My wife and I spent Independence Day weekend and the following week at one of our favorite places: the Great Smokey Mountains. We returned to the Cherokee, NC area for a little relaxation, which included seeing family, hiking, and fueling my addiction to kayaking.

Friday we traveled down to North Carolina via a road that passes along the northern edge of the Park. This way travels alongside the Little River where we enjoyed the beauty of the valley, which included the different rock formations that broke up the river current. Our destination lay south as the road turns just below Gatlinburg, but I felt the necessity to stop at the new Nantahala Outdoor Center outpost in Gatlinburg and pick up a trail map so we would know the abundance of trails that we could choose from to fill our being with the delights of creation. The problem with this type of store is even though it may not have a very large selection, I could still spend a couple of hours just looking. And there also is the kayak section. Every time I have been there, I have to run my hand over the smooth bottom of a new kayak; a feeling that I had never known until stopping there for the first time. My boats have been used when I purchased them and I seem to insist on using rocks as ramps in the river so needless to say, the bottom of mine is far from smooth.

After I had my fix while my wife so patiently waited, we decided to move on to our first destination. This brought us to a few small cabins nestled on a hillside near Cherokee in which my sister and her family were staying for the week. The evening was filled with delightful company and the morning came quickly to lighten the way for us to the campground where we would set up our temporary residence. We had reserved a site at the earliest moment in the year. My wife would jest with me as I counted the days from our trip last year to the time I could reserve the site for this year.

After setting up camp, we visually took in our surroundings before preparing to attend Mass at the little parish in town. The majority of those who gather to worship there are tourists and this evening the crowd was small. The Sundays that we have been there revealed a larger attendance, which is most likely the proffered day and time for most people.

After returning to camp refreshed and our hearts fed, we were prepared to enjoy the week.

On Independence Day, we ventured into the wild of a trail that traveled upstream along a creek that flowed through the campground. Last year, the water level was high enough for me to "paddle" down it for a little ways...which included many moments of rubbing the bottom because of the shallowness of the creek. As we ventured up, my mind and heart wandered from the creek that I was scoping out to see whether I could paddle it after sufficient rainfall, to the beauty of the forest around me, to this day in U.S. history that we celebrate our independence, to those who have fought so bravely for our physical and spiritual freedom, to my family who I love so dearly, to the memories of my father whom I miss greatly, to a growing solemness in my heart that approached like the winds and shadows of an approaching rain. With every step my thoughts traveled further than I could do physically. I would stop and ponder the intricacies of my fungal favorites and I would feel the increase of the soft wind of this approaching storm that began to darken the sky of my heart. After a mile or so, there was a place on the creek that caught my attention so I added it to my wanderings. I stepped out on a rock that I realized was part of a much larger formation that extended downstream about twenty feet and upstream about the same as far as I could tell, but the biggest detail about this formation that captured my attention was that it was laying on its side. My mind tried to reconstruct what it was like thousands and possibly millions of years ago when it stood erect with the water flowing out of it in a brilliant cascade. But now, it lay on its side and the water had cut smooth channels into its gray composition. I was spellbound and the vision I was seeing partnered with the realization in my heart to hold me still at this place as the gentle rains of my emotional and spiritual storm began to fall and the meanderings of my heart saturated my mental pathways...

"When I see your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and stars that you set in place--
What is man that you are mindful of him,
a mere mortal that you care for him?

Yet because we bear the image of our Creator, we are sustained by the gift of His Spirit in which we are given. This gift allows us to live up to the image in which we were made: the image of Love. The Theory of Natural Selection teaches the model that man is on the top of the evolutionary chain, but in reality it seems that physically, man is on the bottom. What places him above the animals is his ability to resemble the characteristics of the Supreme Orderer of the cosmos: to forgive and to have compassion.

Yet you have made him a little less than a god,
crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him rule over the works of your hands,
put all things at his feet:
All sheep and oxen, even the beasts of the field,
The birds of the air, the fish of the sea,
and whatever swims the paths of the seas.
O LORD, our Lord, how awesome is your name through all the earth!
- Psalm 8

After being drawn out of my meditations, we ventured further up the trail to take in the delights of the order around us.

Monday, found us on the Tuckasegee: a river that we have grown quite fond of. On this trip down the river, I took the opportunity to try to teach my wife to "surf" here kayak on the waves in the river. At one point, it was confirmed to her that water was truly wet as her boat overturned due to the situation that placed her sideways in the current. We returned to this river two other times in the week and once again, she had the opportunity to actualize the assumption that water was still wet as a rock tilted her boat causing her to overturn. We will be writing an explanation of our findings regarding the revelation of the wetness of water to be published in mass production later.

Twice in the week, I took a solo trip down a river that was recommended to me by numerous people: the Nantahala. It was cold, to say the least. The dam, which controls the release into this river is not far upstream, which makes the temperature around 50 degrees. The first trip prompted me to wear a wetsuit jacket on the second.

The day of our return to Kentucky finally arrived and we ventured home somewhat saddened, but refreshed.