I hesitate when it comes to paying for a campsite. All I really need is a patch of dirt and some expectation that I won't be picked up for trespassing. Settling in just south of Asheville however, my Fellow Traveler had reserved a site in Pisgah National Forest. It was my intention from the beginning to do as much Ninja-hobo camping as possible, tenting out someplace without being seen and leaving no trace. I had done plenty of it during test runs in NH, and it sure as hell fits the budget. Since I wasn't footing the bill, why not enjoy a campground with fire pits, showers and good company?
The camp ground was a great place cook, relax and sleep peacefully. The real value to me was in its proximity the BlueRidge Parkway and to the Weirdness Capitol of Western North Carolina: Asheville.
I wanted nothing more than to rip some loops on the BRP and the surrounding highways, but that back tire was hurting bad. I begrudgingly made the call to a local shop for them to order my new Pirrelli Angel GT, and scheduled the service. The Monster sulked and kept watch over the campsite, hobbled and anxious, while we went out on the town!
My early impression of Asheville was established by the first person I saw in town, and it turned out to be a pretty fair judgment. I dropped my Fellow Traveler off at the first of several yoga training seminars. They were the reason she was in the area in the first place, and with no bike, being able to borrow the car was pretty handy. It was actually a total downpour when I got into town, so I parked underneath an overpass to step out a bit. Before I had even fully parked the car, I was scrambling for my camera. Walking through the sheltered area of the overpass was the character who served as Ashville's ambassador... And his dog.
The dog was an oldish border collie, damp from the rain, but stepping sure-footed and confidently. He wore a backpack, at least the canine analog to a backpack. It probably contained at least one first aid kit, a flare gun, and various medals of bravery awarded to dogs that save cities. If you were some wussy pomeranian that had ever been carried inside a purse, you could never make eye contact with this dog. If you were a puppy, you would have a poster of this badass border collie on your wall which you would stare at and think, "Someday, I'll be just like him..." His tail did not wag. His tongue did not hang from a panting mouth. His eyes did not dart from car, to squirrel, to bird, back to car as so many dogs' would. He looked at precisely what required inspection, and nothing more. He was the Champion Badass of all dogs, and he knew it. He stood stoically next to a man that could not fairly be called his owner, as a dog of his status can be "owned" by no man.
The man assessed the rain with a keen eye as they both dried off. It seemed not to be the first rainstorm he had been caught in. "...And it won't be the last," he seemed to be thinking, not giving a shit. In his position, the average person may worry about stepping in puddles or ruining their fancy hairdo. The rain only made his dreadlocks look more feral. The grimy puddles only made his bare feet tougher. Like his furry traveling companion, he had a backpack as well. It looked like it had been looted off of a German shock trooper in a trench during WWI. Unlike the dog's backpack, I did not have to guess at its contents.
Protruding from the bag was an assortment of wooden flutes. I imagined that one of two of them had been carved by an Amazonian shaman. Perhaps some were entrusted to him by a monk in a Himalayan mountain temple. Another was surely smudged ceremoniously by an Aboriginal tribal elder. They were all slung together over his shoulder in a way that facilitated a quick draw should the need arise.
Together they stood; the Uncrowned King of Dogs and Flute Ninja. In any other place in the world, they would strike you as utterly absurd. Well, it turns out, Asheville isn't like anyplace else in the world. They were right at home.
I could go on and on about this city. The culture, the architecture, the food... I've got too much for a blog post, so your choices are to wait until my book is published (filthy-rich investors wanted!) or to go there yourself. That being said, if I had to pick one feature of what makes Asheville the town that it is, it's a no-brainer: the music!
Genuinely "Weird" towns like this tend to attract younger people... Or maybe a youthful crowd just weirds-up the place, but either way, the demographic of the city in comparison to the musical landscape caught me by surprise. Why would all these hip young people be walking around in Olde-tyme clothes rocking banjos and washboards? It wasn't until I factored geography into the equation that things started to make sense to me. Bluegrass music was never something I never had much exposure to in the northeast, but it is still embraced whole-heartedly in Appalachia. In fact, I only continue to show my ignorance when I say they "still" love Bluegrass around here. It is, and has always been, the music of these mountains.
During my time in the region, I developed a real respect for it. The nature of a melting-pot nation that is only 238 years old means that much of what we think of as iconically American is an amalgamation of immigrant cultures. If I were a pretentious music aficionado, I would remind you that it does supposedly have roots in British music, but fuck that. I have ears. The voice of Bluegrass seemed to speak only of the mountains all around me and the people that lived there.
On every streetcorner, at any hour, there was music. Sometimes it was a five or six-piece band with washboard, fiddles (often more than one), and banjo, with any or all of them accompanying a lead vocalist with rich harmonies, hoots and hollers. Around the corner would be a young kid with a drum set, giving a 10 minute, Neil Peart style solo. Across the street, in front of a bookstore and Cafe was a very serene man bewitching passers-by with some sort of convex steel drum that I had never seen before. When I heard the bagpipes, I had an isolated moment of weakness. Hearing the sound of my people so unexpectedly, my heart ached briefly for Boston. I dropped two bucks in his tip jar knowing that my soft heart had just cost me a cup of coffee.
The divisions between music, art and dance are not important in Asheville. This was embodied succinctly in bronze statutes just a block over from my favorite bookshop. A dancing couple, a little girl whirling and laughing and a trio of musicians all frozen in time. The statues were planted on the brick sidewalk, forcing you to walk directly through them. When you are approach the figures, you realize their scale is a perfect one-to-one. Music, art and dance. Standing among them, those all just seem to be different words for the same thing.
I haunted Asheville day after day, every time discovering a new wonder to behold, among them, the strongest and therfore best iced coffee in the world. One morning I received a call from the motorcycle shop; my tire was in. In no time, I got the Monster outfitted with some new rubber. My thoughts and my motorcycle turned toward the Blue Ridge Parkway. That tire wasn't going to burn itself. It was during one of the many trips up into the mountains that ensued over the next several days, I met someone who I will always know as Yosemite Sam.
I was on my way back to camp, but I had not yet descended from the ridge. I was enjoying one last view East from a scenic overlook before I bowed out for the day. There seemed to be storm brewing, and I had left my rain gear back at camp. My eyes traced the horizon to South, when I heard what sounded like a high performance engine coming in hot. I heard him downshift just before he rounded the corner and pulled into the lookout point. His car was a black Mercedes, later model, maybe a C63. If you're not familiar, it's pretty slick. I'm not a big car guy, so it takes a bit more than that for me to gawk. I sat on the edge of the retaining wall and went back to my inspection of the mountains. I was born with one of those faces that looks like I am brooding even though in my head I may be reciting the Holy Hand Grenade bit from Monty Python, so what happened next took my be surprise.
"Golly! Hell of a view, ain't it!" It was him, of course. He had gotten out of his car, and as he walked my way, I got to appreciate his style fully. He wore a filthy, brown cowboy hat with two white feathers tucked into a braided, leather hat band. He had a reddish-grey beard and matching ponytail. Teeshirt and jeans, both loose and dirty. He topped off his ensemble with a $300 pair of Oakley sunglasses and he clip-clopped bowleggedly toward me in a pair of cowboy boots that probably cost double that.
"You goan hit some rain, boy! I just come up through Black Mountain and I tell you what, it weren't pretty!" I responded only with one of my patented slow-blinks. Usually I use them to express condescending boredom, but this was delivered slack jawed; genuine dumbstruck moment for me. "Yeah, boy! I just heered em on the radio talkin quarter-sized hail! Quarter-sized hail?! That's like... THIS BIG!" He held up his thumb and forefinger, describing the size of a quarter.
Slow-blink.
"You see all that down'ere?" he pointed down the wall I was sitting on at a large bramble of bushes and vines. "They had me comin up here three weeks in a row tryna get rid of her! They said to me, 'Thatch'ere's poison oak, you better be careful,' and I told em 'I... don't... GIT poison oak,' but they din believe me! But I come up'ere, cut 'er back, she keep a-climbin. Cut 'er back, she keep a-climbin. Finally, I went down'ere with a bottle 'o bleach and that got 'er!" He laughed hysterically. By this point, I had regained control of my tongue and realizing how much entertainment there was to be had, I coaxed him into regaling me with stories, one after another, of everything from his car breaking down, to local politicians, to the funny weather in the mountains. It was glorious. I've met nobody JUST like Yosemite Sam, but I have met a few people cut from the same cloth. They all just want to talk, to be heard and on some level I think they want to be remembered. Days later, down in Asheville, I happened upon an open drum circle. I watched strangers playing together with big grins while others descended into the square just to dance. I watched the surging crowd when I saw a filthy, feathered cowboy hat bouncing up and down. It was Yosemite Sam. He stomped and whirled. He hooted and clapped his hands. As I watched him, I thought of one of the last things he had said up on the mountain.
"Yep, you goan hit that rain, for sure. But the weather up'ere can be funny. Might be pourin down, but don'tchu worry. Ten minutes later, it'll come a-shinin."
At the time, I thought he was talking about the weather...
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My time in Asheville had come to an end. The Monster was chomping at the bit to tear up some new roads. My Fellow Traveler and I would be diverging, and I would be back to being John Solo. Next up was South Carolina and Savannah Georgia, a campsite ten feet from a Florida swamp and the Fourth of July in Jacksonville, all leading up to my first major milestone, Florida's Gulf coast! Keep an eye out for my next entry and if you enjoyed reading, share it!
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