Author: Paul Gerald

For folks like Margaret Smith, spring in Memphis is a brief window
upon a fantastic world.

Tennessee Trails Association

Village Creek

“Right now is the perfect time for hiking,” says Smith, president of
the Memphis chapter of the Tennessee Trails Association. “The flowers
are coming out, the dogwood is in bloom. In summer, of course, it’s too
hot and humid to get out there.”

That’s why this is the busiest time of year for the Trails
Association, whose Memphis chapter has about 70 members and a hiking
season that runs from September through May.

We decided to ask Smith about some of her favorite destinations
within a couple hours of town. Consider this a primer for getting out
while the getting out is still good.

The place: Meeman-Shelby Forest State Park.

The hike: Try the eight-mile Chickasaw Bluff Trail, with good
views of the Mississippi River and some nice ups and downs. “A good
hike to get your heart going, and there are a lot of flowers there,”
Smith says. If eight miles sounds a bit much, there are plenty of other
options, with a total of 20 trail miles available, including some in
the bottoms along the river.

Getting there: About 15 miles north of Memphis, just off
Highway 51.

More info: Call the park at 876-5215 or 800-471-5293.

The place: Wolf River Wildlife Area.

The hike: A mostly level ramble along the Wolf through a lush
forest filled with sycamore trees. Keep an eye out for deer and wild
turkeys, as well as river otters. This is a new wildlife area
designated in the fall of 2008 and remains relatively unknown.

Getting there: Located on the north bank of the Wolf north of
Collierville, between Collierville-Arlington and Houston Levee roads.
One access point is a road leading down to the river from the north
side of the Collierville-Arlington Road bridge over the Wolf.

The place: Herb Parsons Lake in Fisherville.

The hike: A forested, easy, six-mile loop around the lake,
with some small hills but ever-changing scenery and plenty of places to
stop for a lakeside picnic lunch. Start your hike along the levee to
the right of park, and keep an eye out for one spot where you have to
leave the trail for a road briefly. This one is popular with mountain
bikers, as well.

Getting there: From I-40, take Exit 25 (Hwy. 205) south to
Highway 193. Turn left on 193, then turn right on Fisherville Lake Road
to the entrance.

More info: Call 861-5087.

The place: Lucius Burch State Natural Area.

The hike: Options abound in this 700-acre natural area, which
is part of 6,000-acre Shelby Farms County Park. The state Division of
Natural Areas says it’s “a remnant of historic river meanders, bald
cypress-water tupelo swamps, bottomland hardwood forests, and open
river channel habitat. It provides a refuge for forest dwelling birds,
mammals, reptiles, and amphibians.”

Getting there: Access is off Walnut Grove Road across from
Patriot Lake.

More info: Contact Shelby Farms Park (382-0235) for a
detailed map and directions.

The place: Village Creek State Park near Wayne, Arkansas.

The hike: The park sits on Crowley’s Ridge, which is covered
with a lush hardwood forest featuring oak, sugar maple, beech,
butternut, and tulip poplar. A favorite hike of the TTA is the Military
Road Trail, which is 2.4 miles in length and rated as moderate in
difficulty. It preserves the most dramatic remaining portion of the
Trail of Tears, completed in 1829. Other trails include the 2.75-mile
Lake Dunn Trail and several shorter nature trails.

Getting there: Take Exit #242 off I-40 at Forrest City, about
an hour west of Memphis. From there, go 13 miles north on AR 284 to the
park.

More info: Call the park at 870-238-9406.

tennesseetrails.org/memphis.php

If you’ve ever gone on a trip, you’ve heard the Question.

Let’s say you go down to the Caribbean, stay in a quiet little resort with its own beach, charter a boat for a day, go snorkeling, cook a fresh fish dinner in the bungalow, and walk on the beach in the moonlight. And let’s say that was one night in a week of such nights.

After this transformative experience, during which every day was a new adventure filled with interesting experiences, you return home to see your friends and family. And what do they say?

“How was your trip?”

Then they look at you, kind of wide-eyed, and you have their undivided attention for, what, a minute? Maybe two? Or until their significant other says something like, “Honey, where are the keys?”

Since you can’t summarize your trip in two minutes, what these folks are really saying is, “Give me the greatest hits (or hit) of your trip!” For example, I went to Washington, D.C., for the Obama inauguration, and what I manage to tell people is I was way in the back, it was cold but we huddled like those penguins in the movie, and everybody was in a great mood. Oh, and this: I wrote a blog about it! That’s for the one in 10,000 people who will actually read it. Pictures? Forget it. And, please, don’t say “Facebook Album.”

When people ask the Question, they’re just being nice. They want you to know that your pilgrimage to the Grand Canyon is of interest to them, because they like you and want you to feel appreciated — not because they want you to talk about it for 45 minutes. Also, they will want to tell you about the wedding in New York they’re going to next month. It’s a polite social contract between people: I’ll give you three minutes for your trip, you give me three for mine.

And yet, we collect these stories and write them down, anyway. Poke around the Internet sometime for travel blogs and stories. Can you think of one you’ve read recently? Regularly? When you’re planning a trip, do you surf the Web for other people’s experiences?

Ah, but when you have travel stories to tell, you really want to tell them, right? My theory is that telling the story somehow makes the trip official: I had an idea, I did it, and then I told people about it. And if nobody reads my blog (a safe assumption) then at least I told the story to some imaginary audience. So it’s been recorded.

This all came to mind recently upon reading a typically extravagant press release (speaking of “rarely read”) from the website Sosauce Travel (sosauce.com). Apparently, Sosauce will soon debut “a new and innovative method of recording and sharing travel experiences … the most comprehensive and interactive answer to the familiar question ‘How was your trip?'”

Share trip videos with friends, practice your French, or watch international soccer matches at Costello’s Travel Caff in Portland.

Among the features of the Sosauce travelogue are putting pins where you’ve been on a map, showing your itinerary on a map, “recounting your trips in stunning detail,” and reading about other people’s trips.

Sound familiar?

I’m a little more interested in the travel-themed cafe. Apparently, there is now a themed-cafe boom happening in Japan. One of the ideas is that neighboring countries, like the Philippines, are setting up cafes that offer a slice of the homeland to entice Japanese visitors to their country.

But bear with me as we discuss, briefly, how weird Japan is. Their theme-cafe boom started with places where the waitresses dress in French maid outfits, play the submissive role, and offer such services as cuddling, coddling, and cleaning. Seriously. This has led to vampire cafes, prison cafes, Ninja cafes, science lab coat cafes, butler cafes, church cafes, and a “Heidi Girl of the Alps” cafe.

But back to travel stories that nobody reads (ahem). In Portland, Oregon, Costello’s Travel Caffé has taken steps toward a possible solution for “How was your trip?” They are a travel-themed cafe, showing international soccer matches, foreign films, and personal videos shot on location, as well as hosting foreign-language conversation nights.

What somebody needs to do is start hosting a travel- story-themed cafe. Sailed around the islands? Got a million stories and two million photos? We’ll book you for Sunday at 7 p.m., and whoever wants to hear about it can show up. Vagabonders passing through town can tell us where they’ve been. Visiting friends can pitch us on their hometowns. I think this cafe would work.

In fact, writing these ideas down has given me a common experience: While sitting here writing a travel story, I have come up with a better idea for what I should be doing.

A couple years ago, in what might have been my own version of the midlife crisis, I made a list of things I wanted to do while I still could. Among the items was to see a presidential inauguration. And on the evening of November 4th, while watching Barack Obama’s acceptance speech, I knew it had to be this inauguration. Once that thought was in my head, I didn’t really have a choice. My sister lives in the D.C. area, and I had frequent-flier miles.

So here, from the perspective of one little drop in the sea of humanity, is a description of Washington, D.C., on January 20th:

I was up at 6 a.m. and out the door at 7, like a springlet on a hillside miles from the ocean. On the street I joined a larger flow, then a wall of people on the train. I wedged into a person-sized hole, and at each station we said we’d never be able to make room for any of the platform throng. Once, somebody cracked us up with a “Yes we can!”

Downtown was a river of people. We filled six-lane avenues and poured down sidewalks. Crossing the street was like swimming a river, and if you wanted to take a picture or stop for any reason, you had to get in the leeway of a street sign or vendor truck.

The energy was joyful, confident, even giddy. We were doing the “Gimme an O … gimme a B” and then all yelling together, “OBAMA!” We were waving flags, sporting glitter, and strutting our collective stuff.

I made for the hill at the Washington Monument to have a look. Between there and the Capitol building, which is about a mile and a half away, was nothing but people. It was a human landscape. Our springs and creeks and rivers had formed a sea.

Like water seeking to get closer, we backed up against tight spots and street crossings, eddied behind buildings, and streamed into open areas. The Mall is a mile or more long, fully 200 yards wide, and all of that was filled with people.

I headed back to the monument, high ground. By 11 a.m., it was so crowded I couldn’t change places. Whenever I looked around, I saw others doing the same, all with expressions of pure, happy awe. Almost 2 million human beings, all in one place for the same reason!

Up on the Jumbotrons, as the ceremony got started, we saw various political celebs, who got various responses. Clinton, Carter, Gore, Powell, and Kerry: big cheers. Cheney got “Dr. Strangelove” jokes for being in a wheelchair.

Bush got the biggest boos, loud enough to be heard on TV. When he was officially introduced, the crowd, by now a single living thing, serenaded him with “Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, Goodbye!” A proud American moment, I say.

The ceremony was something of a blur. I was a long way from a Jumbotron, with a delay of a couple of seconds between the video and the audio — and probably five seconds between speakers talking and us hearing it. Aretha Franklin was amazing, her voice careening all over the landscape.

When it came time for Obama, some 500,000 cameras were hoisted into the air. The crowd was poised like a slingshot, waiting for “So help me God,” and when he said that, the cheer started down by the Capitol and came to us like a wave, and it swept us into pandemonium. Everyone was hopping and clapping and waving flags, and I looked out towards the mall and saw all those thousands and thousands of flags, whipping back and forth.

Afterward, the crowd broke up in all directions, some lingering like puddles in the dusty, windswept, completely trashed mall. From that point on, it was all about gathering souvenirs and getting home. Up in the neighborhoods, stragglers were showing signs of fatigue, and the once-mighty crowd was thinning back into streams.

I was exhausted but glad and proud to be among millions of Americans cheering the new and jeering the old. I felt a genuine national pride that day, and I was part of one of the greatest gatherings in the history of our country. That doesn’t make me special or accomplished, just lucky. And no matter what happens the next four years, at least we can all say we remember when President Obama gathered us together and said, “Let’s do better.”

It could be because I turned 40 not long ago, but I’ve been thinking lately about regrets. Not regrets about stuff I did, though there’s plenty of that, but about stuff I didn’t do.

A perfect example: the time I was in Alaska and saw a company offering aerial tours of Mount McKinley for $100. I was on something of a tight budget and schedule, so I declined, but by the end of the day, a crystal-clear thought was pounding in my head: It’s not like I’m coming back next week! What was I thinking? But the weather moved in, and I had to be back in Anchorage, and I still haven’t seen that mountain.

Back in my Deadhead days, the band used to play shows in all these cool little places in California: Frost Amphitheater at Stanford, the Greek Theater in Berkeley, the Warfield Theater in San Francisco. By the time I got out of college and got my act together, the Grateful Dead were too big for those places, and I had to go see them in football stadiums or big, sterile venues. I was working on tickets to finally see them at Madison Square Garden when Jerry Garcia died and the whole train quit running.

Never saw Eli Manning play football at Ole Miss. Skipped the Jackson Five Victory Tour (their last, it turns out) because of all the screaming girls. Hardly spent any time in New Orleans before Katrina. Didn’t hook up with a fellow backpacker I met in Thailand back in the ’80s who was inviting me to barely-open Vietnam. Never saw Johnny Carson tape The Tonight Show.

Sure, a lot of this had to do with money. I’ve never had enough of it to go flying around the world knocking everything off my to-do list. But I do spend money, and I do travel, and I do not have a real good reason for why I didn’t do these things. And now I can’t do any of them.

Last year, I read two things that brought this energy into focus and focused it on one goal. One was a study of elderly people, which found that a large majority of them, at the end of life, regretted not the bad things they did but the things they didn’t do. That sent a chill through me. The other was that 2008 is the last year baseball will be played at Yankee Stadium.

Now, I’m not a Yankees fan by any means. I do like baseball, but like a lot of people I’m turned off by the egos, the money, the steroids, the star-worship, etc. But the Yankees have been playing at Yankee Stadium since 1923. They, and their stadium, and their city are icons. The stadium has seen 33 World Series and 26 Yankee championships. It’s where the “win one for the Gipper” speech was given and where the Greatest Football Game Ever Played (1958 Giants-Colts) was played. And that stadium is being torn down after this baseball season.

But besides all that, there’s my dad. My dad grew up listening to Yankee games on the radio, back in the 1930s in Leland, Mississippi. Before that, Babe Ruth used to knock balls out of Yankee Stadium. So did Lou Gehrig and Mickey Mantle. One day I’ll tell my little nephews and nieces, and probably their kids, about Alex Rodriguez knocking balls out of there.

But I’ve never been there, and neither has Dad. And he just turned 74. So awhile back I called him and said, “You know they’re tearing down Yankee Stadium, right?” He said yes, and I said, “Well, I think we need to go to a game there.” Even over the phone, I could feel him get excited. “I would really like that!” he said. So we’re going.

In fact, once I started telling the rest of the family, my nephews got into it (although the 14-year-old insists he’s wearing all his Red Sox stuff to the game), and now it’s become the Family Trip to New York.

I’ve been doing my homework on this. Summer airfare from Memphis to Newark, New Jersey, runs about $300 (into New York is closer to $400). Amtrak is around $350, with a possible stopover in Chicago (Cubs game at Wrigley, anyone?), or you can drive it in two eight-hour days. Game-day ticket prices are $14 for the bleachers up to, ahem, $400 for something close to the field, and hotel rooms can be had for about … well, let’s not think about hotel rates in New York City.

As for the stadium, tours (including the field, dugout, press box, clubhouse when available, and historic Monument Park) are $20 — $15 if you get a group of 12 together.

It may be that the males in our family go to the game and the ladies go shopping, but I don’t care. I’m gonna see the Yankees play in Yankee Stadium, with Dad, before they tear it down. And I’ll be in New York City with my whole family. I’m sure we can find other things to do while we’re there — like go see David Letterman tape The Late Show.

You know, while we still can.

Let’s talk about hiking and backpacking in California. No doubt you’re familiar, at least in name, with Yosemite, Redwoods, and Kings Canyon. Mob scenes, every one of them! Lousy with cars and regulations and concrete! Claustrophobically crowded!

I made a discovery, of sorts, last fall — and almost hate to share it. But there is a whole range of mountains in California that is relatively unknown, except among local hikers and backpackers. It’s massive, glorious, and filled with more crystalline lakes, rushing streams, alpine scenery, and sublime camping spots than a person could see in a lifetime. And if you avoid one or two areas around the weekends, there’s almost nobody there.

It’s called the Trinity Alps Wilderness, and here’s how you get there from Memphis: Fly to San Francisco and rent a car, then drive north on I-5 for about six hours until you see the New Age madness around Mount Shasta. Turn left and follow a series of ever-smaller and hillier roads for an hour and a half to any one of a dozen or more trailheads.

And what is up those trails? About 525,000 acres of protected wilderness (bigger than Shelby County), 833 miles of trails, 55 lakes, and terrain from dense forests to alpine wonderlands.

My girlfriend and I hiked a five-night trip there last September, starting from a little-used campground/trailhead on the northeast side, 15 miles up a dirt road from the “town” of Coffee Creek. We arrived on a Saturday evening, and the only other car belonged to a couple on their way out of the hills.

We spent the next two days hiking in virtual solitude, our only human sightings being two women at Caribou Lake, where we camped the first night, and, this being California, one man hiking alone and wearing only his backpack, boots, and a mighty thorough tan.

That first night at Caribou was one of those “Are we really here?” moments, with deep, granite walls all around, the moon shining above, dinner on the shore, a night’s sleep in total silence, and a frigid swim to wake up in the morning.

The next day we engaged in two Trinity traditions: following an unmaintained trail and getting lost. There is plenty of opportunity for off-trail travel in the Trinities, some of it leading to the most remote treasures. There are also a fair number of “scramble” trails marked as dotted lines on the map, but you’ll need good maps, a compass, and the good sense to use them.

We were confident we could follow the Caribou Scramble, and we did — but in part by luck. We lost it on the way out of Caribou Basin and wound up scrambling up a steep, pine-needle-covered hillside. When we arrived at the knife-edge ridgeline at around 7,700 feet, we were relieved beyond measure that the trail down the other side was within 50 feet of us.

But what a trail! It dropped almost 3,000 feet in countless switchbacks, all of them waterless and in the sun. (Warning: Do not go up the Caribou Scramble!) There’s a campsite and creek at the bottom, but after resting up, we headed to a camp at Emerald Lake, the mountain lake of your dreams.

During the next three days, we napped in the shade, swam and fished in the lake, visited even higher and even prettier Sapphire Lake, watched the sun rise from our sleeping bags, and ate as much out of our packs as we could.

Then we hiked out over two more nights, using rarely visited trails, seeing only several deer and one person who had just seen a black bear. We camped alone two more nights — once near sprawling Morris Meadow and once clinging to a granite hillside — then descended from alpine highlands through fir forests to the piney lowlands, and when we were done, the whole thing seemed like a dream.

The amazing thing about the Trinity Alps, though, is that we barely scratched the surface of what’s there. And with a little effort on your part, the Trinities might make a mark on you, too.

For more information on the Trinity Alps Wilderness, call the Klamath National Forest office at 530-842-6131.