Divermarv

There’s the things…

I live in the country. Compared to in-city living, it is indeed in the country. I see deer and wild turkeys in my yard almost every day. My neighbor has chickens, and someone across the little valley has chickens (with roosters), and turkeys. I hear the country and farm sounds all the time. And it’s nice.

I have a nice little porch, part of which is covered. I can sit out and enjoy a little rain, watching the hummingbirds dodging the fat drops from feeder to feeder. In a way, I live a glamping life.

So why do I go camping? Well. To get away from the everyday. I hear the traffic a hundred yards behind me from a fairly heavy used (especially commuter) road. I have neighbors who do noisy neighbor things. One guy opens the doors to his metal outbuilding and blares his horrible music. Geographically his building acts like a clamshell amplifying noise right to me. Ugh. Then there’s the NASCAR wannabes gittin’ it on my little one and a half lane road leading down into our valley.

So yeah. I go camping to get away from things. One of the things I desire to get away from is the rut. I’m in a rut when I’m home. Leaving home forces me out of that. Mostly.

There’s the little things…

I love camping out west because it is so different from the Appalachian mountains. The birds are different. The critters, and the sights. Different.

Also when I’m out west I’ve had to travel to get there. There’s some fun in that too. Each time (so far) I’ve seen crop dusters swooping through their daily toil.

But even when I’m still in Appalachia, it’s the little things. Maybe even the same things. I’ve been sitting here enjoying the babbling of Peppers Creek, when I noticed a familiar droning sound. Hummingbird. I scanned the foliage and there they were. A couple of hummingbirds out getting drunk on nectar.

There’s the big things…

The title of this post includes “glamping”, because I’m trying to establish my version of it. Not too much. But a fun and sustainable version. I have a custom trailer (see previous posts) I use to haul around my stuff.

As such, I need to be able to drive in to my campsite. I don’t have to have hookups; I bring my own water, and I have a power cube and a folding solar panel array. I currently need to have some sort of toilet facility, portable-potties are fine. Note: I’m working on a feasible way to have my own for when I need to, can you say dispersed camping?!

All of this adds up to nothing at all resembling backcountry camping.

Which means roads. Which means more people. Which then means road noise, neighbors (sometimes noisy) and… starting to sound like my home life? Yeah.

The place I’m currently staying at has enough pluses to outweigh the minuses. There’s Peppers Creek Road about a hundred yards from me, and it is fairly heavily traveled. I’m camping through the weekdays, but some folks are starting to come in for the weekend.

The dark skies, being adjacent to a babbling brook, all these things. The little things, and the things, make it worth it. Plus this is the other side of the Appalachian mountains. There’s cool things to see here, and different things.

This is why I do it.

Peace and love,
Marv

P. S.

Close by is the Blue Ridge Parkway. Which reminds me of my time in the Navy. I was stationed on the USS Phoenix SSN 702, stationed in Norfolk. A friend and I drove motorcycles from Norfolk to my mom’s house just north of Knoxville. And we took much of it down the Blue Ridge Parkway. I remember crossing Mount Mitchell. It was cooooold. When I go places while I’m here, I pass under the parkway, and I get to think of that. #Nostalgia