Embracing the Strange
It was a series of questionable decisions that led me to this point, staring at a fork in the road, wondering which direction to go. I sit on my bike, look at my map, and wonder why the trail I had just ridden is nowhere to be found on the piece of paper. I know the trail was real. I rode it. It was hard. I had to get off my bike and push several times. The pain is still lingering in my legs, but there’s no black or blue line on the map representing that pain visually, so I have no idea which direction I should pedal on this road. I’m already late. The sun is starting to set. I was supposed to be back at camp an hour ago, and if I choose the wrong direction, I’ll be pushing my bike back to the tent in the dark.
It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment when a situation turns south. I like to think it’s a collection of poor decisions that potentially culminate with me finding my way through the woods like a blind man reading braille. Pedaling up a trail with no marker, not putting a headlamp in my backpack, choosing to knock out a “quick loop” before dinner with no solid understanding of the local trail system…all of these decisions have helped inform my predicament, but ultimately, I’m in this pickle because I decided to veer off my normal course of action. This is what I get for trying something new.
I’m a sucker for consistency. I thrive in routine. Same cup of coffee each day while watching the same sports news show at the same time every morning. Same lunch-break workout. Same tacos on Tuesday. I run the same 3.5-mile loop three times a week and bike the same road/gravel route around town twice a week. I walk the dog around the block in the same direction, say hey to the same neighbors. It’s ironic, considering I make a portion of my living by writing about traveling to new places, but the truth is, I’m at my best when I’m planted firmly in the center of my comfort zone.
But here I am, in the middle of a spur-of-the-moment, one-night camping trip in a section of Pisgah that I rarely set foot in, because my daughter asked me to take her camping with a couple of her friends. Sure, the dads were only invited on this trip to drive the vehicle, set up the tents, and cook the meals—we’re like unpaid Sherpas—and the girls probably would’ve gone on their own if we’d allow them to hitchhike and just eat Twizzlers for dinner, but I’m not going to let the truth get in the way of how I’ll remember this situation when I’m on my deathbed. In my revisionist history brain, I’ll recount this tale as the time my teenage daughter asked me to go camping with her.
So I didn’t give it a second thought when she said the plan from the other dads was to camp on a creek in a section of the forest I had never explored before. I couldn’t pack the truck fast enough. Visions of quality father/daughter time danced through my head. We would tell ghost stories around a campfire. We would name constellations in the sky. I would show her how to fish with a spear. Never mind the fact that I don’t know how to interpret the night sky or spear a fish…I would wing it.
Instead, I’m in the middle of the woods, pedaling what is sure to be the wrong way up a gravel road, and it’s all because we veered from the ordinary and I got lost.
Everything about this trip is different. Instead of lugging the whole family camping, it’s just the two of us. I let my daughter pick the menu for dinner, so instead of the pan-fried pizzas I normally make, we’ll have chicken teriyaki bowls with fresh fruit, if I ever get back to camp to make it. Fresh fruit while camping! Have you ever heard of such a thing?! The trails are strange. They’re extra bumpy, like trail crews added additional roots and rocks. And as I’ve stated, they’re not always on the map. Even the flora and fauna are different in this part of the forest. The ferns are bigger, like something out of Jurassic Park, and the squirrels are weird. Some of them are white. Local legend has it that a pair of albino squirrels escaped from a carnival truck decades ago and bred like bunnies in the woods.
Stupid white squirrels. Stupid trail that doesn’t exist on the map. I guess it’s my fault for putting the mountain bike on the back of my truck so I could do “a quick spin” before dinner. There are no quick spins in Pisgah. A mile-long trail could take you half a day if you’re ill equipped or unprepared. I am often both of those things.
At any point during my bike ride, I could’ve just turned around and retraced my steps back to the campsite and the beginning of that fictional trail, assuming I don’t break through the space/time continuum by doing so. This quick spin has turned into an epic journey because I’m an idiot and I probably have several miles to pedal before I get back to the campsite to cook my daughter dinner. I hope I’m not missing any ghost stories.
Just as I’m feeling incredibly sorry for myself, the gravel slog transforms into a flow downhill on a trail that cuts a narrow path through the dense forest. After all the bad decisions, all of the white squirrels and fictional trails, I have a solid three or four miles of heart-pounding downhill with drops and fast turns that sneak up on me when I open up the throttle a bit too much. The trail traces the edge of a creek, which gets bigger as I continue down the slope, until I realize this is the same creek that runs beside our campsite. This beautiful, downhill path is taking me directly to my daughter, and I make it back to the campsite before dark and see that she’s been busy doing laps with her friends on a small sliding rock a few hundred yards upstream from our tent. She hasn’t even noticed I was gone.
We’ll have her rice bowls that night, and I’ll marvel at how wonderful fresh fruit tastes in the middle of the woods. I won’t be able to point out the stars to her because that’s not a skill I possess, but I’ll retrace my bike ride from earlier in the day, drawing in the fictional trail on the map, and highlighting the direction I took on the gravel road and putting a star next to the flowy downhill that brought me back to the start. I want to do that ride again. I want to add it to my routine and bring it into my comfort zone.
This is what I get for trying new things.
Cover photo courtesy of the author
