Escaping COVID-19 at Whitetail Pines

It's the 2020 Pandemic, Terri and I are a couple of weeks into the no travel order and the walls of our house in Clarksville are closing in.  We decided to escape to our hunting cabin called White Pines near the Tennessee River.   Which is exactly 50 miles from our front door.  Here we can socially isolate and have space to roam.  Although it is only 36 acres it lies within a gated community of roughly 6000 undeveloped acres.

I have a lot of annual maintenance to catch up on.  Terri has some sewing projects to work on.  There are a number of things that I have been putting off, like hanging a screen door, cleaning water collection and diverter filters.   I have also developed a mouse problem in the cabin.  Sometimes when you build something the mistake doesn’t have consequences for a couple of years. I have to close up the openings below the two sinks in the cabin.  Recently they have become a mice playground.

So we decide to head to the hills for 5 days or so.    The daily drone of the pandemic news is much less apparent here.  No cable TV to flick through.  So the first couple of days is getting the cabin projects completed while Terri catches up on her English paper piecing quilt project. The world is passing by on the outside with little notice.  So now we can get out in the woods and do some walks.

Well, the day started out with a good breakfast. Then a walk in the woods to look for Mushrooms. No mushrooms but a good look at the woods in the spring. The wildflowers are in bloom and the muscadine vines are leafed out. Here we sit on a woodland bluff above the Tennessee River which has been damned about 70 miles to the north creating Kentucky Lake. Back at the cabin, we have some visitors, 5 big whitetail does. And of course, our 14-year-old cattle dog who rides now as much as he can.

So in a few days we will have to head home to catch up on things there.  Cut grass, get garden beds ready maybe get a local motorcycle ride in.   We are dreaming of the day when travel restrictions are lifted.  We are already making plans to get away and head west.  There are more roads to travel than there is life to live.  So I'm anxious to get started.