Three Cures for the Winter Blues (Page 1 of 1)

Fish update, regarding last week's column: Fish's surgery and intestinal construction were successful.  He's currently acting like a young pup again, chasing the ball, bouncing around the living room and gobbling the scraps that fall off my plate.  The lab report was "guarded."  The cancer may be gone forever, or it may be spreading as I type.  My fingers are crossed, and for now, Fish is happy again.

I'm blaming this two-week head-thump I've had drumming behind my eyeballs on the winter blues: These cold mornings and dark-to-dark work hours are dragging me down. I'm sick of waiting for my truck to warm up. I'm over my sweaters and down-filled coats. I want to take all my pants and hang them from a telephone wire.

I'm ready for shorts, T-shirts, rolled down windows, and patio brewskies. I read once that we gain Vitamin D from sunlight: I need more Vitamin D.

I know all you migrant readers from the snow-swept regions of the world are thinking of me as a wimp right now. I can practically hear you mumbling, "Winter blues? We haven't even had to shovel our driveways!" But I don't live in Minneapolis, thank god, and there's a good reason for that.

Recently, though, I've actually heard a touch of birdsong in the trees, and I've noticed the sun peeking over the horizon a few minutes earlier during my morning race along Pellissippi Parkway. I can feel winter slipping away slowly, fading like a shadow at noon's approach, giving way to spring. And this is thrilling.

But I need to be careful. I can't get my hopes up too early. There's still the looming threat of a late winter storm. The legendary Blizzard of ’93, remember, rolled like a wet sleeping bag over us in March. What I need is a plan.  Something to keep me occupied and focused. I need something concrete to look forward to, so I'm going to start now. My first three weekends of spring, which officially starts March 20, will be engaged with the following three activities: a scramble up the Porters Creek Manway with my buddy 9-Bones; a fishing trip on the Clinch River with my buddy Clark, and a motorcycle ride across the Cherohala Skyway with Fowldog's dad, The Beecher.

The Porters Creek Manway

Porters Creek Manway trickles out the back of campsite 31, which is at the top end of Porters Creek Trail in the Smokies. The Porters Creek Trail rises gently from 2,000 feet to nearly 3,500 feet in 3.6 miles. In the spring, wildflowers bloom like fireworks all along the trail's forest floor. It's a good walk, and campsite 31, though rumored to be a frequent stop for visiting bears, is a nice place to throw down a tent. But it's the small, hard-to-spot path that leads out the back of the campsite and up the valley that I'll be heading to. This unofficial trail — Porters Creek Manway — climbs 2,000 feet in the last two miles up to the AT just short of Charlie's Bunyan, and most of the incline comes in the last half-mile, a hand-over-hand clamber over loose rock and thick laurel.  Often, the only way to follow the trail is to find cairns that mark the way. The last time my buddy 9-Bones and I climbed this path, I stretched out in the sun on the slab-rock of Charlie's Bunyan and fell asleep like a full-bellied Labrador. By the time we made it back to the car, it was dark, and we were leg-weary and fantasizing about burritos from Los Amigos.

Floating the Clinch

I'm not really a float-in-the-boat kind of guy; my satisfaction with the outdoors usually involves my feet, a few bottles of water, a handful of snack bars and an end result of exhaustion. Robert Pirsig wrote the only Zen on the mountain is the Zen you bring with you: For a myriad of reasons, my Zen lies dormant until my breathing becomes shallow and sweat rolls down my back. So for several years, I resisted Clark's invitation to "float the Clinch." Floating implied the only movement would come from the boat; hence, I continued to decline his call to trout fish below Norris dam. "I can't this week," I'd say — and therein, buried in the "this week," I always left open the door. And rather than writing me off, Clark persisted.

One day last fall, I said yes.  And of course, regardless of the fact that my boots were replaced by flip-flops, I had a damn good time. The Clinch River shoved us downstream in his green Alumacraft, and Clark worked the trolling motor to keep us turned sideways. I threw two jars of pink salmon eggs — some of which ended up in the bellies of trout, others slid off my hook and disappeared. The fishing holes white-capped by us, a cooler sat between us, and by the time we were through, I caught more fish than Clark did.

Riding the Cherohala Skyway

The Cherohala Skyway starts in Tellico Plains and runs more than 30 miles to Robbinsville, N.C. The twisting road is wide and smooth, and it passes above 4,000 feet for almost 15 miles, four of which top 5,000 feet. The views from the many pull-offs show sweeping wilderness vistas, and the top-out miles are cold and windy. I've started this ride many times with a T-shirt on only to pull over and bundle up with whatever I have in the saddlebags. The traffic is usually light — not many people are traveling from Tellico Plains to Robbinsville — and I can bend through the turns at a slow, five-under-the-speed-limit pace without worrying about someone swallowing me up from behind.

And my buddy Fowldog's dad, The Beecher, is the perfect riding partner for such a road. He rumbles along on an old Harley that sounds like it's chewing up the highway. He keeps a wide-slung, low-shouldered grip on the handlebars, so that he looks like an ape choking down on the throttle, and when I pull over to wrap in a coat, he'll simply shake out a smoke and light up. It's nearly as good as riding with Leonard Smalls.

OK. That feels better. I've marked my calendar. Now all I need to do is find some aspirin, waterproof my hiking boots, string my Shakespeare reels with low-test trout line, and throw a charge on my motorcycle battery. Winter blues?  Who's got time for the winter blues? Spring's just around the corner!

* The views expressed in Commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Knoxville Voice.