Trees Between Me and THEM

Cover photo by Jenny, looks like a Northern Red Oak. You can find it at the Rock Castle Gorge Trailhead, across from Rocky Knob Campground, Blue Ridge Parkway

I seek out campsites tucked into the trees. The ones with a little buffer between me and THEM. THEM being the other campers. I want a place to string lights and enough distance that I cannot hear somebody discussing breakfast plans at 6:15 in the morning.

At Rocky Knob Campground on the Blue Ridge Parkway this weekend, I had exactly that. The Road Toad teardrop was backed into the woods. With the hatch open, all I could see were trees and dog butts.

Photo caption: Shenandoah & Emma (Old Time Scotch Collies, in case you’re wondering) chilling in the Road Toad camper

Then the church group arrived. They were small on Thursday, and by Friday night, the group had doubled, then quadrupled in size. I didn’t mind that. The kids running around screaming were actually kinda sweet and probably kept the bears away (grin). But the adults didn't seem to know that burning green wood produced more smoke than fire, a lesson they failed to grasp repeatedly.

Photo caption: My beautiful wooded campsite, pre-smoke house. I co-own a Road Toad camper. It lives between 2 worlds: not a tent and not an RV.

My beautiful wooded nook became a smokehouse. It is astonishing how smoke can pollute an entire section of a campground. I packed up camp and moved. Against my will. To the RV section upwind.

Ugh. The land of generators populated by people who, as far as I could tell, spent more time IN their RVs than under trees. I, clearly, was superior to their kind. Never you mind that the Road Toad looked ridiculous among the behemoth RVs and Sprinter vans.

RV and van culture IS different from the camper butt-backed-into the woods tent and teardrop culture, but in some ways better than I knew.

RV and van people wander around the campground. They stop and ask about your rig, your dogs, where you're from. We brush up against politics occasionally, just enough to figure out what kind of ground we are standing on. Oh, we vote the same. Yay for our side! Or, oh shit, we don't. Then we pivot deft as dragonflies into safer airspace. Dogs. Campers. Weather. Roads. Places we have been. Places we still want to see. God, I love America and our great parks, we say, don’t you?

A wooded campsite with a buffer signals: this little space is mine. The trees, the distance, the way the camper is backed in, all of it creates a boundary. People respect it. They walk past, but they do not generally wander in and start talking to you.

The RV section flips that script. Everything faces the campground loop, laid bare. (You need curtains at night!) Campers are inherently curious about each other's rigs, where they've been, and what brought them out wandering in the first place. And the RV space offers a hundred little openings to step through for conversations that do not feel like an intrusion.

Nobody has to go looking for community. The campground makes room for it to happen.

Which is funny, because I spend a crazy amount of my life trying to build places that do much the same thing.

We talk about trails as places to walk, ride, exercise, get kids outside, protect land, and connect destinations. All true. But trails also create those little openings. You stop to ask about somebody's dog. Somebody asks where the trail goes. Kids tear past on bikes. Nobody has organized a community event. Nobody has filled out a registration form. Nobody has to agree on much of anything.

The trail gives people a reason to occupy the same little piece of the world for a while. Maybe that is part of what we are building, too. Not connection on command. Just places where connection has room and permission to happen.

On Saturday morning, I broke camp, said goodbye to the RVers and van people, and stopped by the host site to thank Jim and Patty. Then I headed home through ten miles of Blue Ridge fog toward Highway 58.

Somewhere along that road, I realized my OCD caregiver brain had gone quiet. Not completely. That would require pharmaceuticals or a head injury. But the constant worry had released.

I had gone to Rocky Knob Recreation Area thinking trees were the antidote. And they were, partly. But I also needed the camp wanderers. The dogs, the rigs, the weather, the roads, and the little conversations with people I may never see again.

I needed community, however temporary.

Maybe the best spaces don’t make us connect. They just make room for it.