To be a kid again. Or a dog. Never was a dog, but I could have been. After a week in the mountains of Blowing Rock, North Carolina, I would definitely take another childhood. Or a doghood.
We rented a cabin. It looked like it had fallen out of the sky and landed teetering on a steep ridge overlooking a stream. There were old logging roads and lots of trees and not a living soul but us.
The only way to the cabin was on a gravel “road” that could have been a ski jump if it wasn’t broken up by so many switchbacks. You know you’re in for a wild ride when your road comes with instructions for navigating it.
You also know you’re going somewhere isolated. Away from people. And where your clan can run wild and free.
To be a kid again. Or a dog.
I run a lot … for exercise. I cover lots of miles. I see lots of things and I go lots of places. But when I opened the door and released my two mountain maniacs, I realized that how I “run” and they “RUN!!!” are not the same.
They looked like a jailbreak. They looked like a tidal wave on land. They looked like they had thumbed their nose at gravity and figured out how to bound off the air.
My kid would tear off down the earthen steps to the stream, legs and feet flying like they had come unhinged. Sounds like “wooohooo” and “yaahaaa” and “you’ll never get the dirt stains out of these pants!” emerged from her 9-year-old mouth.
The dog had no interest in steps. She would hurtle straight down the mountain, dodging trees and picking up incredible speed with every step. How she stayed right-side-up I will never know.
And just like that, they were both gone. I had no idea where. I had no idea if I would ever see them again. But I could tell by the hoots and the hollers echoing through the trees that they had found a better life … and it was flippity fun.
Room to “RUN!!!” is a rare commodity today. You can’t just do it anywhere. Not without worrying about a fence or a leash or strange people or looking both ways.
That’s what makes trips to the mountains such a joy as a kid. No fences. No leashes. No worries.
Just land and trails and room to run until you can’t get air in your heaving lungs and you collapse at the cabin steps, begging for Oreos or pineapple juice or a shoe to replace the one you lost in the stream.
“Child! That’s the third one today!”
“Yep. Sorry. Gotta’ go.”
And then the whole thing started over again — “YAAHAAA!”
I ran, too. Up that ski jump of a road, just to see if I could do it. Along the old logging roads, as far as I could go. And up on the highway above us. I felt pretty good about it.
Only, it was different — controlled, not carefree. Restrained, not reckless. Fitness-y and fulfilling, not flat-out and near-fatal. It was fun — just not flippity fun.
And not how a 9-year-old and her dog runs the mountains. Which is why I really wanted to be a kid again. Or even that daredevil, tree-dodging dog.