Sitting in the parking lot of Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest in the western corner of North Carolina, watching the horizontal rays of the westering sun slant through the beginnings of what would soon be a chill evening fog, Asheville suddenly seems like the kingdom of heaven. We – “we” being myself and my friends John and Andrea – had just finished a three-day backpacking trip in the nearby wilderness and then split up for a morning and afternoon to meet back in the heart of the Joyce Kilmer forest, John traveling on foot and Andrea and I by car. The bit of driving involved in moving the car from our original trailhead to the Joyce Kilmer trailhead – a bit of forest service road, a bit of one-lane, cliff-edge driving – was jarring, as usual.
Reincorporation into the “modern” world is always difficult for me after a few days in the wilderness, and the process is never more awkward than when it involves immediately taking a car out onto a heavily traveled road. Silence is suddenly sound, peace is suddenly conflict, beauty becomes artifice, freedom becomes a series of rules. Turning the key, starting the engine, hurrying to turn down the volume on the CD player as the guitar solo from “New Year’s Day” by U2 suddenly roars to life, I was envious of John’s extra few miles of hiking that would take him through the heart of the old-growth forest that Andrea and I were only now able to reach through a circuitous and disenchanting drive.
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