![]() ![]() The mutual joy we experienced on this first road trip was transformational for both of us. ![]() And then she climbed a mountain with me, defying all expectations. The blue smoke of Tennessee mist lifted and Grandma Joy took in the view of her first mountains. She held an umbrella over my head as I assembled our tent and inflated the air mattress. We drove 7 hours into the night, and arrived at the Elkmont Campground in Great Smoky Mountains National Park at 2 a.m. Grandma Joy picked up the phone and I asked, “How would you like to go camping with me in the Smokies this weekend?”Ī few hours later she was seated in the passenger seat of my Ford Escape Hybrid, headed south. ![]() It wasn’t until 5 years later that a small window opened to take our first road trip, in September 2015. Months later, I started a dual-degree program at The Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine. My life was moving in a different direction, however. The sunset of Grandma Joy’s life deserved mountain sunsets and more. I absorbed the stale view from her front porch and thought of the expansive views I’d experienced thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail. I dropped her off at her house, where she lived for more than six decades. “I would have loved to see a mountain.” I promised her I would take her to the mountains. I can still feel the gut punch of her words standing on the shore of Cutler Lake: “If I had one regret, it’s that I didn’t get to see more of the great outdoors in my life,” Grandma Joy said. There was no picking up where we left off we were faced with only one choice: start from scratch and create something beautiful from the rubble. My parents’ divorce 10 years prior had shattered our family and my grandma and I hadn’t spoken in nearly a decade when we turned to Mother Nature for a path toward reconciliation. One of my earliest childhood memories was catching crayfish at a stream in Blue Rock where we now walked together. My grandma Joy was 80 years old when she joined me for a short day hike in Blue Rock State Park near our hometown of Duncan Falls, Ohio. ![]()
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