John Hurl (left) and Jorma Kaukonen sing and play while diners discover that pho is a great way to fend off freezing temperatures.
One of the many advantages to living in southeast Ohio is being neighbors with Jorma Kaukonen, the guitarist who fueled the musical explorations of Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna. He and his wife, Vanessa, created an oasis about 20 miles outside Athens that they’ve dubbed Fur Peace Ranch.
The ranch is mostly a guitar camp, which draws incredible guitarists to town to serve as instructors. This results in great shows at their intimate concert venue (a few hundred seats, at most). They also boast the Psylodelic Gallery, a collection of ’60s art and memorabilia that’s in silo.
But it’s their most recent endeavor that prompted me to jump in the car on a 10-degree day and drive out there: Pho Peace Ranch. Apparently, Jorma is a pho fanatic. Me too. On Wednesdays and Thursdays, the ranch offers chicken, beef or vegetable pho out of its kitchen. I had the beef. Lara the chicken. Great stuff. Even better: Jorma and the incredible John Hurl serenaded us during lunch.
As a side note, I was wearing my favorite Steelers Your Face hoodie, and Vanessa instantly booed me, just as she had when she spotted me wearing the hoodie during a show about a year ago. I assumed she was a hapless Browns fan, but she’s a Patriots fan. We talked football a bit during lunch, and she confided that Jorma roots for the Steelers.
Another reason to love this place.
Lara enjoys the chicken pho before Jorma and John start playing.
Map of the hike. Athens in in the lower left; Dow Lake/Strouds Run is right of the hike outline.
As the semester grinds down, I catch myself looking intently at any stand of trees I encounter. For 16 weeks, I’ve allowed my urge to hike, bike or kayak be suppressed by teaching duties. It’s bullshit, really. I could easily carve out time to spend in the woods during the semester. But I don’t, leaning on this convenient crutch to indulge my sloth.
And then it’s over. No bang. A few whimpers. Grades submitted. Crutch splintered. Time to go hiking.
The bridge over Cucumbertree Run on Rockhouse Trail
As Fall 2016 fell into the rearview mirror, I set off for Sells Park, a short drive from my house that I’d bike in warmer weather. From Sells, I can hit the Athens Trail and create several interesting little loops to get my hiking mojo back.
The Rockhouse Trail blaze
I headed out Rockhouse Trail to Turtlehead Cave, where I shot a few 360 photos, then picked up Athens Trail, Finger Rock Trail and Trace Trail to do a big loop around the ridge that slices between Athens’ east-side strip-mall hell and Dow Lake. It’s a wonderful contrast. Half the hike snakes above east Athens and all it has to offer — Walmart, Lowe’s, Kroger, McDonalds, a confederacy of cars and lots and lots of asphalt. The buzz of traffic on East State Street rises up into the leafless woods, tires squeal, and dogs bark in the buffer zone subdivision between my sylvan retreat and the chaos of East State.
Benz selfie on Rockhouse trail
The trail zags north, a dog threading its owner through rabbit-infested fields, until it turns north, following the ridgeline toward Dow Lake. It enters Strouds Run and gets quieter and quieter and … bird sounds. A random tumbling branch finding the leaf-strewn forest floor in a muffled snap. Solitude.
This is two separate hikes.
First, the urban hike, one of my favorites, wherein I get to smugly float above city sprawl. My life has been filled with variations on this hike. A bucolic stroll through Denver’s Washington Park, enjoying green space and lakes in the Mile High City. A romp with Ozzy through D.C.’s Rock Creek Park, a wonderful green knife that slices into the heart of the District. Commuter cycling along the daybreak arroyos of Albuquerque, watching dawn traffic on the Big I, pedaling cloudlike above it all, troubled only by potential encounters with the occasional passed-out homeless person strewn across the bike path.
Second is the remote ramble. Sometimes, I need to get farther from the exhaust and crush and cacophony of civilization. I retreat to Big South Fork, Mount Charleston, the Buckeye Trail. Or the second half of this hike.
Moss-covered boulders along Rockhouse Trail
The trick now will be to keep going. I always close the semester with an orgy of activity only to sink back into my day-to-day sloth. A head cold already is conspiring to lead me in that direction. But I’m determined to make the most of this intellectual cease-fire between semesters. Aside from my other goal: to finish off the wily, elusive Gravity’s Rainbow.
Here’s a 360 photo I shot at Turtlehead Cave:
Topo map of my hikeOne of the coolest things about hiking in and around Stroud’s Run is the informational signs along the way. i always stop to read them, even if I’ve already done so multiple times. This one is for Turtlehead Cave, a key sight along the Rockouse TrailThis sign is on a stretch of Trace Trail that I hadn’t hiked before. Love these informational signs.
Well. What happens when paranoid meets paranoid? A crossing of solipsisms. Clearly. The two patterns create a third: a moiré, a new world of flowing shadows, interferences. . . .
