1 post tagged “pagan”

Deep Creek

So this last weekend, I ventured into well known but nigh forgotten territory with a couple of friends.  In spite of a late start (about 12 1/2 hours late), we made it to the Deep Creek trailhead of the Great Smoky Mountains fairly early in the day.

After a lunch of pizza reheated in foil on the engine block, we double checked our packs and hit the trail.  The noise and blaring colors of the main camp and the river tubers that populated faded quickly as we hauled ourselves and our supplies up the mountain.  The trail was in excellent condition, and the cool mountain air and fresh stream water (filtered) helped me, the least fit among us, make it the four miles through gorgeous mixed forest to the campsite.  With Gatlinburg and Cherokee N.C. not far away at all, we found beauty and peace in the song of Deep Creek herself, rushing past our little camp.

In mere minutes I was in the stream, splashing about and collecting camp water.  We set up our tents, gathered kindling for our very reluctant fire-- we were, after all, in the Smokies, a wet region on the best of days, even without the morning storms.  That afternoon we threw our rations together and made chicken and rice with gravy over the open fire.  There was more than the three of us could eat.  Dinner was followed by three terrific cigars, provided lovingly by my Dearheart. 

The evening lingered gently and slowly into night.  A sprinkling of rain refreshed the forest at dusk, and sleep came easily, even in a tent I could barely stretch out in diagonally.

Deep creek falls

The next day dawned bright and beautifully.  I rose in what I can only guess was the mid-morning and hit the river again.  Later, my roomie Derek joined me in the creek for yet another splashful expedition.  We traipsed about freely, examiner the river stones, rich with quartz and mica, talked and laughed.

I remembered and recounted to him an encounter in Nashville years before.  It was the nineties, and I was attending an arts ad crafts festival at Centennial Park.  I encountered there several Native American crafters, one of them a Cherokee shaman with whom I had a long conversation.  On parting, he said offhandedly, "Goodbye River Bear, it was nice to meet you." 

The name has always been with me, lodged solidly in the back of my head.  It has only rarely come up in all these years.  At the time, though, it had resonated.

And there, in the serenity and gorgeous green of the Smokies, a place where I had spent many happy, wandering hours in my youth, it returned to me.  The bear is most certainly my totem.  I am indeed a defender and teacher.  There may be some lion in there somewhere, according to a South-African shaman, but really, I'm a bear.  More precisely, a River Bear.

That night, we drank and laughed and finished our cigars.  We told silly stories and had what can best be described as wanton "man fun", wreathed in smoke and primitive celebration.  The next day, we broke camp leisurely and made our way down the four mile track to civilization.  Much of our return trip followed another river, one full of rafters and kayakers, which I intend to visit soon. 

The whole experience was so invigorating it's hard to describe.  It put me even more in mind of myself, which has been a major theme lately.  Another step on the path back to my path has been taken, and I'd like to thank Chris and Derek, and my Dearheart as well, for helping make it possible.  I want to thank the National Park Commission for setting the land aside for such uses, the Cherokee for so carefully and lovingly preserving it before them and the goddess for building the mountains and moving them across the world that they might be loved by we narcissistic, hurried Americans in need of memories old and new.

River Bear