Southern Musings By Gary Lloyd: Hike, write might become tradition

My wife is awesome, so let’s just lead with that. 

For my birthday, she booked a three-day, two-night stay for me and our dog, Sonny, in a Mentone cabin, five minutes from DeSoto State Park. Sure, she’d have been my first choice over the dog, but I don’t think our four-year-old is quite old enough to be the man of the house. Maybe next year. 

So, the dog and I drove northeast and proceeded to have the quickest slow weekend I’ve ever experienced. We checked in two-and-a-half hours early, and we went hiking as soon as I could unpack. I grilled a ribeye for me and steak bites for Sonny that night, and we watched football as night fell. 

We made our way to DeSoto State Park the next morning, where a light drizzle fell before we hiked almost five miles in two hours. I saw 30 deer and zero people in the woods, which was tremendous. It was refreshing to be somewhere the people aren’t, where bulldozers aren’t pushing tree stumps and green away to make room for concrete and bricks. It was nice that the steps in the woods were made from tree roots and stone, and that the waterfalls were natural instead of powered by electricity and illuminated by LED lights. 

I wrote this column in the afternoon and rushed through most of it because the hot tub wouldn’t stop enticing me with its rumbles. I grilled more steak because what is a weekend getaway without steak at every meal? 

That night, our last night in Mentone, I spent a lot of time writing. Another story, a book project I’m seemingly never going to finish and planning for more content were all things I touched on. Had I never figured out the Amazon Fire TV Stick — my wife has the technological know-how, and I do not — I’d have written approximately ten thousand more words. OK, probably not.

As much as I’d like what I came to call the Hike & Write to become an annual tradition, I know it won’t. Sonny is 9 years old and, despite his strong pull of the leash for nearly five miles, it will eventually weaken. As our son plays more sports and involves himself in other extracurriculars, I won’t be able to just leave for a weekend. 

So, I’ll remember this weekend for what it was. Peaceful. Everyone who knows me knows how much I read Thoreau, especially his Journal. On Jan. 7, 1852, 172 years before the day I spent hiking through DeSoto State Park, Thoreau wrote this:

“I go forth each afternoon and look into the west a quarter of an hour before sunset, with fresh curiosity, to see what new picture will be painted there, what new panorama exhibited, what new dissolving views. Can Washington Street or Broadway show anything as good? Every day a new picture is painted and framed, held up for half an hour, in such lights as the Great Artist chooses, and then withdrawn, and the curtain falls. And then the sun goes down, and long the afterglow gives light. And then the damask curtains glow along the western window. And now the first star is lit, and I go home.”

Gary Lloyd is the author of six books and a contributing writer to the Cahaba Sun.