And so the Kudzu might take over the world…

September 13, 2008

When vacationers need a break from vacationing, they go to Natchez Trace State Park in Tennessee. Or, at least, that’s where we went. The campground was practically empty and was just the thing we needed after all the grit and noise of the city.

 

The first day was so hot that all we did was sleep. It was too hot in the tent, so we laid out some blankets. Sorry about the naked, sweaty hobo. We don’t how he got in there.

That night, it cooled down significantly and rained pretty hard. Too bad we had gone to sleep without the cover on our tent. Andy bravely went outside and put it on. In the morning, it felt good to sit by the fire and there was plenty of firewood around as the storm had knocked huge branches out of the trees. We spent the first two days doing almost nothing, save for making a trip out of the park into the real world to buy a few supplies at a local Wal-Mart. We bought some camp chairs — a major upgrade from the blankets — a camp axe, and plenty of s’more ingredients.

 

On our way into the park, we had noticed that they offered guided horseback rides. So, on our third day, we made a reservation. Caitlin rode the darker horse. She was named Sally, had a free spirit, and pooped a lot. The other horse in the picture belonged to our guide, who was named Brenda.

Caitlin had to constantly make sure that Sally wasn’t eating the wild plants along the path. Andy rode behind Caitlin and got to see Sally do all that pooping.

Our guide, Brenda. We asked her how she got into managing a horseback riding company and she told us her life story. When she found out her husband had cheated on her (“And he’d cheated on me four years before that and hadn’t thought to tell me about that, either.”) she took a trip with her children to Natchez Trace and went for a horseback ride. Her horse got spooked by something and she fell off when it ran off into the woods. She struck up a friendship with the manager, who was more afraid of being sued than anything, and she was eventually offered the job of managing the company. She’s happy now and attributes it all to the grace of God. If we were telling the story, we might not have told two complete strangers about our spouses’ infidelity, but that’s just us.

Andy on his horse, Babe. Babe was old and liked to get right up in Sally be-hind.

 

Brenda’s dog, Patches, liked to run in between the horses’ legs and go ahead to explore the woods. This dog is probably the happiest dog in the world.

 

This being Caitlin’s first time horseback riding, she was only just discovering her love for the giant animals.  And just like that, Andy suddenly found himself owning a horse. Or at least the prospect seemed very real with all those questions Caitlin was asking. The princess wanted to know about the going rate for horses these days, the price of keeping them, the best kind to have, how to go about getting one. As it turns out, they’re pretty affordable.  Such a shame the economy is in the crapper or we could be saving some serious gas money.

 

Saying goodbye to the gang.

We discovered a family of stray dogs living in the parking lot of the park’s chapel. Caitlin attempted to tame them and it seemed to be working until a group of kids on bikes came by and made the dogs nervous.

We came back the next day tried to win them over with hotdogs. The puppies were an interesting mix of the mama basset hound on the left and the papa quasi-Jack Russell on her right. There were four puppies, and they appeared to be the only ones left from three different litters.

 

Try as we might, they wouldn’t get very close to us. But they sure loved our hotdogs. We felt a little better when we realized that somebody must bring them kibbles from time to time, as there were empty trays on the ground in a picnic area where they slept. Poor puppies.

 

All the fallen wood in the world isn’t any good if people from other parts of the park come into your campground and take it all away. On our third night, we put the camp axe to use and collected some wood from the side of the road. There’s nothing manlier than the chopping wood and roping it to a car. If only Andy’s hands were manly enough to not get so blistered.

 

We’d seen a skunk on our second night, and while we were sleeping a couple of mystery animals came galloping right through our campsite. They sounded huge so we yelled and scared them away but, on our third night, we realized it must have been this little scamp and a friend. While we cooked s’mores, we could hear him creeping around just outside of the firelight. Andy cooked up a hotdog and put it on a stick. We left it out all night as bait, right outside of our tent and waited for the raccoon to come back. Eventually, we went to sleep and figured we would hear him when he jumped for the hotdog. In the morning, both the hotdog and stick were gone without a trace. We should have left a snare. He would have made a fine hat.

 

Here is the infamous kudzu. It’s a Japanese vine that helps stop erosion, and they introduced it to the park years ago. Not only did it cover up the bare soil, but it engulfed everything else. In some parts of the park, the kudzu goes back into the forest as far as the eye can see making everything look like some sort of Edward Scissorhands garden.

Apparently, there’s a beetle that controls the spread of the kudzu in Japan, but it has no natural predator here. They could introduce the beetle here, as well, but then they’d have to introduce whatever eats the beetle and that’s not a particularly good cycle to start.

 

The best part of our stay at Natchez Trace was our campground host. He was an old man who drove around all day on a golf cart making sure everyone had paid up. We’d have a long conversation with him every time we paid for another day and he’d tell his stories in a southern drawl with a big wad of chew in his cheek. In his younger days, he’d traveled the country like us, only he used a camper. We asked him how he’d wound up being a campground host and, like Brenda, he somehow felt comfortable opening up to two complete strangers. He’d worked at the Ford glass factory in Nashville until they forced him to retire, and shortly after that he stayed at Natchez Trace with his current wife (he met her after his first wife walked out on him — “Didn’t bother me none. I didn’t like her, neither.”) while they were in the area helping his brother-in-law get to a circulatory system specialist. You see, the brother-in-law’s had bad circulation in his legs and his doctor wanted to amputate. While our host and his wife were camping in Natchez Trace, they were offered the job of campground host and they took it because the lifestyle was easy on his wife, who was slowly losing her mind. You see, her first husband, a Vietnam veteran, had shot himself in the face and one of her children had died during childhood. Wow.

Before we left, we made sure to ask his name.

“Well, here’s this,” he said. “You’ve heard the name ‘Pornor’ before, right?” We had not, but nodded. “Now, that’s my last name. I don’t know where my mother got it, but she gave me ‘Gayron’ as my first name.”

His name was Gayron Pornor. What do you think the kids called him in middle school?

After four nights of the simple life, the open road called and we headed out. We left Gayron, Brenda, Sally, Babe, Patches, the church dogs, and those tricksy raccoons behind. Oh, memories.

Next time on The All-American Swashbuckling Wanderlust Romp in F Sharp: Country music can really grow on ya.