Cabin Fever

We had been planning and anticipating the trip up to the cabin for weeks on end before we finally loaded everything up and went. I drove up to Ringgold from Rome to join the family in the four wheel drive so I could make it up to the paradise simply known as Cohutta. It’s well off the paved road, and one must cross a creek in order to get into the high hilly country of that part of North Georgia.

Every few days before we left, my mother made it a point to call and remind me to bring certain things. “You’re bringing the sleeping bag right?”

“Yes Mom, I am.” I rolled my eyes and I silently thank the heavens above that she can’t see me through the phone. I will admit that while I complain about her constant reminders, I do need them. The absent-minded professor gene is strong in my family. Both my mom and I are constantly making lists, then losing them and starting the process all over again.

“And your air mattress?” When she asked me the last time, I was looking at an e-mail as my attention drifted. “Kevin?”

“Yes Ma’am.”

It could have been much worse, I could have left everything behind and brought only my toothbrush and dog. It was better I came overly prepared in the end.

For all the stuff I took with me, I still forgot items I’d regretted leaving after the first few hours. Namely my DVD collection and my pillows were among the three other things that had import to me that were now miles away requiring the need to cross slippery dirt roads. But it turned out that in the wilderness I didn’t need most of the things I left behind. One can only take so many pictures or carry so much for a birthday party.

The night before we left, I looked down at E.B. and said “are you ready to go on our trip tomorrow?”

He gave me a look like I was a mad man, a look of “are you seriously talking to me like I can understand you?” with his head cocked to the side and his ears pointing upward. I see the same mad look in the eyes of Spanish speakers in Rome that don’t speak English so well.

He was good in the car on the way up, good at the cabin during the weekend, good in the car on the way home. When we got back, he found his comfortable place to nap. He’d had enough, and so had I.

A weekend at the cabin is equivalent for me as a weekend at the beach – always a much needed respite from the high-paced life I normally leave, but never long enough to do much good in helping me relax. I feel if I’d had more time up there I could have stretched out and truly enjoyed myself.

North Georgia’s hilly country is all covered by pines and hardwoods, spreading over thousands of acres heading northeast toward the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina. In the mornings this time of year, the fog drapes over the small mountaintops until the sun warms the earth a little more. The view on Saturday morning, even limited as it was, took my breath away as I stood next to the fire, looking round with a strong cup of coffee. The parents and myself are always the first up in the morning. I don’t sleep long or well on a normal basis. Just because I have the weekend off doesn’t mean I’m going to sleep any more.

E.B. during the trip was kept mostly indoors, but in the afternoon a group of us finally got around to taking a hike. What time he spent outside was sniff around for the squirrels and looking to familiar faces for love and a scratch on the belly. He slept too, and played with the other dog Annie. The two were not all that friendly during the trip, and a few times she snapped at him.

He went along with us on the first leg of the hike, sniffing around what amounted to an abandoned cabin that with some sweat equity and about $15,000 could be made nice again. I found a telescope and was hoping to get in some stargazing with the older instrument; Saturday night ended up being too cloudy to use it. He raced up and down the trail back to our quarters before the group resumed our hike down to the creek we’d crossed to get to the cabin. He, I’m sure, was not pleased with being left behind.

My mother likes to take pictures. Growing up on every occasion she could, she ordered my sister and I around into poses for pictures. This was no different. I had been ordered to make sure and bring my cameras along.

“Of course I’m bringing my cameras with me, are you crazy? I’m going to have all sorts of good blackmail out of this.”

She didn’t find that so funny.

Down by the creek, I had some new pictures taken of me for the website by Brittney, who is a professional photographer. The pictures might be some of the best with me that I’ve taken in a long, long time. I crouched on a rock with whitewater splashing on rocks behind me, tiny waterfalls stirring up the stream as it flowed downhill. In the photo, I’m holding a stick I found on the ground to help me balance while walking up and down the hill. After coming off a difficult walk, the group walked along the main dirt road we came in on.

We walked only a few yards before we heard a group of vehicles headed our way. A truck, a front end loader full of firewood and a utility cart came rolling by. An older man from Chatsworth staying at his cabin stopped to talk, and commented on my stick.

“You need a better looking stick than that,” he said.

“It works just fine for me.”

“No, no. I’m gonna bring you a stick from the house I found out in the woods and whittled on a little.”

“Well thank you sir.” I didn’t really expect the guy to show up.

But two hours after we’d made it back to the cabin, and while I was eating a couple of hot dogs inside the cabin, the man pulled up in his cart. He had two sticks in hand and gave one of them to Heath, who is about to have hip surgery again. I got the shorter stick.

“This is a nice stick sir, thank you,” I said. We talked for a while about the comings and goings of life in the back country before he begged our pardon and went back to work. He was expected to help collect and cut more firewood.

The stick had been whittled on, but there was a good amount of bark still left on it’s surface. I took out the pocket knife I got for Christmas from my step dad Danny and went to work by our snug campfire with E.B. rummaging around our side. I spent the better part of a night stripping off the bark with my knife before I gave it a rest.

I never did get his name, but the stick is now leaning against the bedroom wall in my apartment, waiting for further use.

Did you know that legally, every time you sing “Happy Birthday” you owe the writers of the song a royalty for doing so? It’s a public performance after all, and those long-dead artist’s families could probably use the cash. We didn’t pay to sing the song to Danny, who shook his head and laughed as he blew out his single candle with the number 50 on it. He also played along with our weekend full of ribbing him about his age.

Age is something you can’t avoid. Like death and taxes, age is the only certain thing in life. So long as you wake up in the morning age keeps creeping along with the spinning wheel of time. And when you get older, you want to do certain things to make yourself feel better about life. Danny wanted to go to the cabin for his birthday and so we did. He is a man of the outdoors. I think if he were unable to hunt and fish and go do yard work he’d be a much different man.

Danny took his birthday fun with stride; he laughed at the beer card I gave him. Even appreciated the coozie my mom gave him that says “I’m 50! Now get me another beer.” Didn’t even get mad with the hair dye or the other various joke gifts he received. His real gift was getting to go up in the first place and spend two nights sitting next to a red hot fire. That I think it what I enjoyed about the weekend the most – having a good time outside with people I love. And I’m betting that Danny loved that too.

Leaving a place like the cabin is never something you want to have to do, but alas Sunday morning came and the packing up began. Rolling up the sleeping bag, gathering up the electronics and books; cleaning the floors and doing the laundry from the weekend came and went by quickly. It began raining, and it rained until we finally had a chance to load the car by backing it up to the porch and handing each item over, hoping it wouldn’t get soaked. The let up for a few minutes, then began again in the afternoon. It was as if the angels in heaven were crying for us having to go home, and we didn’t leave until mid-afternoon.

Driving back, I thought for a few minutes how nice it would be to live in such a place. I would give my left testicle for the opportunity to have that experience of day-to-day living and chores. How much fun would it be to live in a place where I could chop wood, shoot at deer and walk among the trees with my little puppy running along my side every step of the way. Looking out the window again at the overflowing streams and the slick muddy roads as we wound are way down the dirt mountain road, I changed my mind. I would get cabin fever living in a place so isolated. I need roads and streets, people and traffic.

On the other hand, I sometimes need isolation from the world. I can understand the feelings that build up inside the chest, the need for escape from this crazy world of ours. I think that’s why Danny really chose to celebrate his birthday in such an isolated place with people he loves. He knows the healing powers of respite and relaxation among these woods.

The best place to think and write can be a place like Cohutta or Alligator Point. Sometimes the world and all of the events happening as time passes can be just as distracting as a place where there is nothing but flora and fauna to keep you company. A writer can find a million stories among the rotting logs and the mossy rocks of the lower Appalachian chain or in the salt marshes and grains of sand on the gulf coast of Florida. What he can’t find a lot of are characters, and those are just as important.

People go on vacation to escape, but they come home to get about the business of living. Life may stop for moments, sometimes weeks if you’re lucky. But the world keeps spinning; Progress is always there. What makes people want to come home is that feeling of missing progress, the other side of cabin fever. And in the modern world, one can get behind the curve in a matter of days. That cabin fever I can never live with.

Maybe one day when I’m older cabin fever will come full swing: I will desire those wood above all other places. For now I can live with taking a trip up there once every few years, or down to Alligator Point for our annual trip to the beach. Cabin fever isn’t just about escaping one place, its about escaping the world as we know it.