Simple Pleasures in No Particular Order 

• Munching Cracker Jacks by a campfire.
• A National Forest campground picnic table, with its rugged texture, decorated with a potted flower.
• Going to a Broadway play, “Les Miserables”, with tickets that were a gift from someone who knows you love him.
•  Hearing the show melodies in the songs of the birds and the whispers of the wind in the forest canopy.
• Buying a map of _____acre Mt. Rogers National Recreation Area, part of the Jefferson National Forest, and getting thoroughly confused by the mismatch of route numbers with what you actually find while driving around.
• Following a gravel Forest Service road for hours, not certain that it is the road you planned to take.
• Hearing the haunting call of, I don’t know what, in the middle of the night, while curled up in a sleeping bag.  Do you get up to look for it in the dark, or do you remain motionless as the sound gets closer and then further away?
• Wishing, the next day, that you could imitate that call (Was it an owl?) so you could ask an expert.
• Playing Skipbo in the trailer in any campground anywhere.
• Hearing distant thunder in the mountains as it echoes through valleys, bends over hills, and filters though the trees, mixing in your senses with the sunbeams filtering at a different angle through the nearby trees.  You feel safe, because you know the storm is somewhere else.  You feel uncertain because you are in the mountains, and in an instant it can go from sunlight to dark clouds with lightning illuminating the sky, thunder that resonates in your chest, and rain so hard you can only see a few yards away. ----  Quick run for cover.
• Strumming a guitar in time with the campfire flames lapping around a seemingly unburnable log, that by morning will be turned to ash.
• Having a day with no agenda, and then getting in the car to drive around achieving it.
•  Building a log cabin fire, and as it burns morphing it into a teepee fire.
• A forest floor covered with ferns waving in and out of spots of sunlight, moved by a breeze too gentle to be felt by your skin.
• Suddenly making room in the car to provide a free ride for two young men who have been on the trail for ten days.  You are rewarded when you hear shouts of joy spout from their mouths when you deliver them to a pizza place.
• Walking in an Appalachian Mountain Bald, a high meadow.
• Watching fog drift between your nose and the windshield, as you sit in the car eating lunch with the windows down, on top of a mountain in the clouds.

                       -- Bob Kuhns