Remembering the Barnes Girls, Part 2 of 2

There is one place in the Smokies, one obscure set of grave stones, that strikes me with a deep sadness, the sadness that comes with the death of children…

After about an hour on the trail that begins on the road to Ramsey Cascades, you will arrive at the saddest place in the Smokies: the Barnes graves. Some folks call this the Barnes Cemetery, and I suppose that’s technically true, but I can’t bring myself to call three small graves a cemetery. The entire gravesite consists of a small plot about 6’ x 6’, so it’s a tiny monument to human frailty in a vast ocean of ancient forests and mountains, not unlike the tiny speck called Earth floating in the midst of that vast expanse we call the Universe.

This sense of isolation is enhanced by the fact that it takes some effort to reach this spot – about an hour-long walk on an old trail. Just as a waterfall or vista is better if it requires some effort to reach, the impact of a lonely cemetery is magnified by sweat and distance. And, like most sites in the park, the more sweat and distance, the lonelier the destination will be. Death and loneliness are a powerful combination, and nowhere in the park is that more apparent than at the Barnes cemetery.

But the real impact of the Barnes cemetery is the names and dates on those three, small graves: Delia Lenora Barnes, Oct 25, 1897 – Dec 25, 1898; Julies Barnes, Dec 25, 1899 – Feb 7, 1901; Rosey Barnes, Aug 18, 1915 – Sept 17, 1922. Two fourteen month old girls, one seven year old girl. Being a guy with a precious, young granddaughter, that hits me pretty hard.

The Barnes Girls

This is one of those moments where an historically-informed, vivid imagination can help us to experience the sadness of the tragedy that hit the John and Isabelle Barnes family, perhaps the entire Greenbrier community, in the winters of 1898/9 and 1900/1. Maybe those two winters were no worse than any other, but for the Barnes they were devastating. The days and sleepless nights in December, 1898, nursing a sick child. The tears. The prayers. The loss. Then on Christmas Day one year later having the chance to start over with little Julies. It must have felt like a gift from God to give birth to a second child exactly one year after the death of their first. Merry Christmas! And then, the following winter, their family history was repeated, with a vengeance. Their second little girl, gone after fourteen months, just like the first. Imagine the fear and apprehension that must have accompanied their third pregnancy.

Local oral history says there were several more children and several death-free years after Julies. Perhaps John and Isabelle thought they had finally moved past their personal tragedy, or knowing the vagaries of life in the mountains, perhaps they knew better than to assume that their tragedies had come to an end. Then came 1922 and the death of seven year old Rosey. I’ve been told that she somehow became lost and died of exposure, perhaps in an early snow. If you read much Smoky Mountain history, that’s a scenario that has happened many times in the past 100+ years – farmers, herders, hunters, hikers, and children lost outdoors and dying of hypothermia in these dangerously beautiful mountains.

It’s the kind of thing that gets you to thinking about the brevity and meaning of life and our feeble efforts to be remembered by those who are yet to come – the same things that Solomon was thinking when he wrote “all is vanity, a chasing after the wind.” All of us will end up in graveyards marked with stones that will erode and that people will forget. These mountain cemeteries are full of stones that are so old and worn that no words are visible, the final, fitting remnants of lives lived quietly and unremarkably in a mountain cove.

It’s ironic that one of the simmering controversies arising from the creation of the national park has been providing adequate access to these cemeteries. Some Smoky Mountain families still resent the government intrusion that took their land and family cemeteries from them. And yet, knowing the way children and grandchildren move away to jobs in the city and lose their connection to the family homeplace, if the land had not been taken by the government and a national park created, these rocks and graves today might be covered by pavement, condos, and strip malls, and thus gone forever. Instead, the forced sacrifice by those mountain families has provided us all with the opportunity to put on our boots, walk to a quiet corner of the mountains, to imagine the lives and tragedies of those families… and to keep their memory alive.

Note: I recently (spring, 2013) made an unusual discovery... one of the Barnes girls is a boy! Julies is perhaps misspelled. Should be Jules or even Julius. I spoke to a Barnes descendant recently. Julies is a boy, born to John Barnes first wife. The other two are girls, born to John and his second wife. See my August 16, 2013 blog for the correction.

 

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On the dirt road in the Greenbrier section of the park, there’s a split in the road. Straight goes to the Porters Creek Trail; left goes to Ramsey Cascades Trail. Go left. Almost half a mile from this split, on the road that leads to Ramsey, there’s an obscure, but visible, trail that departs from the left side of the road. (The GPS coordinates are 35.70668, 83.37505.) This is the trail to the Barnes homesite; although, it is sometimes called the Cat Stairs trail because it actually passes through the Barnes homesite on its way up the western end of Greenbrier Pinnacle. Like many great sites in the park, the NPS pretends that the Barnes homesite doesn’t exist. It’s never mentioned in any of their tourist information, and the trail is not marked on any of their maps.

The hike from the road to the Barnes cemetery takes about an hour. For the first minute or two the trail parallels the road but quickly turns left, away from the road. For the next five or ten minutes the trail is obvious, paralleling old rock walls. (You should be headed north.) After 10 or 15 minutes from the start of this hike the trail crosses Bird Branch, a modest creek a mere five or six feet wide and usually only about ankle or calf deep. (It’s important to take special notice of this spot where the trail crosses Bird Branch, perhaps marking it with a bandana or pile of rocks or a GPS waypoint, because if you happen to get lost or bewildered, your exit strategy would be to walk downhill (south) back to this creek, and follow it downstream until you reach this spot, where you would leave the creek and rejoin the trail back to your car.)

The trail can get a bit hazy at this spot where you cross Bird Branch, so pay attention. When you cross the creek go straight uphill for about 10 yards. The trail will reappear and will bear right, paralleling the creek. If in doubt, keep this in mind: for the next 15 minutes the trail generally parallels Bird Branch, staying about 10 or 20 yards above and to the left of this creek as you walk upstream which is generally northeast. In other words, the creek will be below you and 10 or 20 yards to your right for the next 15 minutes.

About 15 minutes after you crossed Bird Branch, the worn path turns left away from Bird Branch. (This left turn can be hard to see because there’s actually a split in the trail. One fork goes straight and continues to parallel the creek. The left fork is the one you should take. There’s a small remnant of a wall or modest pile of rocks at this split.) If you’ll look carefully, you’ll see an X carved about eye level into a tree (a dying hemlock) just 10 or 20 feet up this trail to the left. (For the next 30 minutes you will follow this path which is usually very obvious, but does occasionally get a bit vague.) About five minutes after you turn left away from Bird Branch, you’ll join a different, smaller, unnamed creek. At this point you are about half way to the Barnes graves. You’ll follow this small creek up, so if the trail gets hazy, just keep following this creek’s small valley uphill. (This creek might be waterless in dry seasons. If so, just follow the creekbed where the water would have been.)

For the final 10 minutes of this hike, the trail heads to the right, away from this small creek. At this point in the hike the trail is well-worn and obvious, so when you notice the trail bear to the right away from the creekbed, follow the trail. It leads directly to the graves. The GPS location of the Barnes Cemetery is: 35.71828, 83.35930.

Beyond the graves, you can follow the trail a couple of minutes to the old homesite where a chimney still stands.
 

Note: This is a fairly tame adventure, but the trail does get hazy in a few places. Always bring a map and compass or, preferably, a GPS (and knowledge of how to use them). Always tell someone at home where you are going and when to expect you back. It’s best not to do this or any off-trail hike alone. When lost, two heads are usually better than one. For this particular hike, spring and summer are the best options because the trail is less likely to be hidden under several inches of freshly fallen leaves.

Exploring farther: If you look carefully, the trail continues from behind the chimney. It goes north to a spot on Copeland Divide where you can make a sharp right turn and follow this ridge up through the Cat Stairs to the top of Greenbrier Pinnacle. The GPS location of this sharp right turn is 35.7259, 83.3619. But beware, if you return by the same route you came up, the path down Copeland Divide through the Cat Stairs can be tricky. In short, it’s almost impossible to get lost when you go up a ridge. However, it’s very easy to get off course when you go down a ridge. (It’s the same reason – but in reverse – that it’s easy to get off track when you go up a creek, but not down.) If that doesn’t make sense, you probably haven’t done enough off-trail hiking to try the Cat Stairs section of this extended hike (unless you have a GPS that you can use to mark routes and waypoints).

By the way, there are other, harder, interesting routes among the cliffs on western face of Greenbrier Pinnacle.

For more info, you can contact me at gahoov55@icloud.com .

The Saddest Place in the Smokies (Part 1 of 2)

Because the Smoky Mountains have not only a natural history but a human history as well, there are occasional glimpses of common elements of human society: work and play, wealth and poverty, joy and sorrow, industry and subsistence, justice and injustice, life and death. This human side of these mountains can be observed in museums, old photographs, pioneer cabins, resort cabins, rock walls, railroad tracks, mine shafts, swimmin’ holes, school houses, and cemeteries.

In the broad sweep of history, there’s probably nothing sadder than the injustice perpetrated upon the Cherokee people by Andrew Jackson (with a lot of help from the state of Georgia, aggressive white settlers, and President Van Buren) in the 1830s. The Congressional record calls it the Indian Removal Act of 1830 which is coldly accurate but less poignant than its more familiar name: The Trail of Tears. And while we may be tempted to declare past generations guilty and our own innocent and enlightened, let us not forget that most of us live on land that was taken from the Cherokee. We are the prime beneficiaries of that past injustice and are, in a sense, guilty of dealing in stolen property.

To see this tragedy in our national park requires a solid understanding of regional history supplemented by a sharp imagination because there’s very little physical evidence of the Trail of Tears in the park simply because most of the Cherokee settlements and government internment camps were south and west of the park in today’s Nantahala and Cherokee National Forests. There are, however, rumors of a rocky overhang on the southern slopes of Clingmans Dome where Tsali and his family hid after killing a couple of soldiers who were transporting them down the Little Tennessee River under today’s Fontana Lake.

On a more personal, punch-you-in-the-gut level, there’s a lingering sorrow in the cemeteries that are scattered around the park. For instance, a one mile walk up Porters Creek Trail leads to a small cemetery in which one of the first grave stones you’ll encounter provides a stark reminder of the harshness of life without advanced medicine. It simply says: Mary Whaley, Born & Died, Aug 11, 1909. Far too many grave stones in rural communities of the early 1900s have a single date etched on their surface, accompanied by that hauntingly familiar phrase: “Born & Died.” The Smokies were no exception and because of their ruggedness may have been worse than most.

I suppose there’s no way of proving that one graveyard is sadder than the next. The grave stones of every cemetery are squares of a quilt that tells the story of an interwoven community in which the life and death of each member touched the hearts and lives of nearly everyone else in the cove. That closeness and connectedness which we associate with small, rural communities also created vulnerability. The death of a neighbor left a palpable void in the lives of those who remained, just as tearing a square from a quilt not only leaves a hole but also diminishes the loveliness of the pattern. Every Smokies cemetery tells a sad story.

And yet, there is one place in the Smokies, one obscure set of grave stones, that strikes me with a dull, repressed sadness. It’s the same feeling I get when I hear the low tones of violin music in a minor key, the feeling of some dark memory struggling – and once again failing – to make itself known. But in the case of this graveyard, it’s the sadness that accompanies the death of children.

The trail to this tiny cemetery begins on the road leading to Ramsey Cascades. For the first few minutes the trail is obvious, paralleling old rock walls, evidence of lives spent clearing fields and farming the land. Other evidence of human habitation is an occasional clump of daffodils, a holly bush, or an unnatural pile of rocks. After 10 or 15 minutes the trail joins Bird Branch, a modest creek which serves as the most significant natural landmark on this hike.

About 30 minutes into this hike the worn path turns left away from Bird Branch and crosses a low ridge to join a tiny, unnamed creek that my partners and I call Barnes Branch. The path sticks with this small creekbed for about 20 minutes before turning away to make its final, brief ascent to the old Barnes homesite and the graves of three young girls. [To be continued]

Three Generations of Hikers, Part 2 of 2

After hiking up Parton Peaks, defiling a Crimson Tide hat on the trail, and climbing up rocks and through bushes, we encountered a group of folks relaxing at Myrtle Point on Mount LeConte. Greg, Keith, and his son, Matt, arrived first. When I emerged from the bushes several minutes later, everyone turned and looked. After a brief pause, the young lady of the tourist group smiled and said, “So, are you three generations of hikers?”

It took exactly two seconds for the weight of that statement to sink in. I hung my head in dejection as Keith and Greg exploded into laughter. The fact that this woman thought I might be Keith’s (or Greg’s) father and Matt’s grandfather was, of course, depressing. The fact that she made this comment in front of them was nearly fatal. I get enough verbal abuse from them on a good day, even on the Sabbath! This “three generations” comment would provide them with enough material to last well into my retirement years. If I knew how to enroll in a witness protection program, I’d do it, just to get a breather.

I considered telling everyone at Myrtle that her “three generations” comment was a lot like the time I asked a woman when her baby was due… only to discover that she wasn’t pregnant. A well-meaning comment gone bad. But then I had a brilliant idea: don’t tell them the story. Just walk up to the lady and ask when her baby was due. I thought everyone would get the joke. So I said it… and everyone got it… except her.

She hesitated. I saw the hesitation. I started to explain that I was just kidding, but of course it all got lost amidst the laughter and chatter from Greg and Keith. (Once they get started, they are as loud and annoying as a tree full of starlings.) I came across as a mean, old man with a sharp tongue, which of course can’t possibly be true but would give Keith and Greg even more ammunition for future tauntings.

Eventually, Keith – extracting every bit of humor and humiliation as possible from this scene – spoke confidentially to the woman, but in a voice loud enough for all to hear: “I want to apologize for the old guy. You had no way of knowing that he’ll snap over the slightest offense. His filters don’t work like they should. It happens all the time. Of course, we’re used to it, but that doesn’t excuse his behavior….”

Naturally, the lady didn’t know that Keith was just wringing the last bit of blood from my wounded psyche, so she apologized: “No, no. It was my fault. I drew first blood!”

I wanted to explain to her that I had been kidding, that Keith was kidding, that I knew she wasn’t pregnant, that we are all nice, normal people. But why bother? The damage was done. With a little luck we’d all never see each other again. So, just like Vietnam, I declared victory, cut my losses, and evacuated the premises.

I guess the moral of the story is… well, I don’t know if there is a moral. Maybe it’s “Don’t go hiking.” But if you do go hiking, don’t end your trip where you’ll encounter tourists you don’t know. But if you do encounter any, don’t talk to them. But if you do talk to them, don’t try to be funny. But if you do try to be funny, well… you’ve been warned, and whatever happens is your own stinkin’ fault.

As we were leaving our tourist friends at Myrtle Point, Keith was wishing them well and happened to ask where they were from. Their answer: Birmingham. As in, Birmingham, Alabama. As in, the Alabama Crimson Tide.

We were nearly back to the car before we realized that the defiled Crimson Tide hat by the side of the trail probably belonged to one of them. I wondered aloud if anyone would think less of me if I admitted that deep down in the dark corners of my conscience, I hoped the hat belonged to the young lady.

Keith and Greg’s response was blunt and immediate: “Well, Grampy…” (yes, they’ve started calling me Grampy) “…there’s nothing you could possibly do to make us think less of you.”

I don’t think they meant it as a compliment.

Three Generations of Hikers (Part 1 of 2)

Not long ago I visited an unnamed ridge and peaks with Keith Oakes, his son Matt, and Greg Harrell. Our route took us a little over a mile up Alum Cave Trail to Arch Rock, a neat spot where the trail passes through a modest “tunnel” in the rock. At this point, we hopped off the trail and wove our way up the ridge that actually ends at Arch Rock. Within a few minutes we were doing our usual off-trail ridge routine: pushing through and under the shrubs and vines. The shrubs are mostly Rosebay Rhododendron, the large-leaved, white-flowered species that is common in all the creek valleys and low slopes in the Southern Appalachians. The vines are mostly Greenbrier (Smilax), thin green vines that look delicate but are about as strong as steel cable, with the added feature of thorns. It’s a brutal combination that you can’t just fight your way through. You have to dodge and weave, tip-toeing and high-stepping to avoid any unpleasant encounters.


About an hour above Arch Rock the terrain opened up and we emerged from the thick forest, shrubs, and vines into the open daylight of small heath-and-rock patches where the Rhododendron changed from Rosebay to Catawba and Carolina and the ground changed from dirt to exposed rock and Sand Myrtle. We walked along the heathy ridgecrest to the first of two open, round, rocky peaks called Parton Peaks, in honor of Dolly Parton. Those aren’t the official names, but that’s what some people call them. Ironically, they aren’t the biggest peaks in the park, but they are… what’s a good word here…? Prominent.

Nothing overly dramatic happened on this trip, just a nice, autumn day with great views and some scrambling up some steep spots. All in all, it was a typical day on an exposed, trail-less ridge. Officially trail-less, I mean. On these ridges there’s usually a bear trail for us to follow. We’ve never actually encountered a bear on these paths, but we have seen plenty of evidence – large, brown piles, usually cluttered with whatever berry or nut is in season.

Several hours later we reached the Boulevard near the east end of Mount LeConte. As we ambled up the trail to LeConte, we came across an Alabama Crimson Tide hat by the side of the trail. I started to pick it up because a bald guy can always use another hat, but one of us who is a rabid UT fan – I won’t name any names – decided that the hat should be properly desecrated. So he desecrated it in a thoroughly disgusting fashion. (Note: The next Saturday, Alabama beat UT 12 to 10, thanks to two blocked field goals. Payback, I think.)

From the point of defilement we walked to a spot somewhere below Myrtle Point, LeConte’s dramatic, eastern overlook where hundreds of hikers watch the sun rise each year. We hopped off the trail one more time and pushed our way through bushes and up a few more rocks and emerged from the tangle to the exposed rock of Myrtle Point. And our timing was perfect – there were six folks sitting there when we arrived. (It’s good for our egos whenever we emerge from the bushes to the stares of skeptical onlookers. Their first question is always: “Where did you come from?” That’s the only invitation we need to begin the tale of our most recent exploits. I’m sure we tell them more than they want to know, but hey, it’s their own fault for asking.)

Greg was the first of our party to arrive at Myrtle, and he was already describing our route when Keith and his son, Matt, arrived to join the conversation. Several minutes later, I emerged panting and sweating from the bushes. I guess none of the tourists were expecting a fourth guy to show up because when I made my entrance, everyone turned and looked. After a brief pause, the young lady of the tourist group smiled and said, “So, are you three generations of hikers?”

It took exactly two seconds for the meaning of that statement to sink in. [To be continued]

Outsmarting the Master

Tim Landefeld, Keith Oakes, and I stood huddled around the old man, waiting for his latest pronouncement. The old flyshop owner looked around to make sure no one was eavesdropping and then whispered, “There are a few Drakes showing up on the East Prong.” He looked around again, leaned even closer, and said in a barely audible voice, “It’s about to get cosmic.” Then he slowly backed away so as not to attract attention, as if he’d just revealed a valuable state secret and would now be hunted down by the CIA. (Dick Cheney is a fly fisherman, so it could happen.)

For many years, if the flyshop owner told us to go to the East, we’d go dutifully to the East Prong of this fine trout river. We knew that the Drake Mayflies typically would hatch first on the West Prong for a few days before their hatch moved to the East Prong, and finally after a week or two to the Main Prong. If the fishing would be cosmic on the East, then that’s where we wanted to be. Standing right in the middle of cosmic is every fisherman’s dream.

The problem was that we’d usually get skunked, or close to it. The main bugs would be mosquitos, not Drakes. We’d have plenty of bites – mosquito, not trout. Definitely not cosmic, unless you are a bat.

Given fly fishing’s legacy of secrecy, I suppose I can’t blame the flyshop owner for misleading us. After all, he has a staff of river guides who take paying customers out to the river to catch big trout. His guides go to the hotspots, the places where the mayflies are hatching prolifically and the fish are feeding recklessly. I can’t really blame him for saving the best water for his guys. On the other hand, my buddies and I have spent a few dollars buying flies and other equipment from him, so he does owe us at least one or two small favors.

All that changed last year when he told us to go to the East, but for some reason we went to the West Prong and saw millions of hatching mayflies and caught some good fish. At that moment we finally understood what he’d been doing all these years. He’d been using us as his unwitting scouts. He’d send us not to the spot where it was cosmic, but to the place where it was about to be cosmic. If we came back with a report of lots of bugs and fish, he’d know where to send his guides and clients the next day. If we came back with tales of failure, he’d know that it still wasn’t cosmic on the East Prong yet, and he’d keep his guides on the West.

Clever, very clever. He’d been playing us like a fiddle – a stupid, naïve fiddle. But this past year we discovered a flaw in his plan, a weakness to be exploited. We found a way to outwit the wily master. The secret is his sign by the road.

During the hatch of the Sulfur Mayflies, the sign displayed some poem like: “Fish with Yellow if you’re a wise fellow.” But as soon as the Brown Drake (a larger, higher-status mayfly) hatch began on the West Prong, he’d change his sign to read: “Fish with Drakes for Heaven’s sake.”

The sign! The sign is the answer! It’s the clue that was out in the open, right under our noses, so obvious that we didn’t notice it. So, now we simply ask around to find out when, exactly when, the sign changed from Sulfurs to Drakes. If it’s been within the past 3 or 4 days, then we fish the West Prong because the Drake hatch would still be in its early stages. If the sign changed to Drakes about a week ago, we fish the East, but at the first rumors of Drakes on the Main Prong we’ll move there.

To tell you the truth, we still need to test this strategy a few more years to work out the kinks, but I think we are well on our way to successfully outwitting the flyshop owner. He’ll have to entice other, less-experienced anglers into become his unwitting accomplices. Keith, Tim, and I have unlocked the mystery. We have outsmarted the old master.

But if our new plan doesn’t work, we’ve decided that we’ll just hide in the bushes by the flyshop and follow the guides to the river. Desperate times require desperate measures.

The Low Rhody and The High Rhody (Part 2 of 2)

[In August, 2009, a hiker got lost and was eventually found several days later on the crest of Porters Mountain. This story recounts a bushwhacking trip to Porters Mountain in May, 2008. As you’ll see, I won’t write another story about Porters Mountain because I have no intention of ever going there again.]

The Greenbrier section of the Smoky Mountains is a good place for off-trail exploring. So, in a futile attempt to prove our manhood, Greg Harrell and I spent about six hours on Porters Mountain, pushing our way through rhododendron, mountain laurel, saw briers, sand myrtle, cliffs, boulders, and blowdowns.

Once we reached the crest, we’d occasionally encounter a long, narrow heath bald covered in mountain laurel, Catawba rhododendron, and sand myrtle. The month was late May, so the rhody was starting to show its purple blooms, but the real star of the show was the sand myrtle – a low growing, thick shrub covered in clumps of delicate, white flowers. Those heath bald moments were magnificent and made the dirty, sweaty bushwhacking worth the trouble; although a bit less bush whacking and a bit more heath balding would have been fine with me.

I had once read about an off-trail hike where one of the guys was actually hiking on top of the mountain laurel and rhody bushes while his partner was on the ground below him. To be honest, that didn’t make sense to me, and I couldn’t quite visualize it.

Until it happened to us.

The bushes were so thick and tangled that it was impossible to push our way through. We found ourselves crawling and slithering our way under the branches, which ain’t easy. Occasionally there would be a tiny gap in the brush, just enough to let us stand up to stretch our backs, and to enjoy the vertical dimension for a moment, hoping to see a gap in the branches a few feet ahead. It was at one of these points that I tried to step over a branch rather than crawl under it. I just instinctively put my foot on a branch that was two or three feet off the ground. Suddenly I was several feet off the ground, standing on a rhody branch. As I prepared to step back to the ground, I noticed that there was another branch at about the same level a few feet away; so I stepped on it. And then I stepped again, and again, and again. I suddenly found myself walking on the rhody instead of crawling underneath. At several points I was a few feet above Greg, looking down on him as he crawled below me. He was travelling on dirt and leaves. I was travelling on branches. It wasn’t something we consciously attempted; it just happened as we each looked for a path of least resistance.

Walking on rhododendron is not an ideal method of hiking. It’s not necessarily faster or easier than crawling on your belly (rhody branches are slick when dry and slicker when wet). It’s really just a change of pace, a respite from the monotony of crawling underneath and being able to see only a few feet in front of you. Crawling through and under rhody is like walking in the dark – you can’t see the route ahead, you just keep going until you run into a wall. Walking on top of the branches is like walking in the dark, using a cigarette lighter for light. You can see a little more, but it doesn’t change the fact that the wall is still there blocking your path.

About seven hours after we left my truck at the trailhead, we reached the Appalachian Trail near Porters Gap. That’s mostly a good thing, except for the fact that we’d been out over seven hours and were only about halfway finished. As we sat on a log on the AT, I told Greg that this was a great trip, I was glad we were doing it, but I was exhausted and wouldn’t do it again.

I once heard a veteran of World War Two say that the war was hell, he wouldn’t wish it on anyone, he’d never want to do it again – but he wouldn’t have missed it for anything. Yeah, some things are once-in-a-lifetime experiences because you’ll never have the chance to do them again, while others – like Porters Mountain and war – are once-in-a-lifetime because you are glad you did them, but once is enough.

Within 48 hours, Greg was talking about when we should do it again. That was well over a year ago, and I still haven’t given him an answer.

Beaten and Bruised on Porters Mountain (Part 1 of 2)

[In August, 2009, an old, experienced hiker got lost and was eventually found several days later on the crest of Porters Mountain. It wasn’t me, but it could have been.]

Looking at the scratches and bruises on my arms and head, the lady asked, “Tell me again why you think that’s fun.” I couldn’t really explain why I enjoyed our hike up Porters Mountain in the Greenbrier section of the Smoky Mountains. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I really enjoyed it until a day or two after it was over, so that made it even harder to explain. I guess I should have told her that I never said it was fun. I had said it was great. Yeah, something can be great without being fun, and bushwhacking in the mountains is high on that list.

Maybe I enjoy off-trail hiking in the mountains because I’m having a mid-life crisis, and I feel the need to prove something. But I really don’t think that’s it because I had my mid-life crisis several years ago and have pretty much gotten over it; although I suppose an occasional relapse isn’t out of the question. Either way, there are worse ways to spend a mid-life crisis than hiking.

Or, maybe it’s because I’m a map guy. I’ve always enjoyed looking at maps, planning trips, considering options. I get the same satisfaction out of planning a road trip or hike that some people get out of crossword puzzles or Sudoku. The main difference is that my puzzles have topographic lines, rivers, and ridges instead of numbers and letters.

Whatever the reason, Greg Harrell is afflicted by the same map-related disease, so we set out on the Porters Creek Trail early on a Saturday morning. After an hour and a half we reached the Porters Flats campsite, where the trail officially ends. At the campsite’s wooden marker, the trail splits. To the right is the campsite. To the left are the remnants of Porters Creek Trail, Part 2. This is the part of the trail that was described in old guidebooks, but is no longer officially maintained by the NPS and has disappeared from the trail guides. One of those remnants [the one the lost hiker probably wandered off on] leads toward the western slope of Porters Mountain. Our plan was to follow this path to the crest of Porters Mountain and to follow this ridgecrest southeast to its junction with the AT at Porters Gap.

Within about 10 minutes that plan fell apart as this Porters Mountain trail fizzled out. It didn’t end; it just disappeared. “Ending” and “disappearing” may seem like the same thing, but they’re not. Ending implies that you’ve reached a destination, a site at the end of the trail; such as, the Appalachian Trail ends at Mt. Katahdin in Maine or the Ramsey Cascade Trail ends at Ramsey Cascade. These trails end when they reach the place where they go. That’s not what this Porters Mountain trail does; it just disappears among the leaves, logs, and bushes long before it reaches Porters Mountain, like a “lost creek” that just vanishes into the ground. In other words, there’s not a Porters Mountain Trail. There’s just a brief footpath that points you uphill, then disappears beneath your feet and before your eyes, leaving you on your own.

It was like a father teaching his young son to ride a bike. He runs alongside his young, wobbling bike rider and gives him a push… and his son is on his own, trying his hardest but unsure how this adventure will turn out. That’s how this disappearing path felt. Oh, and let’s not forget that the bike ride often ends with some bumps and bruises, plus a few drops of blood and tears.

So for the next six hours Greg and I walked, crawled, slithered, pushed, and slipped through, under, over, and around rhododendron, mountain laurel, saw briers, sand myrtle, cliffs, boulders, and blowdowns. Hence, the bruises and scratches. It was slow and hard. It wasn’t exactly fun, but it was great; although I must confess that several times I had to ask Greg, “Remind me again. Why are we doing this?” He didn’t have any convincing answers; just something about being stupid or being manly, which are often the same thing.

"Why are we doing this?"

An open, rocky heath bald, lined with Sand Myrtle.
(The reason why we do this.)

This kind of hiking can give you a screamin’ case of claustrophobia. It’s relentless, even disheartening. You force your way through 50 feet of mountain laurel, walk about 10 feet in relative peace and freedom, and run into another cliff or another wall of rhododendron or another laurel thicket or another blown-down tree or another patch of briers. The astonishing thing is that in the early days of the park, hikers did this sort of thing on a regular basis. I’m tempted to say that the peer pressure from this past generation of hikers kept us pushing and shoving our way through the tangle, but I’m not sure it’s accurate to call them my peers. They were tougher than I am. I’m not their peer; I’m just a wanna-be. [To be continued.]