to Tarantino's adopted nation of Hollywood, and for his tribe who inhabit it as true citizens. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was, superficially, the kind of movie where QT steals from the best, re-crafting sly situations, borrowing cool titles, altering clever dialog, and molding it all into new emotions and fantastic images that are wholly original. With this movie he may very well have pressed all of that crude stuff into a perfect gem like a Mort Weisinger Superman squishing a lump of coal into a diamond.

The film glittered.

If you've managed to miss the promotions, the movie revolves around a weird kind of love story between two inseparable pals: Cliff Booth, a very skilled Hollywood stunt man who apparently works exclusively for his best friend Rick Dalton played to a kind of loony perfection by Leonardo DiCaprio. You never get the distinct impression that the two are gay, or that they have somehow sexually consummated their relationship. But you also wouldn't be surprised if they were and had. Instead you get a kind of vibe of total loyalty of each for the other. Booth seems to actually believe in the greatness of his buddy, and Dalton really does go to bat for his friend and servant.

Of the pair, Booth seems the less real. He's almost like a superhero. He is that kind of a creation. There doesn't seem to be much he can't do (including beat Bruce Lee in a fight), and he has the kind of self-confidence that one would imagine coming from a fellow with superpowers.

Rick Dalton, on the other hand, is a man who really doesn't believe in himself. Beset with tremendous doubts about his talent, he stays drunk much of the time, suffers from all sorts of psychosomatic ailments, and generally exists in a constant mope thinking that his days as an actor are almost over since his late 50s/early 60s popular western TV show was canceled. There is one scene in which it is revealed that he lost the part in THE GREAT ESCAPE that went to Steve McQueen that is nothing short of reeking grief in a purely brilliant bit of film making by Tarantino.

Everyone who has investigated the film even cursorily knows that the movie deals with the intersection of these characters' lives with those of some of the Manson Family. You are left wondering how that will play out and exactly what will happen as the two sets of humans are twined inexorably together leading to the last act in the movie. I have to say...the situation and my agonizing over what would happen created a lot of tension in my own noggin.

It is a supremely effective film.

To cap, the end of the movie is nothing short of exhilaration. There is action, and there is pure hilarious violence that I can only describe as glorious release. You'd have to see it to believe it, and to be amazed how Tarantino ties up so many tiny threads into a whole, logical, realistic bit of rope.

I was impressed while it was going down; and I was impressed as I walked out of the theater; and a week later I remain impressed.

It's a freaking great movie. Not decent. Not good. Great.

I'm placing it up there on the top shelf in my memories with the best of the best.

DiCaprio as the self-doubting Rick Dalton, and Brad Pitt as the super-confident Cliff Booth.

Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate. In some ways, the film serves as a kind of temple to the memory of Sharon Tate. And the flawless Robbie manages to make me believe that Sharon Tate was as perfect and joyful as a woman can be.

Sometimes...

A few times in my experiences hiking or camping or backpacking in the forests and wilderness areas I have had some creepy things happen. I've had several bad encounters with bears--once when I thought I was about to be killed (but of course was not).

And a couple of times I had what I can only describe as weird experiences. It's said by many that humans still have some basic senses that they don't acknowledge on a conscious level, but have retained from those ancient days when we were still relatively helpless herbivores traveling through grasslands and forest, ever on the lookout for predators who could kill and eat us. Perhaps it's just an amalgam of the senses we know which, combined on a subconscious level accumulate to give us a pulse of a warning to make us alert for danger that we cannot pinpoint with any one or two of our five senses. Thus, the prickling of the skin for no observable reason, or the tickling of the fine hairs on our necks and arms when we cannot see or hear anything definite.

The first time I had such an experience was when I had decided to hike alone to see Mooney Falls in the Nantahala National Forest one very late summer afternoon. I had already done several miles of hiking elsewhere and on the way back to my campsite at Standing Indian I pulled off the Forest Service road to take the brief hike to see and photograph the waterfall. I figured I could easily do it before nightfall. And I did that, but barely.

Here's the thing. On the way back to my truck I paused to take some photos of gnarly old birch tree that everyone who hikes the trail notices. I figured to capture some images of it on my way back and stopped there to gather those shots. And as I got my camera out and began to record the images all I could hear was the rushing of the creek, and all I could really see was the close press of the green trees and woody rhododendrons that pushed in all around.

But I had the distinct impression that I was being watched in the swiftly failing light.

That's right. I felt that someone, or some creature, was peering at me through that luxurious mass of trees and flowers and shrubs. Why was I feeling that way? I have no idea. As I said, all I could hear was the rushing water, and all I could see were limbs and leaves moving in the slight wind. But the feeling was so strong that I stopped taking photos and looked all around me, trying to spot anything that might be giving me this very disturbing and very creepy sensation.

But I couldn't see anything that might dictate danger. Just that feeling. So, I took a few more photos.

And suddenly all of the hairs on my arm went up. And the fine fuzz on the back of my neck was standing to attention as gooseflesh made pimples up my spine and down my arms.

It was at that point that I just made a quick 360-degree examination of my surroundings, jammed my camera back into its case, and hauled ass down that trail as fast as I could without actually running. After all, doesn't running trigger a chase response in big predators? I didn't want that. But I will tell you that I closed the last circuit of that particular hike in quick order and found myself hustling up the slope of the trail to the parking spot where my truck waited. It was pure relief to open that door and close it solidly to create a hardened barrier between my mortal flesh and the perceived threat that I never actually saw or heard--merely felt.

Well, that was then. Some years back.

On my hike last week in the Big Draft Wilderness Area in West Virginia I had a similar experience. I had decided to do a five-mile loop in the wilderness that would take me from the campground at Blue Bend Recreation Area and back to my campsite. So I did exactly that and soon found myself deep within that wilderness and its rich forest of recovering hardwoods and hemlocks (but mainly hardwoods).

When I began the hike I startled a couple of whitetail deer who, upon seeing me, scattered and thrashed the woods with their fleeing. I watched their tails bouncing through the green screen of limbs and leaves like flags of white vanishing in the distance. We surrender. We surrender. We surrender. After that it was mainly just bird song and wind blowing and the laboring of my breath as I gained the ridges of Brown Mountain.

Along the way, at a wide curve in the trail that took me through a cove, I discovered a particularly ugly Turkey vulture watching me. This vulture--for some reason--seemed fascinated by my presence and it followed my progress into the wilderness, flying from tree to tree, branch to branch, to watch me as I hiked along. I thought it was curious, but they're very intelligent animals, I have learned, and not much that they do particularly surprises me. After about a quarter of an hour it finally lost interest in me, and I lost sight of him.

Around that time I noticed a pile of bear scat in the middle of the trail. Not terribly old, maybe dropped since the last rain. I am never startled to see bear crap in the forests because they seem to be just about everywhere in the southern high country, these days. I rarely see the bears, though. Now and again as they're racing away from me when I startle them.

The higher I climbed on the mountain, the more obscure the trail became. Until I realized that few people were using this trail and it began, at times, to vanish into vigorous growths of all types of low, green plants; including stinging nettle which pricked at my bare calves and made me miserable for several seconds every time I brushed against those nasty, poisonous leaves. All I could do was plunge ahead and make good guesses where the trail should be. And each time I was right.

In no time at all I had achieved the summit of Brown Mountain. At the top, I paused to take some video and photos and.

I got that old, creepy feeling that not only was something watching me...it was also following me.

My breath held in my chest as I strained to hear anything that was not...well...normal. But there were only bird calls and some slight sighing of wind among the trees. Nothing moved that should not be moving. Nothing called out that alarmed me in any way.

And, yet.

That feeling of being watched and followed.

Once more I pushed on, knowing that I would soon come upon a trail shelter in the wilderness. Most wilderness areas do not have things like trail shelters and bridges and such. They are, after all, supposed to be wilderness. But in a few minutes I came to that shelter. It stood there in the shadows and dappled sunlight of a mild summer day and looked as if it had not been used by anyone in a very, very long time. As I had realized since I'd begun the hike, not many people walked into this wilderness. I was very much alone. At least when it came to human company. Still, that feeling of being watched and followed continued to dog me.

I saw some brightly colored mushrooms on the ground near the shelter and decided to photograph them. And it was then, crouching on the forest floor to get a good point of view, that I heard something cracking what I knew were very large, very dry dead limbs on the ground. Something relatively close--perhaps forty or fifty feet away.

I stood up and looked in that direction, and didn't see anything; but did hear some more limbs being cracked underfoot and then some lighter sounds as of something retreating from me through that decaying leaf litter.

I had been right. Something had not only been watching me, but apparently also following me. Or maybe it was someone. I have no idea.

But feeling even more a sense of dread than I had before, I put my camera away, pointed myself down the trail toward Blue Bend, and made haste to get back to the campground and my waiting wife.

Sometimes, I know, those feelings of being watched, of being followed, are not passing paranoia. Sometimes they are spot on.

About where I scared the deer.

Hello, Mr. Man. What are you doing here in the deep, dark woods?

Pushing on.

Death in the midst of so much life.

I'm still here. You are, too, I see. Hm.

Where does a big bear shit? Anywhere he wants to.

Sometimes the trail vanished under depths of stinging green.

It looked like it had not been used in a very long time.

Pretty colors to distract me....WHAT'S THAT NOISE??!!

Nothing there! But I think I'll leave, now.

If the forest will let me....

The Real Heroes

I'm sure most people work hard. I always have and almost everyone I've ever worked alongside have done the same. Lazy bastard goldbricks are actually rare--that's why they're singled out for righteous condemnation. The hardest working people in the world are laborers. Today the laborer is targeted as being stupid, unambitious, and a drag on the economic well-being of the nation; and rife with shirkers who don't do their jobs. These accusations are bullshit promoted by the economic elite and their toadies who all are, in fact, a drag on the well-being of 95% of the US population.

Here, then, are a few groups of people who work harder than any cocksucker sitting in the penthouse, and fully capable of someday storming those palaces, tearing the occupants out of their fucking beds, and slitting their leech throats. (Remember what was done to the stinking Romanovs, you rat bastard thieves.)

Highway laborers.

Farmers.

Linemen.

Construction workers.

Letter Carriers.

Longshoremen.

Farm laborers.

Steel workers.

That steelworker part reminds me of one of the few truly lazy fuckers I ever knew. For a bare few months of his oh-so-precious life he worked in a steel mill. It was frankly the only time he ever worked in his entire worthless fucking Nazi life (that's something else--later on he became a Nazi). He was one of those fortunately rare pieces of shit who gets a woman to support him while he lies around at home. At any rate, because he worked for a few weeks in a steel mill between terms in college (which his mommy paid for), he claims to be a laborer. Yeah. Seriously. He claims to be a laborer because he worked for a few weeks in a steel mill. Before that brief sojourn earning a paycheck, and since, one woman or another has supported him--either his pathetic mama or his long-suffering wife. But he's "a laborer". The hilarity.

At any rate, laborers are the reason this nation exists and has flourished. Strong, hard-working men and women who were either wage slaves, or just plain slaves built this country. They hacked it out and hammered it together. At some point we're going to take control of it, and the blood of the leeches who have exploited us is going to grease the wheels of a new kind of society. I wish I was around to splash some of that elitist crimson lubricant onto those gears.

At some point, the bill will come due and payback will be Hell. Count on it.