August 12, 2024

The Turtle Trail meanders for a little more than a mile. When your situation demands a walk, the humble Turtle Trail, at Paris Mountain State Park in Greenville, is one place. It’s not the only place, but good enough.

The trail branches off the Mountain Creek Trail, which extends just shy of two miles from the lake near the park visitor’s center. It winds quickly into semi-swampland. A slow-moving creek gurgles alongside, amidst cattails and lily pads. Thick fronds of underbrush hang low over the ripples created by dragonflies. You wonder, do turtles swim there? 

The stands of oaks and maples, and some sycamores are impenetrable. Although this is the Upstate, where the Blue Ridge descends from North Carolina, there’s still a hint of Low Country wetland. The air is heavy and pungent.

It’s a gentle place decked out in deep vernal green. The forest closes in quickly, enforcing silence. The four of us stepped forward, small steps, careful steps around the rocks and roots that snake across the trail, polished by the feet of thousands. The surface rises slowly then descends and turns sharply with the rolling terrain of Upstate.

We had no grand purpose. The Turtle transit was not a retreat into wilderness, not a heartsick plunge into trackless country. We saw no hikers shouldering giant packs. No breathtaking mountain vistas lay before us.

It was time to go back to that quiet place. We all sensed something beyond ourselves. It was not about the Turtle Trail, or about any trail or any place. It seemed, a day or two later, a hint of welcome, much-needed isolation, momentary and fleeting, at this point in this year of stethoscopes and procedures, on a walk into the unknown. Which is where we all are going. Nothing changes.

Nothing changes, which is the whole point of the Turtle Trail. The sameness reassures and inspires. I thought of the countless analogies to the forest as cathedral, or chapel, where a perception of serenity and peace may lift the visitor to another realm of consciousness—contemplation of the Almighty, maybe, something sublime, beyond the world’s grittiness.

The imagination may build on all that to the thoughts and images created by Wordsworth in Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey:

Wordsworth, England’s greatest Romantic poet, wrote Tintern Abbey in 1798, a hard time in Europe. In Paris he fell in love with a French woman, then witnessed the atrocities of the revolution. Yet his spirits rose to compose Tintern Abbey and other verse that place him in his unique domain as a passionate explorer of the beauty and mystery of nature. The poem is five stanzas, 160 lines, but only 19 or 20 sentences. He could not contain himself.

Therefore am I still

A lover of the meadows and the woods

And mountains; and of all that we behold

From this green earth; of all the mighty world

… The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,

The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul

Of all my moral being.

Wordsworth never showed any disloyalty to the Church of England. He studied the Bible and graduated from St. John’s College, Cambridge. His brother Christopher became master of Trinity College. His oldest son John became a vicar.

Yet Tintern Abbey contains no reference to the Christian God or any god or church. Wordsworth found an intense, deeply felt lesson in walking the meadows, the fields, the forests. It’s a lesson of passion and then joy, at discovering his own truth in the sweetness of the natural world. 

He wrote at a time of vast suffering of the poor working people of England and the threat of war with France. But those tragedies subside, if only briefly—for the time it takes to read his lines and to walk the humble Turtle Trail, a wisp of a place almost no one outside this town has ever visited or heard about.

The point of our coming was to catch a break, to slow the grind of scheduling and planning and everything else. The heavy air, the silence, the dapples of green can become in the nervous imagination a bulwark against chaos, subtle hints at the power of faith and acceptance of the strength it brings.

Four years after Tintern Abbey Wordsworth completed Ode on the Intimations of Immortality: Recollections from Early Childhood, a haunting reminiscence that merges with reflections on man, God, redemption. Ode is another wistful self-examination, although a far different setting from Tintern.

The Romantic era is now ancient history. Outside English graduate-studies classes, Wordsworth’s lyrical sentences would clang oddly off modern ears, laughed at, even. Our public figures mock and slander each other, the disease spreads everywhere.

Thoughts and impressions come to us as we walk the Turtle Trail, although not likely from lines of Wordsworth. But we may find something like the message of Tintern Abbey here, and the same everywhere in wilderness, where the braces of full-growth trees are columns to the sky, and the paths wind through and under thick canopy.

August 5, 2024

Ventricular Tachycardia is a problem for your heart. It isn’t a household name, not in our household. But we want to keep our hearts beating. Then V. Tach, as our daughter Katheen, an R.N., calls it, came up. She monitors my health adventures from northwestern Wyoming, near Yellowstone.

The journey to understanding V. Tach isn’t a long one. It begins with recognition that the heart is, or should be, an efficient and powerful machine. Few manmade devices last as long. We’ve all heard the medical guidance, captured in a few words: healthy diet, hydration, exercise, adequate sleep.

The heart is a pump that, we’re taught, should beat at 60-100 times per minute to keep enough blood flowing through the body. When blood pressure drops the flow diminishes, endangering vital organs. The heart may try to compensate by lurching into V. Tach, which increases the heartrate, potentially injuring the heart.

Here in the choking, sticky Southern midsummer, none of this comes up in conversation. Instead we struggle with twin afflictions, Trump news, a cacophony of lowlife piggishness, and the throbbing heat.  Here and elsewhere the sun casts a hazy, suffocating pall, shriveling trees, lawns, crops. Local governments, schools, and private groups have canceled outdoor activities. Exposure to the brutal temperatures has taken human lives.

Suddenly I was sprawled in a hospital emergency room, getting fluids through an IV. An Urgent Care physician sent me there after declaring my blood pressure too low. The nurses fitted me with a “fall risk” bracelet, led me to a room, and attached sensors to my chest to read heart signals. A device behind the bed, attached to my arm, recorded blood pressure every few minutes. The BP improved, but instead of sending me home the supervising physician admitted me to the hospital.

“You’ve had two episodes of ventricular tachycardia,” she said. “We need to know what’s going on with you. It could be just a heart flutter, or it could be significant.”

“You’re kidding,” I said.

She jotted the term on a Post-It note for me. The distractions of summer faded. An assistant packed me up and wheeled me out of the ER wing into the flow of traffic, past other patients, doctors, nurses, staff people. We made a couple of turns and rolled into a large room with a bed and fitted out with monitors, cables, and switches. I got off the transport cart, sat on the bed, and signed some paperwork. The nurses attached me to the equipment.

I looked around. The duty nurse tapped on a computer on wheels. “Hit the alert button if you need anything,” she said. “Don’t try to get out of the bed, an alarm will sound. We don’t want you to fall.”

Sandy sat with me, both of us in a daze. She recalled the family doctor had put me through a “normal” electrocardiogram or “ECO” a couple of months ago. The hospital couldn’t find the data. She headed home to look for the records.

Through the night the staff awakened me to take pulse, temperature, blood pressure. I stared into the darkness and listened to the muffled voices of the evening shift. Eventually soft daylight peeked through the window.

Sandy returned, daughter Marie arrived. A nurse appeared to perform another ECO, rolling her sensor over my ribcage as she watched the image on her monitor. I slumped, half-asleep. Another nurse conducted an EKG. Heart data flowed into computers.

Someone brought breakfast. The lead physician came by, parsing his words. “I think this probably was an isolated event,” he said, meaning the V. Tach. “But low blood pressure can indicate a number of things. The cardiologist will look at the data and talk to you. Then we can get you out of here.”

The cardiologist, a young good-looking guy, showed up with his assistant. “We did see a couple of things on the ECO, some irregular waves. Maybe nothing, but I need a closer look. We’ll have to get a trans-esophageal electrocardiogram. It’s called a TEE, done under anesthesia. We insert a tube down your throat containing a sensor that will show your heart from another angle. Just a precaution.”

We stepped out of the refrigerator-cold hospital into the late-afternoon heat.  An evening thunderstorm knocked out the power at home, we sweated until midnight. In the morning the storm clouds were gone, the heat returned. Forty hours of intense cardiac surveillance seemed like a dream.

The old buzzwords, diet, hydration, returned. You may think you’re doing the right things. Whether you’ve taken seventy-plus trips around the sun or not, you need to pay attention. When something goes wrong, like V. Tach, you want to know why. The TEE is set for this week.

We persevere, finding sustenance and strength in the good people around us. V. Tach and its mysteries showed up, but nothing else has changed. Sandy and the kids bring their strength and love. Close friends in this town have stepped up to offer kindness and compassion.

We have been thinking about Alaska, that’s back on the shelf. Maine is a maybe. We’ve kicked around another big road trip, replicating the 2022 drive to Wyoming. We have friends in Albuquerque and Austin from the old Virginia running groups. Our New Hampshire cousins are coming to Myrtle Beach. We’ve never been there, maybe it’s time.        

July 29, 2024

The sun blazed down on the hospital parking lot.  It was nearly full, I had to park a half-dozen rows out. Sweating, I walked inside and inhaled the cool indoor air. I checked in for my 22nd CT (computed tomography) scan in five years.

This one was supposed to be decisive, the first scan since I started an oral chemo drug four months ago. I now wear sunglasses everywhere to protect my red, irritated eyes, and can’t taste vegetables or fruit.

The reception area was crowded. I got in line, the receptionist gave me a digital disc, the kind you get at restaurants that blinks to let you know your table is ready. I took a seat. In ten minutes the device glowed red.

A clerk gave me a paper bracelet, I signed a form. She led me to the outpatient waiting area. A half-dozen patients stared at their cell phones. I completed another form. A nurse called my name.

“How are you this morning?” she asked. We walked to a tiny exam room.

“Which arm?” she asked. I showed her both. She poked at a vein in my right arm. “This is good.” She pushed the vein, it moved under the skin. “Uh-oh, it rolls. We’ll go with the left.”  In a few seconds she had inserted the IV link. I felt nothing, she was that good.  

“Back in here,” she beckoned. I followed her, as I had followed others for the dozen CTs I’ve had in that cramped chamber. I’d met a lot of nurses at the hospital, but didn’t recognize her.

 “Looks busy,” I said.

“We’re always busy,” she said with a smile. “Day and night, 24/7.”

I emptied my pockets and slid onto the bench fitted to the CT device, which is a giant donut. She covered me with a blanket.

“Have you had a CT?” she asked.

“I’ve had around 20,” I said. “Here and in Virginia. We moved here three years ago.”

“Oh? Where in Virginia? I used to live in Centreville. We moved here 17 years ago when my husband got a job at GE. I’d never go back to Virginia.”

“We lived in Woodbridge.”

“Whenever we visit I’m amazed at the traffic. It’s awful.”

She hooked my link to the tube through which a saline solution and a dye flow to enable the CT device to illuminate your organs. I stretched my arms above my head.  She started the dye flow, I felt the warming sensation as it ran through my veins.   

“All set.” She disappeared into the control room. The bench slid me into the donut for a test run. The nurse revved it up, it hummed. “Hold your breath,” a computerized tone commanded. I puckered as it scanned me. Half a minute later it said, “Breathe.” I exhaled and gasped.

It was the same drill as the last time, and all the times before that. Two passes through the donut and I was done.

“The radiologist will look at the scan and send it to your doctor with his report,” the nurse said. “You can read it on ‘MyChart’ probably later today.”

I stuffed my wallet, phone, and keys in my pocket.

“Drink plenty of water to get the dye out of your system. Have a great day,” she called. She already was moving on to the next patient.

The visit had taken under an hour. The routine now is much faster than just a few years ago, when patients had to drink two quarts of metallic-tasting liquid and wait an hour until it “painted” their organs. The pre-scan fasting is down to two hours from six.

The CT is easy, once the patient is on the bench and prepped it’s over in a few minutes. It creates a ghostly black-and-white image of your insides. PET scans and MRIs are harder and take longer, although in most cases are more precise. If the doc orders a PET the patient knows they’re on track for the next step, a biopsy.

The scan report was posted on the “My Chart” site that evening. It showed some reduction, a few centimeters, in the liver and pleura tumors. After six years of cancer: biopsies, surgeries, chemo, two months of radiation, a year of immunotherapy, and all those scans, some good news. Helped along by prayers of hundreds of people, many I know, many I don’t know.

Two days later Sandy and I showed up at the Cancer Institute, where the oncologist and I first met nearly four years ago. The phlebotomist drew three vials of blood for his inspection. We walked to his office. He extended his hand and grinned, “How are you feeling? Scan looks good.”

I mentioned the tired, bloodshot eyes. He nodded and turned to a computer monitor and pulled up the scan image. “The drug is working,” he said. “That’s big, because it’s experimental. Labs are great. Creatine is a bit high.”

I knew the drug is intended for cancers that I don’t have. No drug exists specifically for thymic carcinoma. I’m an experiment, the doc’s only patient with this problem.

 Sandy brought up the low blood sugar, the loss of taste, the optometrist’s prescriptions.

The doc said, “Lay off the drug for two weeks, see if that makes a difference. If you’re still doing well I’ll reduce the dosage. We know the drug is working. So I’ll see you in two weeks.”

“Lay off the drug”: I wondered. Health care almost always amounts to more drugs, more tests, more side effects. Let’s try going the other way. Then too, some of us are blessed, gifted in ways we do not earn. Some other Power is in charge.

The pills are in a drawer, two unopened vials next to the four empty ones. The two weeks will fly by. This guy knows his cancer. I’m a test case. We all have our tests. We soldier on.

July 22, 2024

We learned that Thomas Farrell had been murdered. The crime occurred in Nashville on May 29, 1913. Farrell, a police detective, was shot by a bad guy, who then was arrested. This and more news was reported two weeks ago at the Harper family reunion. Farrell was Sandy’s great uncle, or maybe a great-great uncle.

We drove for six hours to a state park in Tennessee to attend the gala event, a meeting of the Harper (Sandy’s maiden name) clan and two other families, the Maybrys and Pritchetts, who are distantly related. Of the sixty-plus folks who showed up under the park pavilion, I knew about a half-dozen.

In a cosmic, big-picture way, family is the foundation of human history and culture. Family connections dictate the form and function of governments worldwide. British history is a fifteen-hundred-year story of family, if we date from the Plantagenets (1154-1216), who reigned after the Normans, and were followed by the houses of Lancaster, York, Tudor, Stuart, down to Windsor today.

In the same way, the rule of the Bourbons and Romanovs, until ended by gruesome political violence, guided the histories of France and Russia for centuries. The consciousness and constraints of family hold in Asia, the Middle East, everywhere, for good or evil. No one escapes. Hermits, cloistered monks, and prison inmates serving life have families. For all of us, family may be a primal source of joy, or heartbreak.

Family ties endure, but for many they become strained and remote. American families—parents, siblings, children have scattered. Our oldest daughter is in New Orleans, the youngest lives in northern Wyoming. We have nieces in Seattle and cousins near Miami. A couple of cousins live in New York, and an uncle and more cousins in southern California. That’s life. Everyone knows it.

Sandy’s family actually bucked the trend. She has some family in Michigan on her mom’s side, whom I first met at a funeral last summer. One day they were there, the next day they were gone. The Harpers, though, mostly stayed in Tennessee within 20 or 30 miles of Nashville, where Sandy and I met all those years ago.

Twenty-five years ago my mom staged a reunion. It was the same type of thing—a blur of aunts, uncles, cousins and their children, stories, singing old favorites, a few drinks, for some more than a few. The older ones all are gone but the memories remain, which really was the point. The kids at that reunion have kids of their own. Grandkids have shown up.

The Harper gathering followed the pattern. One guy, first-cousin Mike, shouldered the work of putting it together. We knew he was interested in genealogy. Mike went all-out, creating whiteboards of the family tree complete with dozens of ancient photos and blurred copies of birth, marriage, and death certificates. He arranged the boards on tripods near some picnic tables.

The exhibits took us back to Michael Farrell, born in Logford County, Ireland, about 1840. Various documents report that in 1855 he stowed away and sailed to America. In 1861 he enlisted in the Confederate Army and fought at Shiloh and Murfreesboro, Tenn. He was wounded twice and discharged when the war ended.

In 1867 Michael married Bridgett Hollaran, who had come from Galway County, Ireland. They had ten children, including poor Sheriff Thomas. Michael bought land and farmed for a living. He died in Nashville in 1932.

From Mike’s research we learned that Michael’s and Bridgett’s daughter Annie, born in 1869, married John William Harper, a telegraph operator, in 1895, starting their Harper line. Annie and John had six kids, including Peter Gaines Harper, Sandy’s grandfather. Peter married a woman named Duel Sisco. They had five children, including Sandy’s dad, William.

Mike stopped there, but he could have gone down another level to Sandy and her siblings and their spouses. The next branch would be our kids and their cousins. He already has reserved the same pavilion at the same state park for another reunion next year. Maybe he’ll tack on those people.

We stood around chatting for hours, grazing on a massive potluck buffet. We met, with some confusion, a few Maybrys and Pritchetts, as well as the dozens of cousins, nephews, and nieces, fitting everyone into the family puzzle. We took pictures, someone took a big group shot. As the late afternoon heat simmered, the crowd packed their picnic baskets and folding chairs and headed for their cars. We stayed over at the park.

As with any family history, odd facts show up. Somewhere the documentation reported that John William Harper’s father, Peter Leboun Harper, fought with the Union Army. With Michael Farrell a Confederate veteran, we were looking at a blue-gray dynamic. How did Michael like his daughter marrying into a Yankee family? Trivial, but fun.

Our son Michael later asked what now seems an obvious question: since the Harper name didn’t show up until Annie married John Harper, why start with the Farrells, a generation earlier, instead of John William? I wondered myself.

But then we realize a family tree can start really anywhere because, like all human history, it has no clearcut beginning. Those patriarchs of the 18th century and earlier, nobles or paupers, landlords or tenant farmers, are descendants as well as ancestors. Annie, wife of John and mother to Sandy’s granddad and five other Harper children, was first a Farrell. Her earlier relatives were Farrells and others.

The line advances into the future. Louis XVI lost his head in 1793, but the Bourbons returned to rule France in 1815. Even after the Bolsheviks executed Tsar Nicholas and his family in 1918, a few Romanovs escaped to Europe. Their lineages remain, obscure, but real. People marry, have kids, change names.

Connections, while distant, endure. That’s the principle behind all this visiting. We’re already talking about who will appear on Mike’s 2025 whiteboards. Right now we’re planning to be there. Maybe with the kids.

July 15, 2024

We arrived in Tellico Plains, Tenn., in the far southeastern corner of the state, finishing a four-hour trek from midstate Chapel Hill, that’s also Tennessee, not North Carolina (the town was named after the North Carolina city). The plan for Tellico was to get a look at farm property a friend is buying just north of town. Then there’s the Cherohala Skyway.

From Chapel Hill we headed east through pretty country, then paused at a Bell Buckle café for coffee. The town offers eccentric Middle Tennessee charm along with the usual antique and curiosity shops. We’ve stopped there a couple of times over the years. The coffee is tangy and good. The town, really a hamlet or village, is home to the Webb School, a small but prestigious boarding school for grades 6 through 12. The kids wear uniforms.

Sitting in the café, we noticed the few local folks who wandered in, a young woman with two kids, an older couple. I guessed this is exactly what we should be doing at this moment: sipping caffeine in a quiet place in the middle of nowhere. It suited me.

We drove south on I-24 to Chattanooga then north on I-75. We crossed the Hiwassee River then exited at Calhoun. Twenty miles along, Tellico Plains sits in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, where the 656,000-acre Cherokee National Forest rims the few settlements in the area. Maybe 800 people live there, maybe 700, I asked, no one was sure.

Once there you’re cornered between mountains and forest, miles of forest. The Smokies spread across the boundary region of two states. The Skyway, starting at Tellico, extends 43 or 50 miles, depending on how it’s measured. Tennessee has about 25 miles, the rest is in North Carolina. The route (eastbound) ends at some indefinite point just west of Robbinsville, N.C., birthplace of country music legend Ronnie Milsap.

Cherohala combines the first two syllables of “Cherokee,” and “hala,” the last two of Nantahala as in National Forest, which covers 531,000 acres of western North Carolina. The Skyway rises more than 4,000 feet to around 5,400 near the eastern end. The road starts in town and continues tamely for a few miles, bordering the crystal-clear Tellico River.

We stopped at Oosterneck Creek (1,045 feet) and watched the river rush by. As we chugged forward a half-dozen bikers cruised past us heading to Tellico.

The forest air cooled to a refreshing crispness. The Skyway curled up, up, then down, then up. At Lake View we were at 3,360 feet. The deep green of the mountains loomed through pale mist. We watched the mile markers and puttered on. At Brushy Ridge we were at 3,750, then 4,100 at East Rattlesnake Rock trailhead.

More bikers roared past, a couple of cars lined up behind us as we poked nervously forward, we pulled into an overlook to let them pass. We crossed the Tenn.-N.C. border, climbed, then descended, then climbed again, in some stretches at a 9-degree slope. I stopped at Haw Knob (4,890) but crawled past Huckleberry Point at 5,300.

The vernal mountain forest stretched to the horizon. The road turned and descended. We gritted our teeth, the van’s brake warning light clicked on. Wright Cove was at 4,150, Obadiah 3,740, Hooper Cove 3,100. The road twisted down, falling. Suddenly we hit Santeetlah Gap at 2,600 and saw signs for Robbinsville.

We were done with the measured Skyway but the narrow two-lane pavement kept twisting through dense woods, sunlit and beautiful, bordering a rocky creek. A few homesteads showed up alongside small garden plots and woodpiles, meadows and pastureland. Then the forest closed in again.

Eventually we found outer Robbinsville. We saw a church steeple and a couple of signs urging “Repent,” then a courthouse. Highway markers appeared announcing state roads 129, 143, 19, backwoods routes carved through the rough country.

We passed the last point on our state map. No internet connection, no Google Maps. I went old school and yelled at a guy in a parked pickup: “Which way to Bryson City?” He opened his door and pointed.

“Turn around and go back and take the first left. Go to the first light and go right. Keep going ‘til you pass some guys working on the road. Turn right at the next light, then right at the one after that, then stay straight and you’ll see a sign for Bryson City.” I stared at him. “Turn around—” He started to pull away. “I hope you remember that,” he yelled. “I won’t,” I called back and got back in the van.

We squinted again at the signs, I studied the map, baffled. Suddenly the internet kicked in, we got our maps. We oriented to 129 and headed out of Robbinsville. We passed the guys working and pressed on. The road straightened out. We saw a sign: “Bryson City, 23 miles.” The city street became a country highway.

We veered alongside fast white water, I guessed the Tuckasegee River, which flows through Bryson and east. The river rushed past, we saw a bright orange inflated raft float by, the paddlers in their helmets stroking with the rapids. Then another, then a third. The Nantahala closed in around the river and the road. The Tuckasegee flowed by, more rafters riding the fast water.

The forest opened up to white-water businesses, rental places, shuttle buses, a few cafes and bars. Rafters were unpacking vans, lugging gear. The woodland road widened to three-lanes. We saw signs for Dillsboro, Sylva, and Waynesville, which calls itself “Gateway to the Smokies.” We crossed the Appalachian Trail and dozens of other remote pathways.

The peaks towered around us through eastern Nantahala, still lush and jungle-dark, the kudzu hanging in thick tangles from massive oaks. Passing Sylva, we looked north at Black Rock Mountain, green and gorgeous, 5,700 feet of rock set gracefully among the Plott Balsam range. Then the Pisgah National Forest, Nantahala’s junior partner, full of waterfalls and other wilderness magic, stretching east to Asheville, and south toward home.