Homesteads

A friend and I spent yesterday wandering the shore and woods surrounding Center Hill Lake. We’d come across an old map of the area and wanted to see if we could find a couple of landmarks. A good excuse as any for getting out and about in the brisk November weather.

The lake was created by the Army Corp. of Engineers back in the late 1940s/early 50s’s with the construction of Center Hill Dam across the Caney Fork River. The dam stopped the water of the river and its tributaries— forcing all who had lived along their banks to relocate to higher ground.

We never made it to our destination; even the best map is a poor indication of the rigors of the hike, through gulleys and brambles, up bluffs and around mud.

In the course of our ramblings, though, we came across the tell tale signs of a few abandoned homesteads. Up one branch, the water level had retreated to winter lows, revealing the fallen chimney and rock foundations of someone’s dreams. In the thicket woods we traced an old wagon road to remnants of another chimney, a mountain spring beneath a moss carpet nearby. Further on, down another hill, a rectangular limestone wall encircling a rich patch of bottom was all that suggested here was home, long ago.

In passing, we briefly wondered what life must have been like there, way back when, and moved on.

I always think about places like these after the hike, and wished I’d spent just a little more time there. For I may never pass that way again, and there’s something I might have missed.