The car backs out of the driveway around noon on a Sunday after morning HC yoga and an hour or so of packing and checking gear.  It takes a little bit to remove the shackles of urban civility, as I stop at the local Teets for some hydration tabs or even powdered Gatorade (neither of which they have), which lets me convince myself that I need to stop at Ingles in Lincolnton to get it (And some Chocolate Cashews. And some Green Tea).  My earliest check-in time to the campground is 3:00, and that was my target time, but the GPS has me cruising in a bit past 3:30, maybe around the time the first rain of the afternoon hits.

 

The freeway part of 321 ends in Hickory, and my listening eases into this podcast that gets me all hyped about simplistic, dirt-bag recreation, eschewing the elaborate creature comforts for an Earth’s rotation of outdoor living..  While taking an overnight to the BRP may not count as a massive cultural shift, it is a bubble, a respite from other distractions, both joyous and obligatory, to the single-minded pursuit existence and movement among the myriad life of the outdoors.

 

 I perpetually crave this experience, and I’m close enough to retirement to imagine a life in which it is a more constant, cultivated reality, not just an escape from it..  But in a summer that has been hectic with airports and travel, this 24 hour dirtbag bubble–a drive up camping spot where I can run and swim and paddle–will do for now.

 

 

I’m pulling across the Watauga county line when my sense memory hits me.  I didn’t put my hands on my trail shoes.  They are sitting in my living room.  This disrupts half of my plan–hard to run trails without shoes.  I pull into a church parking lot and text Nic to confirm.  Yup.  Shoes are right where I left them.  What will I do?  Will I run in my deteriorating Chacos?  Is there a place I can rent running shoes?  Google, what you got?  Rack Room seems like a place I can pick up a cheapie pair to destroy, but the gods smile on me as there is a Columbia Sports outlet two minutes from me and I score a pair low weight grey and blue Vitesse trail runners for 50% off, lighter and more nimble than the truck tire Brooks Cascadia brand that I’ve been running with for the last few years.

 

I check in and pull up to the campsite around 4.  It’s more perfect than I could have imagined.  

In a car camp ground usually reserved for months, I had found one Sunday night with lake front property.  Coupled with storm damage, and all the other sites around me were closed.  Relative solitude.

 I take to the first task of camping–gathering the fire wood.  All the while, the rolling gray clouds threaten the rain that will make this fire impossible, so I race against reality, climb hills and valleys to collect every small piece of wood fuel I can, then erect my hammock and tarp so I can keep some of the kindling (all of it already moist) somewhat dry for the evening’s dinner.

 

By the time I finish, it is near 5:30, and I wonder if it is even worth the time to run.  I could–at this point–return the shoes if I wanted.  But I didn’t come here to save money on returning shoes, so I quickly change clothes, get a quick stretch and hit the trail.  Across the BRP, the Boone Fork trail cuts through the camp ground and then out the back, down to run along a creek flanked with massive boulders, as with every other trail in this part of the world, it’s a mud pit, so the shoes get a good work on their maiden voyage.  The first couple of miles are a light bounce, save for slowing down through sloshy mud, creek crossings over wet rocks, and an occasional bridge.  I pass a couple of hikers, and I know they must think I’m crazy.

By about mile three, I’m a little less buoyant on the trail, and a sign points to Hebron Falls via a spur trail.  I take the bait, pause the timer and descend.  The falls are not obvious. They require a long descent followed by quite a bit of rock hopping back up.  In the end, the view is glorious, but as I return to the main trail, the original spark of floating down the trails is not so vibrant as before  The roots and rocks are much more treacherous, there are ladders near narrow passages, and I find myself walk-running more than before.  By the time I get back into the main part of the park, I think I’m ready to ratchet up the pace, but I spend my last burst before the trail ends on flat, open trails only to find myself bonked by the  half mile left back to my hammock.  Spent, I limp my sweat-soaked body to the camp by 7 after 5.8 soul-draining miles

 

But no time, like the present.  I change out of the sopping wet running clothes and into the kayaking gear.  Soon, I’m at the lake pushing in.  Price Lake isn’t huge, I discover.  You can probably get from the widest part to the other in 15-20 minutes if you’re really humping it.  So, I paddle around, explore a creek under a bridge.  Then the running endorphins settle and the stillness comes in, small flowers floating on top, the traffic of the lake now non-existent, the boat bobbing ever so subtly atop still waters, a chorus of birds and frogs many trees deep around the shore only punctuated by the occasional motor driving over the bridge at the dam and the all-too natural squabbles of a family camping carrying across the placidity of the lake surface.  Everything and nothing encapsulated in this bubble of quietude.  Finally, the mad rush to prepare, to drive, to run, to hurriedly throw the boat on the water comes to a halt on the glassy surface rippling reflection of trees and mountains in the distance.

 

Eventually the edge of an evening chill awakes me ripples the stillness.  Post-run temperature regulation is a buggy feature of my biology, so I generate some heat by putting the paddle back in the water and churning for the camp site.  There, I begin to arrange the wood in the light of the reclining sun.  The cardboard shoe box (they are caked in mud: no returns) makes perfect initial fuel, and soon I have a blaze that warms and builds the axis mundi of the world for the night.  There is nothing to do but eat and tend the fire and sit at the bank of the lake, watching the stars sparkle in ways they never will in my backyard, in a stillness that a photograph can never capture.  Against that serenity, the chorus of frogs–deep guttural voices, high squeaking voices–fill the air, undulating at times as I provoke the fire to new heights.  Soon, sleep beckons me, and I’m out in my hammock.

The gold in the Eastern sky starts to wake me, but I’m not in any hurry to get out of the hammock.  I’m supposed to check out by noon, which at some level makes me think I should rise early and grind it while I have the time.  Instead, I grab a Kind Bar and my books, make a cup of tea, and put my chair right up on the lake, taking the time to let my mind wake with the day.  There is the suggestion in my reading that the exhaustion of physical energy is necessary for a spiritual path.  This turns over and over in my mind as I get up, find my second set of running clothes, and head out for a loop around the lake.  The body is tired from yesterday’s redline burn, so I remind myself to settle into the trail, but the initial labor of getting the muscles moving in unison takes a little more  The run is a quiet lap–about 2.5 miles around the perimeter.  Morning walkers from the campground already pass me.  I decide when the lake loop is done to go back across the road to reassess the trail that bonked me yesterday–much more serene with the goggles of exhaustion removed, and I take a quick left up the Tanawha trail.  In the first quiet steps of the pine-needle carpet, I imagine running the whole thirteen miles to the other end, but that run will sit in imagination.  Perhaps one day it will manifest in reality; perhaps it won’t.  Instead, I settle for a fast-ish sprint back to the campsite–as much as I can over the terrain.  I have one split second where I fear tumbling over my right knee as I turn a corner in haste, but I’m otherwise a free animal running in the wild for the last five minutes of the trip.

I’m back at the campsite after 3.6 miles.  I’m out of the shoes, into a PFD, and swimming in the beauty of the lake waters.  It’s still too early for a lot of paddlers, and it feels like the entire lake is mine, leisurely swimming, stretching out the shoulders and elbows and hips and knees and ankles that have taken the brunt of the running expedition.  They smoothly move through rotations in this suspension of gravity.  I stretch and balance,floating atop the water.  Soon, I am back in shore and load up the boat for one last trip around the lake.  There are two creeks on the Western shore that offer tiny spots just enough for a kayak to fit and contemplate the serenity of being in a hidden pocket of the world, shaded from the sun by drooping magnolias, feted by flowers fallen along the shore lines.

 

I emerge back into the lake.  The morning rental canoes have begun to make their way into the waters.  People ask me “What’s back there?” and parents and children navigate the tense balance of paddling a boat across open water.  I stroll across the northern shore to see the other campsites and then back to mine.  Boat on the car with 30 minutes to spare, I make it a point that my hammock will be the last bit of gear to pack.  I sit in the breeze to hear the paddlers across the water.  Read a little, write a little, sit back and stare at the leaves a little.  In this morning, I have risen lazily and had a morning impossible in the strictures of the civilized world.  I read.  I wrote.  I sipped tea.  I ran.  I swam.  I paddled.  And, here, I sit and let it all surround me as the day reaches noon in the swaying breeze.

 

Shortly after noon, I’m back on the BRP.  A water main break in Blowing Rock means I’m waiting all the way to Mt. Holly to score a breakfast burrito and a smoothie, and which point the harsh afternoon heat of the Piedmont against the concrete and asphalt make the 24 hour dirtbag bubble seem a distant dream.  Energy expended and memory created.  A day like any other.  A day like no other.