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. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
The only way to the cabin was on a gravel \u201croad\u201d that could have been a ski jump if it wasn\u2019t broken up by so many switchbacks. You know you\u2019re in for a wild ride when your road comes with instructions for navigating it. <\/p>\n
You also know you\u2019re going somewhere isolated. Away from people. And where your clan can run wild and free. <\/p>\n
To be a kid again. Or a dog.
\n<\/p>\n
I run a lot \u2026 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 \u201crun\u201d and they \u201cRUN!!!\u201d are not the same. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
My kid would tear off down the earthen steps to the stream, legs and feet flying like they had come unhinged. Sounds like \u201cwooohooo\u201d and \u201cyaahaaa\u201d and \u201cyou\u2019ll never get the dirt stains out of these pants!\u201d emerged from her 9-year-old mouth. <\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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 \u2026 and it was flippity fun. \t<\/p>\n
Room to \u201cRUN!!!\u201d is a rare commodity today. You can\u2019t just do it anywhere. Not without worrying about a fence or a leash or strange people or looking both ways. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s what makes trips to the mountains such a joy as a kid. No fences. No leashes. No worries. <\/p>\n
Just land and trails and room to run until you can\u2019t 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. <\/p>\n
\u201cChild! That\u2019s the third one today!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYep. Sorry. Gotta\u2019 go.\u201d<\/p>\n
And then the whole thing started over again \u2014 \u201cYAAHAAA!\u201d<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
Only, it was different \u2014 controlled, not carefree. Restrained, not reckless. Fitness-y and fulfilling, not flat-out and near-fatal. It was fun \u2014 just not flippity fun.<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 \u201croad\u201d that could have been a ski jump if it wasn\u2019t broken up by so many switchbacks. You know you\u2019re in for a wild ride when your road comes with instructions for navigating it. You also know you\u2019re going somewhere isolated. Away from people. And where your clan can run wild and free. To be a kid again. Or a dog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[553,555,8,565],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2015-nutshells","category-animals","category-parenthoodandchildren","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1364"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1365,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364\/revisions\/1365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}