4/24/2023 0 Comments Garret mountain tanks![]() Put on the cruise control and turn up the volume of the radio program for maximum immersion. ![]() Just like the memories when darkness fills the sky and traffic is long gone. The miles continue to tick away, as does time. And my heart always seems to fill to the brim with pure emotion and gratitude when I get lost in those moments like last Monday afternoon/evening, rolling along that lost highway, happily lost in thought.ĭon’t forget, all who wander aren’t lost. Your hometown over a thousand miles due north, filled with faces not seen in many moons. Your aging parents hundreds of miles below you in St. A glorious spring sunset falling behind the deep forest of South Carolina. You compartmentalize the day at hand, more so the week ahead of you, now in the rearview mirror come Sunday, when you put it all in a shoebox in the closet of your memory, only to start over with a fresh, empty box come Monday morning.Īnd then there are the days and hours (and minutes that fly by with ease) you’re alone in your truck, cruising along I-95 and I-26 back to Southern Appalachia. It’s funny, you know? You spend every day trying to accomplish the tasks at hand, whether it’s work-related or whatever it is that brings you happiness when not in the presence of work. And not to mention those awkward, sometimes promising weekend dances with YWCA Camp Hochelaga from just across the water in South Hero. Myself and a few of my friends from school heading off to camp for a week each summer (for four years in a row), learning the ropes of not only rock climbing, canoeing, archery, arts/crafts and capture the flag, but also how to navigate the choppy waters and unknown landscape of growing up. YMCA Camp Abnaki on the shores of Lake Champlain in North Hero, Vermont. I hadn’t thought of my past summer camp experiences since I was, well, in middle school. Somewhere between Columbia and Spartanburg, South Carolina, “Middle School” slid into 1998’s “Notes on Camp” episode. The smell of crappy pizza and sounds of overzealous excitement in the cafeteria. Worried about a pop quiz and the mile test in gym class. Broken pencils, always in need of an eraser. Interactions and moments not thought of since I myself was in middle school, the late 1990s on the Canadian border. Somewhere near the intersection of I-95 and I-26, the radio program slipped into another episode, 2011’s “Middle School.” Journalists roaming around schools and interviewing young kids as they hop the fence between their elementary years and their impending teenage experiences. And even though I’d never met or interacted with those voices, I knew and acknowledged each one. Voices, in essence, just moving from one dot on the map to the next, either for work or play (or both). Voices in transition, physically and emotionally. ![]() Voices heading somewhere for summer vacation. It was the…įor someone like myself who wanders through rest stops and travel plazas on a pretty consistent basis - and throughout seemingly every corner of this country - I found a lot of solidarity in the responses from those who were approached and questioned. 10, 2012, I took on my first assignment for The Smoky Mountain News.
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