A battle once here...

Last Friday was the 169th anniversary of the Battle of Snows Hill. The Civil War skirmish took place along our road the morning of April 3, 1863, involved as many as several thousand troops. I’ve got a copy of the New York Times from later that month which has a front page headline and account of the battle.

The story is based on dispatches from a correspondent traveling with the Union Army of the Cumberland. As much an anecdotal account of the battle and its aftermath as the actual skirmish. Looking out at these hills, it’s hard to imagine soldiers racing through here. chased by minie and cannon balls.

Over the years I’ve done a lot of research on the battle, also combed the hills with a metal detector. Found shards of cannon balls, used and unused lead shot of every size and description, breastworks and fox holes. A friend once found a complete parrot shell that had hit the road embankment, drove into the dirt where its fuse was extinguished. When he found it it cracked open in half, exposing the grape shot and powder as if cut in half.

But i think the luckiest find was made by my son Marcus. He was 11 or 12, walking through the woods near our house, metal detector under arm, when he found a union boot spur sticking up out of ground.

Savage Gulf

Finally made it to the Savage Gulf, part of the South Cumberland Recreation Area, in Tennessee’s outstanding state park system. Been wanting to visit for years. Worth the trip, only about 45 miles away.

We visited the Stone Door end, took the Big Creek Rim and Laurel trails as a loop, after hiking through the Stone Door. Started down into the gulf but changed our minds, as it was already midday. Also took the short loop to Laurel Falls from the visitors center. Total hiked, about eight miles in a leisurely five hours.

Ranger station well set up with ample paved parking, bathrooms, sign in/map station and . Excellent free map of all trails and sites. Trail from there to first overlook paved. Get a nice view of the gulf.


Then the hike through the woods begins to Stone Door. That alone worth it, especially the climb up and down the many steps through the door. How many Indians, poneers and tourists have passed that way?

Word of caution to anyone with children venturing even this far. The Stone Door trail leads to first of many bluffs—cliffs might be a more apt description—with a straight drop off the edge into the gulf. Watch where you walk, and keep those kiddies close at hand.

From top of Stone Door the Big Creek Rim Trail begins. It’s a three mile amble through the woods, returning again and again the the natural rock outcroppings overlooking the gulf. Some
breathtaking views of woods, gulf, and trail far down below, the roar of the river cascades shouting up to you. Buzzards saunter in and out of view, gliding their thermals. Early spring out, so the gulf dotted with occasional splotches of maple reds and oranges and yellow greens of early blooming poplars.

Not crowded at all so we took a break from the trail on one of these bluffs, had the whole gulf to ourselves, just watch and listen and take it all in. Kings of all we surveyed.

Trail eventually leads to the Alum Gap campground, primitive campsites, permits required.

From there our loop back followed the Laurel Trail another three miles back to the Ranger station. An easy, uneventful walk, save for the stands of mountain laurel and patches of club moss breaking up the woods. Best for late April or May when the laurel is in all its glory.

We had a great time, and only touched all there is to see or hike at Savage Gulf. Next time we’ll visit the other end of the Gulf, at the Savage Ranger Station, and sample the trails there. Probably wait until fall, when the gulf runs with color.

An afternoon on the Millennium Trail

We spent Sunday afternoon hiking the CClayborn/Merritt Ridge Millennium trail at Edgar Evans State Park in DeKalb COunty. Total trail is supposed to be about 81/2 miles, we probably shaved a mile off in the four hours we hiked. It's a pretty easy walk most of the way, however the last 5 mile loop can get to be pretty strenuous.

This is the longest trail in the park and it begins with an easy realtively flat run of about half a mile or so. That leads to an old homestead sitting right at the edge of a finger of the lake. The homestead was likely situated there for the fresh water source no longer apparent.. All that remain are large limestone front and back steps, a pile of chimney rock, stone pillars which define the shape of the house, and the foundation of a spring house or root cellar. Another pile of chimney stone suggests a log cabin once stood about 500 feet away. On our way there Pete found an Indian game stone.

Anyway the trail is divided into two loops: the Clayborn loop about 2 1/2 miles long; and the Merrit Ridge loop another five -1/2 miles. The trails lead through through dense woods and cedar thickets as it climbs from holler toridge then down along the lake.. But most of the time you're in the ones. As you passhomesteads long abandoned like the one just described , now overgorwn with woods, you can't help but wonder what life must have been likeway back when....

I'd recommend this hike for the winter months. Nice views of the lake are surely blocked out when the trees are in full bloom.Winter, though, though you get a long view of the lake in several places

The Merritt Ridge Trail traces a peninsula as it juts out into the water.At its closest(about the halfway mark foir the hike) it'sa 70 foot drop to the water below. Nearby, there's a rocky shoreline and you can get right down to the water. ALong the way we paused at to take in the lakeview from atop the ridge..On our way down we marveled at the size of the rocks which were stacked fro a run of wall. Large square blocks of chart almost table size . From there the trail leads down the hill and into a cedar thicket.

The whole time hiking we only passed another group early on and saw only one boat on the water. The rest, the woods, trail and lake were entirely ours. In most places to trail is well-worn. Near the halfway point there's so much deadfall lying back and forth along the trail that I imagine in summertime you could lose your way. So always look ahead for the white metal strip markers s as you go along and you'll do fine.

If you've got a few hours and enjoy hiking this is a pretty easy walk. Just allow yourself enough time to explore the sites and woods and to take in the lake


Recommended.

A Friend and A Truck

A longtime friend of mine just moved on from these parts.... to the other side of the world, literally. We’d been tight 30-plus years, since we first wandered into here from opposite directions. At this writing, don’t really know if or when I’ll see him again. You learn with age nothing’s certain but the passage of time, and that’s limited.

Earlier in my life I might have saddened over such a departure but I’m older now and take all things in stride. In his case, he left as soon as his draining divorce was finalized. He needed to reinvent himself after a suffocating relationship. At least that’s how I see it: like so many in broken marriages he suffered real pain, at the same time loving that person and situation which was also the root of his grief. I did all a friend can do, listen and help talk him through some of the rougher spots.

At the beginning of our friendship we spent many miles and hours arguing our respective views of the world. The thing we most shared was a love of the outdoors, and constantly discovering its myriad fancies with long hikes through the countryside.
We were friends enough to agree to disagree on a whole range of issues, from politics to science to religion. I remember with a smile how he, a scientist, chided me once for allowing the possibility a perpetual motion machine could be built.

We had our last hike a few days before he left, on a large tract of nearby public land he had not visited before. Had he not left, we would have returned there again and again. We still may, if his journey points back this way.

In leaving, he shed this old life like a snake sheds its skin. In that complete break he wanted to make he gave me the truck which has served him so well for years. A little rusted and banged up but better than mine.

And to give someone a working truck in the country— I guess that’s as true a gesture of friendship as one can make.

Beyond their dreams....

I’m just back from watching the swearing in of our 44th president, Barack Obama. It’s a proud day for me as an American,. I also take some vicarious pride in this truly historic event for some long at rest in these Tennessee hills.

At the heart of our house is a one room log cabin once the home to a family of freed slaves. The cabin has an earlier history, reputed to have served as a toll house when the road outside our door was the main highway through the area. In my own research, though, the earliest deed I could find is for purchase of the this property by Stephen Sellars, colored a few years after the Civil War

I know from census records, before the war the same Stephen was slave to a Sellars family in the area, and that from 1870 onward, the Sellars family, with as many as seven children, made their home in this humble cabin. In fact, they named one of their daughters “America,” perhaps reflecting family pride in the country which struck their chains for freedom. On the hill near my office, within 100 yards of where I sit, there is an old black cemetery. Most gravestones are mere slate slabs set upright in the ground, but of the few carved with dates, several mark the birth of people born into slavery.


As I headed down the hill to vote for President Obama last November, I thought of all sleeping there, and what such a day and opportunity would have meant. Seated by those cabin walls watching our new President take his oath this morning my thoughts returned to them again, and all their years of suffering, endurance and hope had finally wrought., Here was a moment certainly beyond their dreams, but a dream fulfilled for all who recognize the basic dignity of all.


So in their memory, our flag proudly hangs today on the cabin wall they once recognized as home, to greet and remind wall who pass this way how far we’ve come as Americans.

That time of year...

The sun’s trying to break through today, a balmy but warm afternoon with the temperature pushing 70.

The past four days, fog lingered in the hills and hollers, day into night into day. Everything assumed an eeriness, the ever present suggestion of phantoms in the woods.

Just before that we had two days of relentless rain, seven inches or so, leading into an unpredicted snowfall of three inches, gone by afternoon.

Next, another blast of of cold to welcome winter’s arrival, and Christmas next week. Seems a little less Christmasy this year, with people worried about work and all.

The mantle in our living room, from from it’s early days as a one room cabin, holds the happy scars of hundreds of Christmas stockings from the past century and a half or so. Anxious little kids grown up and gone back home to their maker. It’s our place now, but the suggestions of their Christmas mornings hang about that space, adding as much of the holiday cheer as the garlands, decorations and lights now about the place.

Joe Brown,who was a child in the house during the depression, told how happy he was to get a n orange, some nuts and candy and a toy or two, and what great Christmases that made. When we bought the place and opened the attic, we found a marble pinball game he received from an older brother and wife who’d left home for the promise of better jobs away from here. He made my kids a model of the kind of home made plane, a few scraps of wood and rubber bands, he received another year.

He’s gone now, but his Christmas memories, they’re part of our house, too.

Fall's Harvest and Invasion

Fall is long and warm in the hills this year. Though some were predicting a dearth of colors, due to a prolonged dry spell in late summer, the season has again come on in all its glory. I’m looking out now at a landscape ablaze with reds and orange, yellows and fading greens.

What’s most noteworthy about this fall, however, is the bountiful harvest of nuts and fruits. The limbs of apple and pear trees in the area seem overburdened. I’ve never seen as many walnuts on the black walnut in our yard. I’ve already raked a full season’s worth and as many, if not more, still cling to the branches.

Theories run all directions on why this is so. Some say the bountiful harvest is nature’s way of protecting itself against a pending harsh winter. By spring we’ll know if there’s truth to that. The other notion holds the abundance of fruit and nuts is survival instinct at work in the forest. The drought of last year, its lingering effect and the prolonged dry period of this summer, have no doubt stressed the trees, Here in the ridge several long-standing hickories and oaks succumbed to the lack of water by late August. Under such conditions, proponents hold, trees go into overproduction of seeds as a way of ensuring their survival.

Whatever the case, the harvest is ours to enjoy. With the abundance of apples, a friend retrieved a borrowed cider mill from 12 years in storage, and hired my son. The novice cidermeisters spent a couple of days mashing and pressing bushels of apples into gallons of fresh juice. I’ve never tasted better, and have a bucket of apple mash fermenting in a half hearted attempt to make some jack.

They’ve had to shut down the cider mill for a while with arrival of what has become one of the autumns most unwelcome events: invasion of the Asian ladybugs. Now out in full force, buzzing clouds everywhere in the afternoon sun, leaving a trail of orange stench on windows and doors, and on your hands should you try to brush one off. Were just one to fall into the vat get pressed with the cider, they fear the batch would be ruined.

I read these ladybugs were first brought to the U.S. in a government effort to control aphids. But without any natural controls in place, the Asian variety proliferated, becoming a seasonal nuisance all the way north. That’s what I heard, anyway.....another well intended government cure.