Seven Brothers Hit the Trail

Photo courtesy of my brother, the portrait artist Thomas Caleb Goggans. Click the picture to go to see his portfolio.

    A couple weekends ago my six brothers and I all went backpacking together for the first time ever.  Plenty of camping, hiking, and backpacking trips had previously occurred, but never with all of us together, or for so ambitious a trek.  In all we ascended over a mile in elevation, and packed over twenty miles of Smoky Mountain tails.  It was truly an adventure: we had cook stoves catch on fire due to failed o-ring values; we hiked through the rain and then had to take swift action to provide shelter and warm food for a couple members of our group who were edging towards hypothermia.  It was spiritually revitalizing: we sang hymn, talked about theology and life, saw deer, elk, and boar, and soaked in the glorious beauty of a temperate rain forest, lush with spruce, fir, rhododendron, mountain laurel, and wild azalea . It was truly an awesome trip.

    Odd as it may seem one of my favorite parts was hiking through the rain. At first it was a glorious reveling in the gentle cool rain and the mysterious mists. Then it was an endurance challenge, me against the elements: could I weather the storm?  The experience reminded me of a piece I wrote once upon a time when I didn’t have a car and walked through the rain a lot more than I do now, so I went back to my old blog to re-read it.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was almost as good of a composition as I remember it to be, but couldn’t resist reworking it a bit in light of my new experiences and posting it in my Creative Nonfiction here.