Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
A Hiking Trip
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2015 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
In February I got an email from my pal Jane:
Subject: Long shot: Hiking in TN at end of April?
This led to a fun hiking trip last week in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I took Amtrak south and Jane picked me up in Raleigh. The long drive west gave us a chance to begin catching up. We walked to the Alum Cave Bluffs and to Rainbow Falls, and we did the Bud Ogle nature walk near a falling-apart sluice mill, all accompanied by the very helpful Falcon guide Hiking Great Smoky Mountains National Park by Kevin Adams. Our timing evidently helped us get a lot of the trails to ourselves, as we missed both the wildflower-loving spring crowd and the family-vacation summer crowd, and forecasts had predicted more rain than actually occurred. Few hikers were around to mind our duets of "Union Maid" or "Goodnight Ladies/Peck A Little, Talk A Little" or "Women and Men".
After my Coast-to-Coast walks through England, during which I developed wayfinding hygiene approaching paranoia, I found the trails in the Smokies super well-marked. (Right after Rainbow Falls we did overshoot, but I blame that on our inadequately attentive reading of the guidebook.) Also we saw a deer, and a weasel, right on the trails! And we saw a mama bear with her three cubs, safely across a valley from us, but still! Wild black bears!
And then I got to spend May Day in Asheville, North Carolina with my friend David. I caught "Loving After Lifetimes of All This" at The Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design, and thus discovered the amazing art/zine partnership Temporary Services; I particularly appreciated their Group Work: A Compilation of Quotes About Collaboration from a Variety of Sources and Practices (PDF link), and now that I've glimpsed a neat-looking booklet about Madison in their exhibit, I'm planning to seek it when I go to WisCon in a few weeks. We filled the evening with a May Day rally, a whomping performance of A Streetcar Named Desire, and the end of a Beltane celebration. I read a lot during my Saturday bus ride eastwards through North Carolina, and then Saturday evening I saw live roots rock near Raleigh. And during the train northwards, I did a good six hours of work on my fanvid.
Spring came back to New York City while I was away. I'm thinking about spring cleaning, and about what I want to make room for. Making things, yes, code and art. More live music, live theater, hiking, and long chats with friends I rarely see, who live very different lives. Changing and allowing myself to be changed.
