On The Trail In Asheville

Healing from the outside in

On Montreat’s Graybeard Trail with friends Dayton and Austin. If you zoom in close, you can see the chipper look on my face is actually suppressed terror upon realizing the trail we were on was labeled “Difficult.”

“I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.” - John Muir

In case you hadn’t heard, 2023 is the NC Year of the Trail, a 12-month celebration of the natural splendor that you can hike, bike, paddle, or horseback ride through here in North Carolina. According to the Great Trails State Coalition, our outdoor recreation economy generates almost 28 billion dollars annually and creates 260,000 jobs for North Carolinians. If you’re planning a visit, the NC Year of the Trail website has a terrific calendar of trail events as well as information guides so you can find the path you desire. Besides boosting tourism, the endeavor aims to “inspire people of all ages, abilities and backgrounds to try trails.”

Historically, you would not have pegged me for the “outdoorsy” type. My friend Liz loves to tell people that I once boasted I wouldn’t go anywhere I couldn’t plug in my blowdryer. While it’s true that I prefer glamping to camping, I am now thrilled to be living near so many stunning hiking trails. Age must have made me appreciate the simpler things, because I don’t remember the Blue Ridge Mountains gobsmacking me to this degree when I visited in my earlier years.

I’ve asked my Montreat friends if they paid much attention to the natural surroundings when we summered here as children and teens. We all agree that we were too busy with our rapscallion and wanton ways — especially those of us rebelling against the churchy vibe in this Presbyterian conference center — to give much thought to the beauty that surrounded us.

But now that I’m old, and more spiritual than wanton, my idea of a good time is taking a hike — as long as it’s in the “Advanced Easy” category. So I jumped at the offer to join friends on a hike up Montreat’s Graybeard Trail a couple weeks ago. My enthusiasm clouded my judgment, as I didn’t think to inquire about the trail’s level of difficulty (it is, indeed, marked “Difficult”) before we set out. After about 90 seconds of sidestepping icy patches and snow-covered rocks, I started to pant. And panic.

“Wow, this is so beautiful!” I said through a wheeze, secretly wondering just how far up we were going, and were there any sherpas along the way who could fetch me a hot toddy?

Dayton’s wife Susan took this picture and scampered up the trail like a billy goat while I brought up the rear.

We climbed through forest, past waterfalls, until we came to an intersection of trails. Praise Jesus, we then got off Graybeard and crossed Hope Bridge to relatively level earth.

Susan on Hope Bridge, Montreat, NC

It was my first time on the bridge that my cousin Perrin helped assemble. Perrin is Mr. Man About Montreat and also spent six months building Lower Piney, a gentler trail down the mountain, which is a rather peculiar way to spend your retirement, if you ask me. At age 57, his brother Frank spent five-and-a-half months hiking the ENTIRE Appalachian Trail, as in the 2200 mile-long Appalachian trail, yes, that Appalachian Trail, so all this is evidence that I was adopted because I clearly share none of these people’s DNA and I don’t understand them at all.

Perrin was in his 70s (!!) when he helped construct the bridge

We stopped to snap photos at the old reservoir that’s now part of a wildlife sanctuary while Susan and Dayton’s dogs plunged through the icy surface to go swimming.

Montreat Wildlife Sanctuary

The earthen trail turned into paved road as we made our way back down to where Austin and his cousins live. The whole thing took us 2.5 hours and this is a photo of the dog at the end:

Exactly how I felt

When I got back to Perrin and Mary Jo’s, I promptly collapsed on the bed, where I laid prostrate until Susan texted me an hour later to come over for pizza to celebrate Austin’s birthday. Despite barely being able to stand upright on my wobbly legs, I went, because now that I’m in North Carolina, I’ve decided to say “yes” to everything within reason.

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I was seven when I took my first hike in this state, to the summit of Mt. Mitchell, the highest peak in mainland eastern North America, located 30 miles northeast of Asheville. For some reason, my mother let me wear cowboy boots, so my guess is that a lot of my “hiking” took place on Dad’s shoulders. Being seven, I was entranced more with the s’mores than the views.

Circa 1970: Dad, me, my sister Allison, and Mom on Mt. Mitchell

Somewhere during adolescence, hiking through nature gave way to hiking through the mall. A few years after my parents moved to Asheville in the late 1980s, I sublet my tiny Beverly Hills studio to stay at their house while I completed a really bad novella collection that is collecting dust in a box somewhere. I was 26 then, two decades away from blowing out my knees, and I jogged everyday through my parents’ gracious and woodsy Grove Park neighborhood. But I didn’t do any hiking.

In 2021, when I took my second scouting trip to Asheville before deciding to move here, I rediscovered another hiking trail from my childhood, Craggy Pinnacle, just 20 miles up the Blue Ridge Parkway from Asheville. On that clear, crisp fall day I was mesmerized by the 360-degree panoramic vista at the top.

Craggy Pinnacle, Barnardsville, NC

The Blue Ridge Mountains meander from Pennsylvania to Georgia. If you’re wondering what gives them thar hills their distinctive hue, conifers in the mountain ranges emit “Volatile Organic Compounds” (VOCs) that meld with ozone molecules to create new molecules that “scatter blue light from the sun.” These particles disperse and settle into a haze that turns various shades of blue over the mountaintops.

“Something’s crossed over in me and I can’t go back.” - Thelma and Louise

In the film Thelma and Louise, Geena Davis’s character tells Susan Sarandon’s character that their adventures have changed her on such a fundamental level that she can’t return to live under her abusive husband’s regime. Something similar happened to me as I stood atop Craggy Pinnacle that September afternoon. I had to get back to my West Hollywood apartment, but when I looked out my narrow balcony at the white stucco walls of a neighboring condo, inhaling the perpetually “Unhealthy Air” quality air, I felt as though I couldn’t breathe. The construction on the luxury building next door had stolen my sunlight, the Los Angeles air was suffocating me, and I could no longer escape reality: the city that once had felt so expansive was now draining my spirit — and my oxygen level.

And the Blue Ridge Mountains that I’d taken for granted in my misspent youth were beckoning me home.

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Asheville rests in a vortex of natural energy that has long been a place of healing. Doctors in the 19th and early 20th centuries discovered the cool mountain air was a natural tonic for their patients with lung diseases and other medical conditions. Indeed, tuberculosis sanitoriums sprang up in and around the city during this time. After traveling to Asheville in 1888 with his malaria-stricken mother, railway heir George Vanderbilt was so taken with the area that he decided to build his 250-room “summer home” on 8000 verdant acres here. The Biltmore Estate is now a National Historic Landmark that attracts over a million visitors a year.

Before I left Los Angeles, two lovely friends gave me a gift certificate to The Biltmore Estate as a going-away present. One of the first things I did when I moved to town was to use their gift to buy an annual pass. I’d toured the 175,000 square foot French Renaissance chateau a few times before, but I’d never walked the grounds, which I did with delight last weekend.

Bass Pond Trail, Biltmore Estate, Asheville, NC

There are trails galore at The Biltmore, but my favorite was the half-mile loop around Bass Pond. The pond was featured at the end of the film Being There, when Peter Sellers walks onto the water.

Bass Pond, Biltmore Estate

Mary Jo joked that I’ve done more in and around Asheville in the few weeks that I’ve been here than she’s done in the past ten years. That wasn’t the case in Los Angeles. In my late 50s, as my denial and blind optimism ebbed, I resigned myself to the truth: what should have been the best part of my life had been stolen by a brutish divorce and the pedal-to-the-metal grind of a single mother in one of the most expensive cities in the country. Once the pandemic hit and my youngest child left for college, I spent more and more time alone; a big outing was strolling the aisles of Trader Joe’s. I lived at the edge of Beverly Hills, and often walked the 2-mile Beverly Gardens Path. It was a pleasant-enough excursion, but I was still choking on smog and wildfire smoke.

Just as the Blue Ridge Mountain air was a remedy for tubercular patients, it’s also a healing elixir for the disillusioned. The pain and damage from my past have lost their sting now that I’m here. I wake up every morning and gaze out my window as the winter sun peeks through bare tree limbs on the ridges above, grateful for my late-in-life renaissance, and the mountain air that I get to breathe.

“I am well again, I came to life in the cool winds and crystal waters of the mountains.” - John Muir