Thanks

We spent a few days in the woods.

Not terribly deep in the woods, but definitely there.

About a month ago, it dawned on me that we had a few days to kill at the beginning of Thanksgiving break (we get the whole week off here).  My daughter wouldn’t be coming in from college until Tuesday night – flying into Atlanta. She wouldn’t want to go anywhere else, naturally and understandably, but we could do something in those few days before she arrived.  What?

Me being me, the first possibility is always a five letter word beginning with “b.”

Stop it.

BEACH, people. BEACH.

But then, well – the beach would be about five hours from Atlanta, so that would be counter-productive, as it would tack on a pain-in-the-neck-drive on the front of another pain-in-the-neck-drive from the ATL to BHM after we got her.

So I started thinking about north Georgia.

I’ve never really thought about north Georgia before. Oh, I’ve driven through it a million times on 75, of course, but I’ve never gotten any further than a gas station in Dalton. I knew people went there, I knew the Appalachian trail began (or ends?) there, I knew that they grow apples and such, but I’d never considered a visit.

I have to admit, to be honest with you, that my whole sense of “Appalachian mountains in the Southeast” is severely skewed and simmers under extreme prejudice because when I think of it, all I can think of is Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg and traffic and dinner shows and outlet malls and more traffic.

(Once, we were visiting my parents who live in East Knoxville.  Michael wanted to go get some shoes at the Bass outlet near Pigeon Forge, which is not that far away. A quick trip, right? Well, he didn’t come back, and he didn’t come back and finally he did – practically staggering. The traffic! was all he could say.)

I do love travel research.  I’ve intensely researched far more destinations than I’ve ever been.  At this point, I could probably point you to a decent rental in a non-touristy neighborhood in Venice, an interesting inn in Monterrey, some good ranches out in the Four Corners area and a fun farm stay in the Dolomites.

It’s that bad.

So I got the bug, tripped through VRBO and Craigslist, and got a sense of what I wanted and where and somehow, in some way, stumbled upon the Wildacre Cabin – about halfway between Chatsworth and Ellijay, on the edge of the Chattahoochee National Forest.

What a treasure. I can’t say enough about it, I can’t be thankful enough.

What I wanted was a place near water where the boys could roam without me having to worry about them either tumbling down a steep incline or into a raging river.  This was perfect. Not rustic – the cabin was very nice -  but completely isolated, in a hollow, surrounded by hills, at the bend of a creek.

(And the hospitality was impressive, as well.  It’s experiences like this that confirm to me the great importance of the Detail People – a club of which I am sadly not a member – in the great scheme of life.  The Detail People do such great things for the rest of us, like having goodies for two little boys on the kitchen counter, including a birthday gift for the just-turned-six Eagle Feather. I may scoff at you sometimes, Detail People, but really – you’re far better than I!)

There’s plenty to do in the area, but we didn’t do any of it.

I had sort of thought we would.  Joseph has been studying Alabama History this year, so he has learned about the Native American tribes in the Southeast and the Trail of Tears – and there are related sites nearby like New Echota and the Chief Vann House and  there’s also Fort Mountain State Park with its mysterious wall,  just up the road.  They had said they would like to go to Fort Mountain on Monday, but when the time came, they changed their mind, and we ended up “playing”  badminton for almost two hours instead.  And that’s okay.  We could have hiked up through more woods and seen that wall and wondered, along with the rest of the world, who had built it – was it Indians? A Welsh explorer? Who? – and that would have been fine.

But it was also fine to bat a badminton birdie back and forth, around, up and down into the ground as the afternoon waned and the sun prepared to set, to watch them try to get better at it, to see them glow as warmly as the setting sun when they rallied well, to laugh at crazy hits and missed shots.

Maybe it was even better.

The only major mishap occurred on Sunday afternoon when we were walking along the creek. We walked and we walked – there was a trail, which crossed the creek a couple of times, back and forth.  At one point, I was trying to prove something – I have no idea what – when my foot slipped on a rock and down I went into the creek, which was not at all shallow at that point, so for a minute I was swimming, which was fine (it was warm – the weather was in the low 70′s for all those days), even though I was in jeans – no, the only thing that was not fine about it was that I had my phone in my pocket, my still almost brand-new Droid.

(Oh, you want to scoff, don’t you? Well, excuse me for being a parent alone in the woods with two little boys thinking it would be a good idea to take the phone along just in case! Plus, it’s got GPS and Joseph – the planner, the tracker – liked checking our progress.)

I thought it was dead – and it certainly seemed to be.  When I got back to the cabin, I immediately took it apart to let the parts dry, did some research, saw that people recommended sealing it in a plastic bag with either a desiccant or some rice for 72 hours.   I had neither.  But – amazingly – the next morning, I put it all back together…and it works.  It works fine.   I’m pretty surprised.

Anyway. It was peaceful.  We went to Mass in Ellijay, did some grocery shopping in Chatsworth, drove around a bit, and it seems like a very nice part of the world.  Not a Wild West Frontier Medieval Crusader Dinner Show in sight.  We fell completely in love with the cabin and the clamoring has begun to return, preferably in the summer when the garden (tomatoes and okra were standing in their withered, late-autumn states) will be flourishing and more fun can be had in the creek.

We’ll see.  Every place I go, I always want to return.

But then I think…what will I miss, then, by not going someplace new?

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