natchez trace | A Dash of the Unexpected

Our holiday weekend was full of some of my favorite things: outdoor adventures, memory-making and family.

We started with a picnic Saturday along the Natchez Trace, followed by a hike that quickly turned into a hard-rain dousing, to the enormous entertainment of the youngest members of our crew.

We came home, took showers, had a spaghetti supper and closed the day with a few holiday weekend fireworks, courtesy of Uncle Ryan.

We spent Sunday at the Tennessee Renaissance Festival, held at a real-life castle in Arrington, just a short drive from here. We ended the day hot and tired, but everyone had such a good time. We toured the castle, and the kids really enjoyed the junk food, the games and shops and the shows – pirates and Robin Hood, a knighting ceremony, birds of prey and jousting (the clear favorite).

Lina wasn’t loving waiting in line for the bus for the castle tour, so she sidled right up to a sympathetic-looking fellow tour goer, whose name, we learned, was Ella.

She started the outing a little overwhelmed and crabby, but a pile of french fries and a smoothie did wonders for her outlook.

Lina loved the interactive Robin Hood show. She started out three rows back with us and moved up a row at a time until she got the unimpeded view she wanted.

Corin was thrilled to slay the dragon by snaring the ring with the sword, thus being proclaimed an honorary knight for the day, to rousing “huzzahs.”

Memorial Day was lower-key, with biking and walking at the local arboretum, a little driveway basketball and squeezing in as much play as possible before my brother and the family headed home. I am reminded, as I sort through photos and look back over the weekend, that these simple pleasures, of family bonding and hiking in the rain, of cousins building Legos, riding bikes, rolling down grassy hills and waving sparklers in the dusk, of outings and memory-making, are all possible thanks to a very steep price. Others have paid for this life we live, and I am grateful. Those who have lost someone to service – including my mom, who remembers her brother today – deserve our remembrance and respect. It’s easy for me to type those words, but living it out, through a bone-deep commitment to the highest ideals and values that make us American – that is where the meaning lies.

The kids were off school for Veterans’ Day last week, so we took a rare opportunity for a mid-week camping trip. We picked a humble little campground an hour-and-a-half drive down the Natchez Trace, a beautiful historic parkway that ends just a few miles from our home. We arrived in camp around bedtime and were snuggled into our sleeping bags in short order. Lina was awake some in the night, listening to dogs barking and marveling at the novelty of nestling between her sleepy parents, but overall, the night went pretty smoothly.

We woke to a crisp, brilliantly sunny morning. There are few things as perfect as a whole day with no schedule, no responsibilities and an open road to explore. We ate our pancakes, visited with the horses who shared our campground and loaded the car and began our leisurely meandering back up the Natchez Trace. Corin loved the opportunity to help choose our stops. We visited Laurel Hill Lake, traveled short portions of the original Trail of Tears, hunted for slag at the site of a historic steel furnace and visited the site where Meriwether Lewis is buried. We explored a waterfall and hiked part of a trail imaginatively named Devil’s Backbone (a key factor in its selection for Corin’s agenda). Corin soaked up the stories from history that inevitably arose from our explorations.

I will remember for a long time the feeling of that cool, bright, free day on the Natchez Trace.