Hot Springs

Waiting for the train: In this case, I’m second in a three car lineup at a level crossing at the bottom of a steep basin rimmed by a cluster of mountains in North Carolina. Just one of those things you know; window rolled down, engine off, a pause to think; can’t get around a slow moving freight as it groans its way across the main street of some hidden town; where the exhaust from the train’s three diesel head-ends can be seen steaming from the pines a mile away as the engines growl in tandem at the task of hauling mountains of steel up mountains of rail. Come to think, life can sometimes feel exactly like that.

You know the experience. Things get a little congested at an intersection; there is a great juggle of the days. And then, you spot a moment when all seems calm and the balls are suspended in the air in timeless slow motion, you take a deep breath and you run: not away, but to you. To try and figure out where you are in the game. Let me rephrase that: Who you are in the middle of a performance that requires that you not lose concentration nor drop anything. It can happen, right?

So, depending on the intensity of the performance and my concentration abilities—not always operating at max in the best of times— I look at the measure of respite that it might take to help restore perspective at this time. Nothing new here: Sometimes it only takes an hour or two of lying on my back in a cornfield, cloud-gazing; other times might call for an afternoon up in a tree, yet others times a bike tour or 14.6 kilometres of just plain meandering on foot will do it.

I reconcile the emotional stuff that wants to get in the way of going. All the parts of me have a conference and agree to give myself permission from time to time to dropout in order to re-find equilibrium. Sometimes, finding that so-called balance happens more later than sooner.

In a most recent scenario, I calculated that a week-long road trip might just about be right. No sightseeing, tourist guides, freeways or fast food joints. Mostly back roads, side roads, main streets of little places, bigger places, places where I can observe life from a distance; get a feel of what’s going on. I figure getting lost is one way of finding oneself.

At the rail crossing, at last the end freightcar creeps past. With the jangle of the crossing bell and the flashing lights now arrested, there comes a silence. I start up the car; three trekkers, back-packers with a dog that carries its own knapsack, appear from the opposite side of the tracks; all bear camping gear and are headed beyond. I slowly take in Bridge Street, the main drag.

I’m caught with the preservation of boomtown facades of the downtown. I pull over, read the info at the side of the road: “Hot Springs, a place visited since time immemorial for the 100 plus degree mineral waters…’’ the plaque reads. Turns out that having just travelled down a steep highway that unwound like a slinky-toy wrapped around a stone pillar, I am in Appalachia country. The place stirs with the patina of earlier generations; head scarves, granola, tie-dyed shirts, welcoming faces. I wanna stay.

A small cedar cabin; campfire smoke waiting in the mountain bowl in the first of evening; remnants of day leaving over the shaggy mane of hilltops to the west; my boots resting on a porch rail; shot of brandy in hand and at this very moment, all is right with the world.

The Southern railway has run through here since the end of the 19th century. It follows the watershed of the French Broad River. I can hear the fast moving freshets where Spring creek confluences with the river just beyond the veranda.

Eight hundred feet above my head, is the Appalachia Trail. The A.T as it is called, completed in 1937, is one of the longest, continuously walked footpaths in the world. It extends north to south, 2,180 miles in length and travels through fourteen states from Maine to Georgia. An estimated 2-3 million people visit parts of the A.T. every year.

Now picture this, I mumble to myself. The Trans Canada Trail, now in the works for over two decades will soon link our country from coast to coast to coast. Nearby to the County, along Brighton and Trenton way, the Waterfront Trail is one link in the bigger picture. The Waterfront runs from Niagara to the Quebec border and carries on east from there.

I take another sip of brandy at this point as I pose a what if. What if there was finally a dedicated focus given to our Millennium Trail that travels through our backyards? It is a mere 50 kilometres, easy to restore. The path is as flat as Holland, making it ideal for walking and cycling and runs through an encyclopaedic list of natural heritage and history sites. The fact of it being part of the Waterfront Trail seems to be obscured. We have hardly thought through the possibilities.

Since the Trans Canada Trail is envisioned to have a link running south into Maine and hooking up to the A.T., eventually I could walk from my porch on Slab Creek to this very porch in Hot Springs that I sit on this evening, given a little time and body conditioning. Well, perhaps a lot of time and conditioning. I find it amazing how, when I run away from home, I am eventually carried back there one way or another. All it took in this case was a slow moving train.