Mt Mitchell On Top of the World as far as us East Coasters are concerned
Seven or eight years ago, Jeremy and I were spending our usual couple of weeks in Asheville during the month of July. The free music festival Belle Chere is held there every year on the last weekend in July, and we had our pre-parenthood traditions that included lots of late nights listening to music in crowded bars, followed by sleeping in until all hours, and then maybe getting around to an afternoon hike.
One of these lazy afternoons was hot and humid enough to chase us up to a higher altitude. We learned early on in our mountain explorations that if you want to escape the heat, just go up a few thousand feet. And bring a sweater...and a raincoat, because you never know.
So we decided to head up to Mt. Mitchell, the highest point east of Mississippi. We werent up for any of those real hikes (on account of all that music in bars), so we stumbled onto the Balsam Nature Trail, an easy mile loop full of stones and moss and mushrooms and caves.
This has become one of our favorite hikes to do with the boys. We take them each time we are in Asheville, and it is the perfect walk for young rock scramblers. At this point they can walk the whole trail themselves with only a couple of snack breaks to boost the morale.
A brief "Mt. Mitchell and the Boys" montage (sing Through the Years in your head...)
In the spirit of celebrating the general mouthiness of my boys, I will admit that when we took them up the mountain a few weeks ago, Theo was expressing skepticism about the fabulousness of this particular hike. Basically, we had been to the fish hatchery the day before and so for him, on this particular day, it was feeding fish or bust. He kept requesting fish, and at one point his brother piped in with a request for a beaver. Say what?
So in classic manipulative cheerleader mom mode, I told them that while there would probably be no animal sightings, there might be....wait for it...a WATERFALL!!!! Gasps, smiles, claps. My work is done here, folks.
Okay, so there is no waterfall. There is just a small, trickling fresh water spring that comes out of the mountain toward the end of hike. Vocabulary is fluent at this age and I take full advantage. But it was enough for them, and it is enough for us...every time.
I cant wait to go back to our waterfall.
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