We wintered over in Greenville, SC from November 2020 to March 2021.  We ducked, dodged and weaved through those months trying to avoid contact with Covid as it ravaged its way across South Carolina that winter.  Those months, before vaccinations were even in sight, raised our anxiety level to Defcon 4! We had two strategies to reduce anxiety but still enjoy ourselves:  Drive-by-Tourism and Getting Outside.  

Drive-By Tourism is where we drove by that famous fill-in-the-blank, waved at it, but did not go in because there were too many people without masks packed inside that building.  

Getting Outside was our second strategy.  

Greenville is surrounded by multiple state and civic parks and nature preserves, as well as a million waterfalls.  As we visited and then crossed the parks off our list, we found two things to be constant.   

The first constant we experienced was that the parks were by and large not very pretty.  Overused, littered and scraggly is how I would describe most of them.  It was rare for us to come across a trail that we thought was pretty.  I hate to say it because it makes me sound like a curmudgeon.  How can I not like a landscape?  Well, sometimes they just aren’t pretty.  Nature doesn’t always magically produce beauty.  To quote Emily Dickinson “Nature is sometimes caught without her diadem”.  I’ve also come to appreciate that I am more drawn and appreciate the beauty of certain types of landscapes.  It’s possible that the South Carolina hills and mountains just didn’t fall into one of those categories.  It’s also possible that that Covid winter was hard on the soul and the bareness of a winter landscape was not enough to fill us back up, refresh our souls.  On the other hand, the amount of litter and neglect was depressing.  I’m not sure I need to understand why, I can only say that we found most places profoundly disappointing. 

The Second Constant was our inability to get away from the hordes of people.  

We worked down a list of state and city parks hoping for a chance to get outside all by ourselves.  Unfortunately everyone else had the same idea.  No matter where we went we kept running into crowds.  Early in the morning, late in the afternoon, all the way to the top of a mountain; People everywhere!  We became so frustrated we devised strategies - early morning, between 1PM and 2:30,  before the 3PM parents and children run out of the house and pack the trails. We also began to go further and further afield, looking for that one park we might enjoy without sharing it with hundreds of other people.    

Determined to find a place where we would be ALL BY OURSELVES for a change, I chose a park at the very tip top top, top of a mountain.  According to the hiking book you could see everything and three states and it was grand.  Se we set out one cold Wednesday morning from Greenville, which is in a valley.  We followed a river valley for awhile and then we began to climb a very narrow road with extreme turns and what felt like a 90 degree climb.  More than once I thought we weren’t going to make it around a turn without having the tires go off the road.  Only one or two cars came down that road while we were going up. Our cell phones popped out of service.  It was quiet, it was remote, it was hard to get to.  OH BOY!  We were finally going to be all by ourselves and not have to worry about ducking and dodging other people.   Even though that climb was one of the scariest I have ever been on, we were secretly pleased to have finally found our own remote corner of South Carolina.  And then we turned the final tight curve and found about 20 cars parked randomly about the access points to various trails.  SHOOT!  Then we went further up to the top of the mountain and wouldn’t you know it, we found about 8 cars packed into the parking lot.  There were, believe it or not, large groups of people milling around.  

We just sat there in the car laughing at ourselves. We just could NOT get away from people.  Even at the tippety top of a mountain, in the middle of the week, in winter.  There was probably some existential, the universe is trying to tell us something, thing going on, but if there was we never understood the message.  

Lucky for us several cars packed up and drove off.  After we finished laughing we got all grumpy again.  When we got out of the car we only had a handful of people left to share the space with.  We kept muttering under our breath to them - move to the left, move to the right, move faster, get out of here!  They finally did leave and we FINALLY were alone - for about 15 minutes.  YOWZA.  

The top of the mountain, was indeed grand, absolutely splendid.  This particular site sits on a continental divide and there is a viewing platform with a line embedded in it to show the spot.  The 360 degree view was breathtaking.   We walked a bit, but it was quite steep and muddy.  We had a brief conversation about what kind of hiking boots all those people we passed must be wearing to be on those trails and then promptly forgot about it since we did not possess any such thing having shipped our winter hiking boots home due of the huge amount of space they occupied in our packed trunk.  We stood quietly in the winter sun thoroughly enjoying our moment of peace, until the next crowd, this time boisterous teenagers, walked up to disrupt the mood.  Then we packed ourselves up and drove down that scary mountain road, which was now crowded with all those other cars that had beat us to the top of the mountain that morning.  

We experienced this over and over, arriving on a weekday to find the park crowded to the max with kids and parents.  Apparently everyone had the same Getting Outside Strategy to deal with Covid weirdness.  It’s a good and wonderful thing that there were so many places for people to get outside.  We give both Greenville, the city and Greenville the county a lot of credit for providing numerous opportunities for people to get outside.  We found the best and most satisfying places to walk were not the state parks, but portions of the Swamp Rabbit Trail where the access points were in quieter neighborhoods with fewer people.  

We encourage people to get out, explore, find those waterfalls and then write us about your experiences.  Our time in Greenville occurred in the middle of a crisis and it may be unique.  It would be fun to compare and contemplate.