The Ocean is Calling

We have been looking forward to our annual Sabbatical more keenly than usual.   The weather has been cold for December, and the older I get the more I feel it.  I remember running in the winter when the temperatures were in the teens, and when there was snow on the ground.  Readers of this blog may look back only a few years and see photos of Highlands Roadrunner with ice in his beard and snow on his cap.  But these days a mere 30 degrees seems cruel.  I have run more than once this month in temperatures below freezing, hoping to become acclimated to the cold, but my body no longer seems to adapt to winter running as it did when I was younger.  We are looking forward to 40-degree runs in Atlantic Beach instead of 30-degree runs in Highlands.

It has been a stressful year in many ways, but we have wrapped things up well, I think.  I totaled up the mileage in my running log for the year, something I have been doing since 1995 when I first began keeping records, and the cumulative total including this year’s (least mileage of any year - 435) is 32,885.  That is only a fraction of the miles which an elite runner would complete in a career, but I am proud of it nevertheless.  

We decorated the house for the holidays, had new friends over for dinner, and sought out old friends for lunch, and prepared Christmas Dinner for our daughter and son-in-law and Martha’s 93-year-old aunt.  And then we undecorated the house for the holidays and packed up and left 2023 and Highlands behind for a couple of months.  The Ocean is Calling, I wrote on the blackboard a day after Christmas.

It is more a spiritual call than an auditory one and it requires careful listening:

      On quiet nights I can hear that ocean
if I listen carefully, here below Satulah Mountain,
beneath the cricketwhisper and the quavering calls
of the screech owl and the faroff wail of a hound,
that ancient blind soothing saltwater breathing,
the pulled tides and the moonphase nightwaters
sighing softly from an impossible distance,
the gentle surfcrash, the end of all seeking,

We took our time getting to Atlantic Beach this year, as we did last year, driving first on Saturday morning to the Historic Brookstown Inn in Old Salem, an old converted cotton mill where we have stayed many times in the past.  

A familiar face greeted us at the Inn – Sally, the hotel cat, who showed up ten years ago, a stowaway (perhaps a reluctant one) in the back of a moving van.  Her owners in Seattle were glad to learn that she had a new home, and Sally seems to love it here, killing the occasional mouse while not at all interested in the bacon and sausage on the breakfast bar every morning.

We had time before checking in to explore nearby Old Salem, but most of the shops were closed because of the holiday.  Only Winkler Bakery was open with its historic beehive oven, and visitors were queued up to buy their famed Moravian Sugar Cake.  We declined the urge to indulge.

We returned to Old Salem on Sunday morning to worship at the beautiful Home Moravian Church, founded in 1771.

It was an appropriate service for the last day of 2023, a liturgy for a New Year, with a timeless scripture reading from Psalm 148, one of my favorites.

Praise the Lord from the earth,
you sea monsters and all deeps,
Fire and hail, snow and frost,
stormy wind fulfilling the Lord’s command.

One of the members of the church had died in the past week, so the service included two hymns from Funeral Chorales of the Moravian Church.  It was especially moving to us because we learned that one of our friends from Highlands had suddenly died the previous day.  Life is short.  Or as one of the Chorales put it,

A pilgrim, us preceding,
in grace has been called home,
the final summons heeding
which soon to all must come.

We had time to visit the church’s nearby God’s Acre, where generations of Moravians are buried in identical graves, reflecting their belief in equality, even in death; no one person stands out among the recumbent stones.

It was only an hour’s drive to our next stopover, Shelton Vineyards in Dobson, and on the way we stopped to stretch our legs and refresh ourselves with a cold beer at the Angry Troll Brewery in historic downtown Elkin, “The best thing to happen to Elkin since the blanket.”  The brewery is located in an old blanket manufacturing building.  We tried an interesting IPA called 42 Is the Answer to Everything, perhaps the best IPA I have ever had, in fact.  I wondered about the name, and later found that it derived from Douglas Adams' science fiction book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and represents all meaning (“the meaning of life, the universe, and everything”) as determined by the fictional supercomputer Deep Thought over a period of 7.5 million years.  Unfortunately, nobody could remember the question, so the joke goes. 

Shelton Vineyards was an appropriate place to wrap up 2023.  We enjoyed a wine tasting and then a New Year’s Eve dinner at their restaurant, The Farmhouse, with excellent wines perfectly paired with each course.  It was a late night for us early-to-bed people, and we actually left before the final course of Yadkin Valley Port and a rich chocolate dessert.  There is only so much celebrating that we can withstand, even on this final day of the year known for excesses of celebrating.  And as in the past, no, we did not stay up to “see the New Year in” as some of our dinner companions were planning to do.

Turkey Trot . . . Not

For the last few years, we have run destination 5-K races on Thanksgiving Day.  It is a great way to celebrate and to give thanks for good health and for still being, at our advancing ages, runners in (reasonably) good health.  Turkey Trots are the most popular races in the country, with nearly a million people running/walking them since the first one in Buffalo, New York, in 1896.  They’ve been around since before the Boston Marathon (1897), and they are often non-competitive events for the whole family.  In my earlier running days, I have run races on Thanksgiving Day in places as distant as Orlando and Charleston, sometimes alone, sometimes with our daughter Katy or in recent years with Martha.

Our most recent streak began in 2018, when we ran the Turkey Strut in Winston-Salem, and in a huge field of participants, Martha placed third.  In 2019, we ran the Run for the Turkey in Greensboro and both placed second.  In 2020, we and millions of other runners did not run any races at all because of the Covid-19 epidemic (so we discount that year in our unbroken streak), but in 2021 we ran the Sunrise Rotary Turkey Trot at Lake Junaluska, a place we had never visited before despite its proximity to Highlands; I took placed first and Martha third.  And last year, we ran the Turkey Trot in Williamsburg, Virginia, and Martha placed fourth.  So despite being non-competitive, we have done pretty well on Thanksgiving mornings.  The interested follower of this blog can read about all of these modest exploits in my archives.

This year, we signed up for the Turkey Trot in nearby Hendersonville, and Martha was even able to snag the last two reservations at Season’s Restaurant at Highland Lake Inn in Flat Rock, together with rooms at the Woodward House.  We have always stayed in one of the rustic little cabins at Highland Lake Inn, but last year we had checked out this much larger space and wanted to give it a try. 

It proved to be one of the nicest rooms we have ever stayed in and was very close to both the starting line of the race on Thursday morning and the Flat Rock Theater, where Martha was also able to snag the last two seats at their annual Christmas Show.  (How she manages these feats of reservations remains a mystery to me, but I am thankful for her skill and her foresight.)

To be honest, we had both been having some qualms about the race ahead of time.  We learned that there were 1400 runners, and that only four awards would be given:  first place male, first place female, farthest traveled, and “mystery time prize.”  Placing is not everything, especially in a big race like this, but it is nice to know how you measure up against others in your age group.  The decision not to “Trot” this year, though, had nothing to do with race size or temperatures (predicted to be in the low 30s), but with an injury I inflicted upon myself 12 days before the race.  Following a good four-mile run in town that day, I went down to our raised-bed gardens to take care of a final late-fall harvest, that of digging up for winter storage my dahlia tubers.  This was my first year for growing dahlias and they had done well, and my simple, low-exertion chore was to dig them up and to pull up the wooden stakes that had secured them during the season.  It has been so dry that those stakes were stuck fast in the dirt, and when I jerked them up in a sideways motion, I instantly felt something pull in my back.  To make a long story short, muscles in my lower back were so painful that they required a visit to Dr. Sue Aery, our local chiropractor, and several days of rest and doses of ibuprofen.  By the time we left for Hendersonville on Wednesday, although I was improving, I knew that I could only finish this Turkey Trot at a Walk.  Martha had been having some issues with her neck, too, and had visited Dr. Sue several times.  So we decided that we would break our streak of Turkey Trots this year and simply enjoy our stay at Highland Lake Inn and Thanksgiving Dinner at Season’s.

I admittedly was feeling a little runner’s guilt on Thursday morning, but I awoke early, went outside for Tai Chi, and managed to run perhaps a mile around the empty roads on the 26-acre property where we were staying.  Since a child, I grew up thinking that it was an improving thing to do to walk or run on Thanksgiving morning.  I remember when I was a young child my brother and I being taken on a walk by my Dad in order to, as he termed it, “work up an appetite.”  (Or as my Mom probably termed it, “getting us out from under her feet.”)  And what a wonderful aroma greeted us when we would return to the house and smell that turkey in the oven!  Good memories.  That one mile around Highland Lake Inn made me feel that I was honoring the tradition as best I could.  And dinner was wonderful, as it always is at this restaurant, which we have enjoyed on Easter, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day, but never before on Thanksgiving Day.  

Black Friday for us involved nothing more commercial than a “window-shopping” visit to downtown Hendersonville and a visit to Oklawaha Brewing down the hill on First Street, where we enjoyed good beer and grilled-cheese sandwiches and played a spirited game of Scrabble.  In the afternoon, we drove to a place we had discovered a couple of years ago, Point Lookout Vineyards, located on the slopes of Point Lookout Mountain with 30-mile views.  We enjoyed a glass of wine and a very good charcuterie plate before driving back to Flat Rock.

Our final event of the day was the Christmas Show at the historic Flat Rock Theater, which thoroughly entertained us (and I am not always easy to entertain at song-and-dance shows).  There was laughter, and dancing (by the Flat Rockettes), and beautiful music.  And what a wonderful venue – the oldest playhouse in North Carolina and the State Theater.  The history is an interesting one: 

Flat Rock Playhouse’s roots go all the way back to about 1940. A ragtag group of struggling actors that called themselves the Vagabond Players was formed in New York in the late 1930’s. They were led by London native and Broadway actor Robroy Farquhar.  This troupe of actors worked their way down the east coast and ended up in Henderson County around 1940. They were attracted by the growing tourism industry in the area and established themselves as the first summer theatre in North Carolina. The Vagabond Players took over an old grist mill at Highland Lake and established the Old Mill Playhouse, which became the actors’ base in 1940 and 1941.

It was a memorable Thanksgiving despite the tradition of a Turkey Trot, and we returned home on Saturday filled with gratitude for good health, family and friends, and the love that we share for each other.  There is much to be thankful for.  And yes, that back has improved enough that I was able to run a mile or so this morning, and my sights are set on another race next Saturday.

Oktoberfest 5-K

Like many runners, I enjoy keeping records of my running and my races.  As we grow older and slower, it can be a little depressing to remember the finish times I used to record – “The older I get, the faster I was!” I like to say.  But it can also be inspiring to realize that, despite injuries and hardships, running has been a constant in my life for forty years or more, and since I began running road races I have rarely missed the opportunity to test myself several times a year.  My best year was 2018, when I ran eleven races, nearly one every month.  Most of those races have been shared by Martha during the last couple of decades, and it is something we enjoy doing together.

Looking back in my records, though, there is a huge gap.  We both completed the Crystal Coast 10-K in Morehead City on March 7, 2020, and did not run another race until 18 months later.  The reason for that, of course, was Covid-19, which killed 350,000 people in the U. S. that year and even more the next year, and which caused race directors around the world to cancel events that had been going on for decades.  Even the Boston Marathon was cancelled that year, the first time in its 124-year history.  What took place instead around the country was something called “virtual races,” where a runner completes the prescribed distance on a course of his or her own choosing, and then sends in the results.  Race Directors are trusting sorts.

We returned from Atlantic Beach after that March 7 race and within a week we were wearing face masks, toilet paper and hand sanitizer had disappeared from the grocery shelves, and we were spraying the soles of our shoes with Lysol when we returned from the store.  What a relief it was to sign up for those first two Covid vaccinations in February and March of 2021.  It is still hard to believe that there was so much “anti-vax” sentiment running wild in the country.  To my mind, vaccinations are one of the best things modern medicine has produced, as most of us well remember who lined up at our schools for childhood polio vaccinations and cheered at the elimination of smallpox.

Slowly, road races began to return in 2021, and we signed up for our first “real” race on September 11, the Never Forget 5-K (in memory of those who died on that date 20 years ago – see post of October 2).  We went on to complete eight races before the end of the year, our finish times faster with each successive race.  One of those races was the Oktoberfest 5-K in Walhalla, which has been going on for nearly 20 years and is only 45 minutes from our house, but which we never entered for some reason.  Believing that we can once again race ourselves back into good condition again after a five-week road trip, we are trying the same thing this year, with the Autumn Breeze 5-K less than two weeks after the 11-mile Cades Cove run, and this race only two weeks after that one. 

It was a perfect day for a race on Saturday morning – clear, 51 degrees, and a light breeze blowing.  There was a new certified course this year that looked even faster than the one we ran two years ago.  The Oktoberfest celebration itself, organized by Rotary, was taking place on the other side of town, and you had to look hard to find any mention of this race on the Rotary website.  “Listen to the OOPS Polka Band while munching on a bratwurst with kraut. Enjoy a refreshing mug of cold German beer. Reunite with old friends. Join the dance floor for the always fun "chicken dance". Explore our amazing arts & crafts with vendors from all over the Southeast. And don't forget an apple dumpling for dessert!”  On Main Street, there was no sign of bratwurst, beer, chicken dancing, or apple dumplings, just a hundred eager runners lining up for the start.  The newly-crowned Oktoberfest Queen, a cute young local woman, did make an appearance wearing her plastic tiara, though, as did three or four large costumed characters who were high-fiving runners at the finish.

We both had a good race.  Martha’s finish time was 34:03, faster than her time both two weeks ago and two years ago, but there was stiff competition in her age group and she took third place.  I was the only man in my age group and so took first place in 39:15, faster than two weeks ago.  (A 77-year old man in the next age group put that time to shame with a time of 26:59 – my competition next year when I will be 75.)  

But there is no predicting your place in a race; it's just a matter of who shows up on that particular day.  The important thing at our age is to keep showing up.

Autumn Breeze 5-K

Two years ago, we ran this race in pouring rain (see post of October 4, 2021).  We probably would not have run that year except (a) we had already driven to the race and were standing at the starting line, and (b) we are both, as I often remind myself over and over again, Not Right in the Head (the condition is much worse in me than it is in Martha).  I remember her asking me, moments before the start, “Are you sure you want to do this?”  But then the race started and we already knew the answer.

Last year, the race conditions were much better, and our friend Anthony, who is the co-Race Director, asked at the starting line how many had been there the previous year.  Several hands went up, and we all looked around to see how many other runners were Not Right in the Head.  This year, conditions were even better.  The temperature was in the low 60s, there was a light breeze, and the sky was that unique color of deep blue that we often experience in the mountain in October.  This course is one of the prettiest ones we have run regularly, too, starting just upstream from the dam in the Tallulah River, following the river past the Terrora Hydro Plant, and then returning on a paved asphalt greenway trail under a canopy of hardwoods just beginning to turn gold.  It is relatively flat, but not an especially fast course because of branches pushing up the pavement of the greenway trail, which is an impediment for clumsy runners like me (but not for the 16-year-old boy who won the race in 18:12 - it didn't look like his feet even touched the ground). 

It had only been eleven days since our eleven-mile run in Cades Cove, but both of us had been training a little more seriously.  I even ran a couple of 400-meter intervals once, and we both felt good going into the race.  Martha, as usual, rounded the first curve and disappeared, and I never saw her again.  We both had good races.  My time last year had been 40:54, and we had both taken first place in our age groups.  This year I was happy with 41:44, and I managed to win a third place award.  (First place in my age group was taken by a 70-year-old in an amazing 28:28, a time I have not run in almost a decade.)  Martha again took first place in 36:28; her goal had been only to break 40 minutes.

 

 

We celebrated as we had last year at The Edge Café and Bar, located just up the hill from where the race had finished – cold draft beer and good, healthy food!  A perfect Sunday afternoon.

Cades Cove

Years ago, we used to run long distances in preparation for marathons.  In August of 2000, I was training for a half marathon in September and a marathon in December, and I remember that the idea of a training run in Cades Cove in the Great Smoky Mountains originated during that period of time.  An eleven-mile one-way loop road circles the Cove and passes by historic cabins, barns, and churches.  I was running one day with our friend Anthony at the time and mentioned it to him, and he enthusiastically replied that he had always wanted to run there.  So we organized the very first trip to Cades Cove that year, and since then I have run the loop thirteen times with many different groups of runners and friends, including Martha.  The road used to be closed to traffic on Wednesdays and Saturdays until 10:00 a.m. during the summer (now it is closed all day) so we would get started running before then and hope to complete it before the steady stream of cars and trucks were released and caught up to us. 

Martha and I had not run in Cades Cove for five years.  We were sharing running memories several months ago, and she suggested we consider organizing another trip there, even though we are no longer running those kinds of distances.  We remembered a pasta-loading dinner we had all enjoyed at an Italian restaurant in Townsend, and Martha graciously volunteered to host our own pasta-load at our hotel, the Gateway Inn, where most of us were staying.  We sent an e-mail to runners, former runners, spouses, and anyone else who might be interested in going and it attracted thirteen willing participants.  Some of us fondly recalled our last visit there when, on the evening after completing the run, we had gathered around the fire-pit at our hotel and shared food and drink and camaraderie – a memorable time!

That is how all thirteen of us ended up sitting in the picnic shelter at the Gateway Inn enjoying a delicious salad and spaghetti dinner miraculously prepared by Martha on the tiny stove in our cabin (and toll house cookies baked by me the day before).

It was a perfect day in Cades Cove.  Rain had been predicted but never showed up.  We had just returned from our five-week road trip out west a little over three weeks ago, during which I had only run a mile or two a few times.  And Martha had not run at all since June except for a couple of short runs after we returned.  But we both surprised ourselves, running (with walking breaks) the entire eleven miles, and enjoying the scenery and the wildlife, which this year included deer, a bear, and some wild turkeys.

Others in the group ran, walked, or cycled various distances - there are two shortcuts across the Cove that total either three or eight miles, and bicycles can be rented at the Camp Store. 

After the run, we all gathered for lunch at the Peaceful Side Social Club and Craft Brewery in Townsend, which coincidentally was located in the same building where that Italian restaurant had been.  That evening, we met around the fire-pit as we had five years ago, but when light rain began to fall we adjourned to the picnic shelter again to enjoy food and drink that everybody had brought with them.

Such a wonderful day, with good friends, in one of the most beautiful places on earth!  We may have to make this a regular annual event.

Home

 Sunday morning hazy sunrise over the Tennessee River.

That was all I wrote on the last page of my little journal, and this was the last photo I took, because the final day of our road trip was a route we had traveled many times before and there was no need to continue taking photos.  Many of those times we had been returning home from running the Rocket City Marathon in Huntsville.  We knew all the familiar sights:  The Tennessee River, and then US-64 through Murphy and along the Ocoee River past the Ocoee Whitewater Center, built to host the whitewater slalom events of the 1996 Olympic game.  It is a beautiful drive and the weather was just perfect on this Sunday morning.

 

We drove from Franklin to Highlands, and then down the Walhalla Road to our home, and all was at it should be.  No trees had fallen on our property, nothing was amiss.  (Although the grass really needed to be cut after five weeks).  It was good to be back home again.

 

Martha posted a photo of our deck and wrote on Facebook:

 

“We are home!! Thanks to all of our friends and family that “armchair traveled” with us on our 5 week Wild West Trip in our Mini Cooper!! We drove 7,340 miles (with no mechanical issues) through 18 states, and visited 14 National Parks. We appreciated your prayers and your special comments along the way. We hope our trip brought back happy memories for many of you, and inspired others to start planning your own adventures!!”

 

We had indeed been surprised by all of those who had followed our road trip, some of them very unexpected.  And since returning, we keep running into people in the post office or the grocery store who say, “We loved your trip!”  It was our longest trip, but one of our most satisfying.  And I keep thinking about those questions I asked on Day One (see post of July 31):

 

·       What did you see?

·       What did you learn?

·       How has it changed you?

 

Those are questions I ask every day as I remember those special moments that we spent together seeing all that we saw, and that I will continue to ask as I process all of it.

 

And now I have finished “catching up” on this blog, which has taken me several weeks in itself.  To those few readers of this blog, thank you for following us.  And may you have adventures of your own someday.  Bon voyage!

"People cannot discover new lands
until they have the courage to lose sight of the shore."  Andre Gide

Chattanooga

A friendly black and white cat turned up at the cabin the previous day, and he has been hanging around, walking the perimeter of the handrail on the rear deck of the cabin and poised to leap inside when the door is open.

 

After we left Natchez Trace State Park, we decided we had had enough of I-40 and found a more scenic route to our next destination, Chattanooga.  It was 40 miles slower and, as in the past, our GPS kept frantically telling us to turn toward the Interstate, but we turned down the volume and it finally shrugged and gave up.  We instead played “Margaritaville” on the sound system.  It was a good, winding road through Tennessee countryside, and we saw some interesting sights, more than we ever would have out on the Interstate.

Our backroads route eventually led us to US-64 – the same road that goes from Murphy to Manteo in North Carolina, and right through Highlands – and it took us to Lawrenceburg, home of Davy Crockett.  There was a tall statue of him in the town square, and after circling it a few times we found a restaurant open called The Pie Factory, which according to a complete stranger on the sidewalk out front made delicious pizzas.  The stranger was correct!
 

Our waitress was a pretty young girl named Azia, and she had a tattoo on her arm, which we asked about (we never fail to ask).  She read it to us:  “Trust in yourself.”  I hope she finds her dream and trusts in herself, and in other people, too.  This little town was a pretty one, and we wondered if that was her dream, to remain here serving pizza to mostly local friends, or if she would seek wider horizons.

 

We arrived in busy Chattanooga and checked in to our hotel for the night, the Riverview Inn.  Martha had once again selected an interesting place, high on a bluff overlooking Chattanooga and the Tennessee River. 

 

We braved the busy Saturday night traffic and headed into the nearby commercial area looking for a place to eat dinner, and found 1885 Grill, which served seafood and allowed us yet another opportunity to eat outdoors on a covered terrace.  Doesn’t food always taste better outdoors?

 

Then we drove back to the Inn and chatted with a couple around the fire-pit.  She was a nurse and he was a science teacher, and we got into a discussion about the short attention span of today's students.  We returned to our room and watched the sunset from our balcony.  We were almost home!

 

Natchez Trace, Day 2

In planning this road trip, Martha thought that by now we might need a relaxing rest day, thus the two-night stay in this State Park, and she was exactly right.  The place is named for the historic Natchez Trace, a wilderness trail in the 18^th and early 19^th centuries, and it covers more than 48,000 acres, much of which we explored today because it is so extensive in area.  We found several wilderness trails, campgrounds, boating, and even horseback riding.

 

Breakfast was very nice.  We had done well in provisioning ourselves at The Food Giant!

 

We had time for a little hiking on some of the trails in the area, too.  This was exactly the kind of day we needed after so many weeks on the road.

 

 

We walked down to the lake to see about taking out canoes or paddleboats, and on the way we spotted this huge blue heron taking off.  Beautiful, the way its wingtips touch the water as it rises into the air.

 

It was pretty warm by then, and we decided to go out for awhile on the lake.  The friendly young woman renting the boats named Jessie told us in a casual kind of way to watch out for water moccasins.  She said they didn't bother her; she just hit them with an oar.  We opted for a paddleboat because, I guess, they are farther from the water (although not equipped with defensive oars).  We started out and she said, “I wouldn’t go that way. That’s Snake Cove.”  So we went the other way.  And we never saw a snake.

 

Natchez Trace State Park has only one restaurant, Pin Oak Lodge Restaurant, and it is in the main building where we registered, several miles away.  We had learned when we checked in that there was a Seafood Buffet on Friday nights and it sounded appealing; we had not had seafood in a long time.  And hiking and paddling works up an appetite!  We arrived early enough to be near the front of the line = cold-boiled shrimp, deviled crab, baked potatoes - delicious!  I noticed that the sign had misspelled “buffet” as “Buffett several times.”  Fans of "Margaritaville?"  What an eerie coincidence when we learned the next morning that Jimmy Buffett had died that same day.

 

We returned to the cabin, and I lit a fire in the fire-pit next to the cabin, not so much because of the evening chill in the air as because we wanted to see a fire.  We poured a glass of wine, sat at the picnic table near the fire playing a game of cards, and watched the sunset and the lightning bugs.