It’s now Friday of the “Vacation Week” I’d mentioned in my previous post (Taking a Vacation – No, really!). My son and I are in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, right at the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The original plan was that he would be doing a lot of hiking while I’d just be relaxing at where we’re staying and doing a lot of reading.
We also spent some time planning out what we’d be doing each day, mainly because he wanted to be sure he covered all of the hikes he wanted to do and still factored in any of the “tourist stuff” for both of us.
You’ll note I referred to what we came up with as the “original” plan. As with so many things, the plan didn’t quite get followed. The part that got skipped wasn’t about him hiking, but about me staying put and doing a lot of reading. I seem to have forgotten to stay still. Oops?
I don’t believe I’ve really revealed much details about myself, but – because it’s relevant here – I’ll give some now. I spent the back half of 2015 hospitalized and in physical rehab. I have an incomplete spinal cord injury (no, I’m not linking it; you can look it up yourself). Around this time, 11 years ago, I couldn’t even sit up in bed or a wheelchair without screaming in agony. When I was finally released to go back home, I was using a walker. I’ve since “graduated” to just using a cane when I’m not at home (for stability mostly).
Saturday – Driving Down
From central New Jersey to the Smokies would normally be a 10-11 hour drive – just solid US Interstate driving. We deviated (with good results). Specifically, we decided to go along Skyline Drive through Shenandoah National Park. It’s a 105 mile scenic route that goes through the entire park and is rated as taking 3 hours to go the full length. It’s slow going and there are scenic outlooks throughout the entire drive. Needless to say, we stopped at a LOT of them. Our 10-11 hour drive turned into 15 hours. Even with an early start, it was late at night by the time we got here.
Sunday – Looking Around + His First Hike
We wandered around in town (it’s a “resort town” so the central strip through Gatlinburg is packed with “stuff to do”). In the evening, my son went off to hike to the Mt. Sterling fire tower.
After he was back, we started moving things around on the schedule. One of the things we had talked about back in NJ was the possibility of me trying to do the Kuwohi Trail. Kuwohi is a 5/8 mile (one way) paved path to the highest point in the Smoky Mountains. I wanted to do it – for the view, for the achievement, and also just to see if I was capable of it. To potentially make Kuwohi “even better”, we’d slotted it in as a sunrise hike on Tuesday.
Monday – It Starts Getting Strenuous
The next hike he wanted to do was to the Mt. Shuckstack fire tower (sensing a theme here?), which starts off just past Fontana Dam in NC. As we were driving through the park, we saw the turn-off for Kuwohi and figured we’d at least take a look at what the trailhead parking lot was like. Even from the trailhead, the views are … amazing. We were taking a lot of pictures and, I’ll admit it – I was seriously tempted to just try the hike right then and there. [My son even commented that he “could see the gears turning”. He was prepared, if I decided to, he’d go for it with me.]
While the trailhead is on the “other” side of the dam (and it’s possible to drive across it), he decided to hike across the dam. I looked at it and thought “what the hell … not like I’m likely to have another chance to walk across a dam any time soon, right?” Round trip across the dam is about a mile. That’s more “single session” walking than I’ve done in the past decade. I viewed this as being a “life achievement” – like ticking off the box on a Bingo Card.
After walking the dam, I still had a couple of hours left and, nearby, there’s a very interesting road … known as ‘The Tail of the Dragon“. There are 318 curves in the 11 miles of road, and some of them are tight. This particular road is a big deal for motorcycles and sports cars (as well as anyone who simply wants to say they drove it and “survived”). While I was waiting for him to finish his hike, I drove over there and went both up and down it. One more Bingo Card checkmark.
Tuesday – Sunrise Kuwohi
We woke up “too damn early”, giving ourselves time to get to the lot and then time for me to make it up there. This is also where the title of the post comes in. Going into it, I KNEW this was going to be a struggle and it was going to hurt. And that’s why I told myself, before we even started … “Crying is allowed; stopping isn’t”. I could moan and curse as much as I wanted to. But, so long as I could still move my legs, I was making it to the top.
We made it with about 10 minutes to spare. There were about 15-20 others there, at least a couple of whom had passed us, going by while we were still working our way up. I hadn’t actually been crying on the trek. That had been a way for me to refer to all of the internal cursing I knew I’d be doing (since I wasn’t going to waste breath on actually cursing).
Getting to the top, though? That’s when a couple of tears started to form. I was standing there … on my own two legs … in the darkness, at the highest point in the Smoky Mountains … waiting for sunrise. That’s one hell of a Bingo Card achievement for someone who, 11 years ago, couldn’t even stand up, huh?
The US military has a motto that gets drilled into recruits during Basic Training, through all of the physical training: “Pain is weakness leaving the body”. I’m not a big believer in that particular motto, but, for this one? Yeah, pain was definitely me proving – to myself – that my limits weren’t quite where I’d thought they were.
The Moment
The people who get to the top of Kuwohi for sunrise on a “random Tuesday” are there because it’s special. Every time someone makes it there, the group, generally, all turn and congratulate the newcomers. There were some raised eyebrows and glances at my cane, and I had the opportunity to tell others the short version.
And then everyone quieted down as the first reddish-orange light breaks through. On Monday, one of the Park volunteers had mentioned that sunrise there can be rough because there’s often a lot of overnight fog that hasn’t burned off yet. For us … there was nothing beyond a few wispy clouds.
All of us, my son and I included, were busy taking pictures – with phones, or cameras, or just embedding the view into memory – for a bit. As the sun came up more fully, I turned to my son and embraced him, thanking him for … not just taking the trip and letting me join him, but for this … the opportunity to push myself and see sunrise from Kuwohi. If he hadn’t gotten into hiking and decided to come here, I never would have done this on my own.
The Trek Back Down
For hikers, it’s generally recognized that the hike “up” may be bad, but the hike “down” is even worse. Going up, it’s just a matter of pushing your body up more and more. Down, though, you need to not go down “too fast” and you’re continuously needing to lean back against the slope.
Now add in trying to do that with a cane. I joked with him that I was tempted to just lay down and let him roll me downhill. He reminded me that going down in a zip-zag pattern is a way to make the slope less brutal. It helped, but it made the path “longer”, and I was definitely starting to feel everything.
Side note: Hopefully obviously, I didn’t buy new boots just for this. I had some boots which were well over a decade old at home and they’d been loaded in the car along with all of our other stuff (I had tentatively thought about doing this hike, or something else, so I knew I’d need them).
At The Trailhead
As we reached the lower portion of the trail (where it flattens out some), I glanced down and noticed that my hiking boots looked a little odd. I pointed it out to my son who checked and said it looked like the sole was starting to separate from the main boots. I chuckled. That’s what I get for decade-plus old boots, right.
When we finally got back to the car, and both of us were going to change into normal shoes, that’s when I noticed …
The sole of my boot was barely hanging on. Aging rubber and glue, combined with the sheer forces from keeping myself from sliding down the trail had been too much for them. They were done.
I’d survived a hike up and down Kuwohi better than my boots did.
Rather than bringing them back with us, we both agreed they deserved a resting place, even if temporarily, on the mountain which had finished them off. Yes, that involved tossing them in a trash bin in the parking lot, right next to the trailhead. But, for some period of time, they were “buried” on Kuwohi, where they gave their last to help me make it up and down.
