A Burning Issue

 

Trip report from Foothills Trail Hike, 4/13/24

Split Mountain Ramble

[From April 10, 2008]

 

Claude Monet, Impression, Sunrise, 1872

Paris – April 1874 - a group of artists rejected by the juries of the Salon offered their avant-garde paintings for public view. Renoir, Monet, Cezanne and Degas rocked the art world in what became known as the first exhibition of Impressionism.

Meanwhile that same month, on this side of the Atlantic, there was another kind of explosion. The Hickory Nut Gorge gained notoriety as rumors spread of a volcano on Rumbling Bald Mountain, near Chimney Rock. Buncombe County’s Thomas Clingman (1812-1897), a one-time US Senator and a long-time explorer of the mountains, promptly weighed with his observations of seismic phenomena throughout Western North Carolina. In several articles he described "a certain mountain in the northern part of Haywood County, N.C. [which] was, at intervals of two or three years, agitated and broken into fragments along a portion of its surface."

Clingman first visited the site in 1848, and learned that the jolts to this unnamed mountain in northern Haywood County had been witnessed as early as 1812. Amidst his descriptions of the mountain’s behavior, he provided detailed clues to its location, so I compared his notes to my Haywood County topo map. Tracing the lines that indicated a mountain rising from Ledford Cove to Pug Knob, I saw the letters that spelled out "Split Mountain."

I was on the trail, with a map, a compass, a camera, and the words of T. L. Clingman:



The top of the ridge, where evidences of violence are seen, is perhaps three or four hundred feet higher than the ground below. There are cracks in the solid granite of which the ridge appears to be composed, but the chief evidences of violence were observable a little south of the crest. From thence along the side of the mountain as one descends, there were chasms, none of them above four feet in width, generally extending north and south, but also occasionally seen in all directions. All the large trees had been thrown down.

There were a number of little hillocks. the largest eight or ten feet high and fifty or sixty feet in diameter. They were usually surrounded by what appeared to have been a narrow crevice. On their sides the saplings grew perpendicularly to the surface of the ground, but obliquely to the horizon, making it manifest that they had attained some size before the hillocks had been elevated. I observed a large poplar or tulip tree, which had been split through its centre, so as to leave one-half of it standing thirty or forty feet high. The crack or opening under it, was not an inch wide, but could be traced for a hundred yards, making it evident that there had been an opening of sufficient width to split the tree, and that then the sides of the chasm had returned to their original position without having slipped so as to prevent the contact of the broken roots.

As indicating the sudden violence with which the force acted, a large mass of detached granite afforded a striking illustration. From its size I estimated that it might have weighed two thousands tons. It seemed from its shape to have originally been broken out of the side of the mountain above, and to have rolled in mass a hundred yards downward. It lay directly across one of the chasms two or three feet in width, and had been broken into three large fragments, which, however, were not separated a foot from each other.

I figured I could find Split Mountain. I wondered if it would resemble anything that Clingman had described.

The more I tried to imagine it, the more I hoped to locate that mountain. And the more I hoped to meet someone to tell me about it.

It was a gorgeous April drive. Beyond the big fields and rolling pastures of Crabtree, the farms were hemmed in by steeper and stonier mountains. Rock piles, hundreds of yards long, lined the ancient pastures on the slopes.

At last, my map and my compass told me I had found Split Mountain.

I couldn’t see any two thousand ton boulder broken into three large fragments.

I couldn’t see any hillocks, eight or ten feet high, fifty or sixty feet in diameter.

I couldn’t see any large trees thrown down, or saplings growing perpendicular to the ground.

But I’d found the place, and still hoped to find the person.



Then I saw him standing next to his porch.

I slowed to a stop and I said "hello".

He greeted me with a smile, and we proceeded to talking about rain and drought, developers with too much money, big tax bills, the price of gas, the prospect of raising laying hens and growing the corn to feed them.

This gentleman was exactly the person I’d hoped to meet. He must have been almost eighty, and he'd been born on the same homeplace where he lived today.

I showed him the Clingman article and asked what he knew about it.

"Not much," he said. "That’s Split Mountain, alright. But I’ve only been on it one time, hunting ginseng with my daddy."

He continued, "You see how those rocks run down the side of the mountain. I always heard you could go to the top, and find holes in the ground, where you could drop [fence] rails in and never hear them hit bottom."

I climbed out of the car, "I’d better take another picture of this mountain."

He pointed down the road. "There was a post office there one time. Split Mountain, North Carolina. And Riley Greene ran his mill down there. He ground corn into meal, and he had a sawmill, too. The sluice came all the way down the creek, ten or fifteen feet off the ground. In the winter, the water would overflow and freeze solid, all the way down to the ground. Winters were a lot colder then."

I enjoyed my visit, meeting this new friend, and seeing this place through his eyes.



On another day I might actually climb to the top of Split Mountain. I might even find that hole in the ground. And when I drop a fence-rail (or a walking stick) into that hole, I’ll let you know what I hear…or what I don’t hear.

For the time being I'll ponder over Clingman’s theories in regards to Split Mountain:

The extent and configuration of the ground acted on, the long intervals between the shocks, for a period of nearly a century past, and of the absence of heat and of the continuous escape of gasses, rendered it evident that these disturbances were not due to such a merely local cause as the combustion at a short distance below the surface of a bed of inflammable mineral substances. Though in the opinion of Mr. Fox and others, there are electric currents in certain mineral veins, yet no observations heretofore made would justify us in attributing such phenomena to electricity.

And I’ll continue to follow Clingman’s treasure maps to some other curious places in these mountains.

By the way, that First Impressionist Exhibition from April 1874 is depicted online at http://www.artchive.com/74nadar.htm It's worth a visit, too.


Camille Pissaro, Gelee blanche (Hoarfrost), 1873

The Grooms Tune on the Road to Mount Sterling

Spring is a good time to visit the area of Waterville/Big Creek/Mount Sterling and the northeastern corner of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park at the border of North Carolina and Tennessee.  The wildflowers are spectacular.  And the history of that area is notable, as well.

[From April 1, 2007] 

Under the heading "SOMEBODY OUGHT TO DO THIS–"

The next time I roll through the crossroads at Mount Sterling, I should be listening to an old fiddle tune, Grooms Tune… or Bonaparte’s Retreat. Not the jazzed-up western swing version of Bonaparte’s Retreat, but a doleful rendition played slow and sad. The real Grooms tune. Somebody ought to do this next week. Because April 10, 1865 (the day after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse) was the day that three men were executed near Mount Sterling by Teague’s Home Guard.

The area had been ravaged by scalawags and bushwhackers, and the populace had suffered numerous raids of family farms by Union troops hunting provisions. The village of Waynesville had been burned two months earlier, and the citizenry was beleaguered and anxious.



For whatever reason, Henry Grooms, his brother George and his brother-in-law Mitchell Caldwell, all of north Haywood County, North Carolina, were taken prisoner by the Home Guard. The group traveled toward Cataloochee Valley and Henry Grooms, clutching his fiddle and bow, was asked by his captors to play a tune. Realizing he was performing for his own firing squad Grooms struck up Bonaparte's Retreat. When he finished the three men were lined up against an oak tree and shot, the bodies left where they fell. Henry's wife gathered the bodies and buried them in a single grove in Sutton Cemetery No. 1 in the Mount Sterling community, the plain headstone reading only "Murdered."

Now this account of the story was attributed to a Geoff Cantrell article in the Asheville Citizen-Times (February 23, 2000). Grooms family member Bettie Tanana, however, tells the story differently:

George was forced to play Bonaparte’s Retreat (later called Groom's Tune which can be found on the internet). Mitchell, according to Archives records, was an idiot and was told to put his hat over his face before he was shot. All three men were buried in a common grave. George was my great great great grandfather. My great great grandmother signed an affidavit stating that when she found her father's body his fiddle was found at his feet.

Some of Teague's men were also deposed verifying how the murders occurred. (I have copies of these records.) Most of the men in Teague's Homeguard were older men and neighbors of the men they shot. They even continued to live as neighbors after the war. Incidentally, another great great great grandfather, Henry Barnes was also found several miles away killed by Teagues Homeguard. His daughter, Amanda, married George Groom's son.

I had no idea that this scene was going to be in the movie Cold Mountain. I wanted to stand up and cry through my tears that that was my family being killed.

Myself, I’d like to think that come April 10, some fiddler will stand by the side of the little dirt road leading into Mount Sterling, and that fiddler will play Grooms tune one more time…really slow and sad.

Fire on the Mountain

 [From April 4, 2008]

Rumbling Bald Mountain, ca. 1940, Hans Curt Pfalzgraf Collection, D.H. Ramsey Library, Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville 28804

Had you picked up the edition of the New York Times published on this date in 1874, you could have read of a "third-rate hoax" in Western North Carolina, the Bald Mountain Volcano. 

Starting in February 1874, stories spread concerning earthquakes in the Hickory Nut Gorge near Chimney Rock. By calling it a hoax, the Times was contradicting a story it had reported just a couple of weeks earlier:

RALEIGH, NC, March 17 – Passengers from the west on this morning’s train confirm the reports of the rumbling noises and the general upheaving of the Bald Mountain in Western Carolina. People living on and near the mountain are moving out, and a volcanic eruption is momentarily expected.

Despite the eyewitness accounts, the subsequent New York Times story that appeared on April 4, 1874 dismissed it as an old legend:

From Our Own Correspondent.
RICHMOND, VA., Friday, March 27, 1874.

The Bald Mountain Volcano, of North Carolina, has been regarded as a third-rate hoax here from the publication of the first sensational rumors in regard to it. The truth is, doubtless, that this new sensation is but the revival of an old tradition, derived from the Indians, that Bald Mountain was once, in very remote times, a volcano, and hence that absence of vegetation which has given it its name.

The Indian legend is to the effect that a certain tribe living at the foot of Bald Mountain was annually afflicted by the visit of a huge bird of prey, that made his eyrie on the summit of the mountain, and that on every visit seized and carried away with him a child of the tribe. The annual affliction had been undergone for a long series of years, when a great chief and medicine-man arose, and, just before the time for the next annual visit of the bird, began to preach a crusade against the common enemy. He adjured the warriors, as they were brave men and loving fathers, no longer to submit to the depredations of the bird, but to march against him and destroy him or be destroyed.

Thus aroused, the men of the tribe swore to follow the chief in the desperate venture, and, placing their squaws and children in a place of safety, they encircled the base of the mountain and began the ascent, resolved to kill the bird at all hazards and at every cost. The mountain was then clothed in rank vegetation – mighty forest-trees thickly undergrown by a tangled wilderness, that made the progress upward very painful and difficult. But the determined tribe persevered until, nearing the top of the mountain, what was their horror to perceive that it was not merely one tremendous bird they had to encounter and destroy, but a countless number of the fierce creatures, clustering in ferocious masses all over the higher portions of the mountain.

At this despair overcame them, for they at once recognized how impossible it would be for them to overcome and exterminate so many of the winged monsters, and they threw themselves down upon their faces, expecting the birds to rush down upon them and destroy them. At this moment their leader raised high his voice to the Great Spirit for their deliverance, and in answer to his prayer vivid lightnings sprang from every quarter of the cloudless sky, without a sound of thunder, slaying the birds to the last one, riving the forest-trees, and wrapping the whole mountain-top in flames, that soon swept from it every trace of vegetation. Thus were the monstrous birds of prey destroyed, the mountain made bald, and the tribe delivered. The anniversary of the deliverance was perpetually celebrated by the tribe, and the tradition I have just related handed down from one generation to another.

In this tradition lurks the true story, doubtless, of either the original formation of the ridge known as the Bald Mountains, or of an eruption which occurred many years ago.

So concludes the New York Times report from this date in 1874. But that does not conclude the mystery of the Bald Mountain Volcano. In May 1874, the Honorable Thomas Lanier Clingman weighed in before the Washington Philosophical Society to discuss Rumbling Bald Mountain and other seismic phenomena of Western North Carolina.

But that’s another story for another day...

Possum Hair Hat

 [From April 3, 2007]

I’d call it an astonishing mystery - on April 3, 1730 in the Cherokee village Nequassee (present Franklin, NC), Sir Alexander Cuming (a Scottish adventurer) orchestrated a ceremony to install Chief Moytoy as the "Emperor of the Cherokees," and won the allegiance of the Cherokees to the King of England. A member of Cuming's party related the event:

April 3. They proceeded this Morning to Nequassee, being. five Miles Distance from Joree, their Company always increasing. Here the Indians met from all Parts of the Settlements, (having received Intelligence of the General Meeting intended) by the Expresses sent from Keeowee. This was a Day of Solemnity the greatest that ever was seen in the Country; there was Singing, Dancing, Feasting, making of Speeches, the Creation of Moytoy Emperor, with the unanimous Consent of all the head Men assembled from the different Towns of the Nation, a Declaration of their resigning their Crown, Eagles Tails, Scalps of their Enemies, as an Emblem of their all owning his Majesty King George’s Sovereignty over them, at the Desire of Sir Alexander Cuming, in whom an absolute unlimited Power was placed, without which he could not be able to answer to his Majesty for their Conduct. The Declaration of Obedience was made on their Knees, in Order to intimate, that a Violation of their Promise then made in so solemn a Manner, would be sufficient to make them no People. Sir Alexander made the Witnesses sign to the Substance of what they saw and heard, in order to preserve the Memory thereof, after Words are forgot. The Witnesses were Sir Alexander Cuming, Eleazar Wiggan, Ludovick Grant, Samuel Brown, William Cooper, Agnus Mackferson, David Dowie, Francis Beaver, Lachlan Mackbain, George Hunter, George Chicken, and Joseph Cooper, Interpreter, besides the Indians.

Cuming anticipated some details of the ceremony, as indicated by one contemporary account:

Sir Alexander had been informed of all the Ceremonies that were used in making a head beloved man, of which there are a great many in this nation. They are called Ouka and as we translate that word King, so we call the Cap he wears upon that occasion his Crown, it resembles a wig and is made of Possum’s hair Dyed Red or Yellow, Sir Alexander was very desirous to see one of them, and there being none at that Town One was sent for to some other Town, He Expressed Great Satisfaction at Seeing of it, and he told the Indians that he would carry it to England and give it to the Great King George.

During the ceremony, Moytoy insisted that Cuming share in the glory of the moment. The Cherokees present lifted Cuming up onto the seat reserved for Moytoy and performed the Eagle Tail Dance that involved stroking him with the tail feathers of 13 golden eagles.

We’re told that Cuming made the trip to the colonies because of his wife’s dream that he would accomplish great things among the Cherokees. Drawn to a place he’d never seen, Cuming left England on September 13, 1729 and arrived in Charleston on December 5.

He was a persuasive confidence man, who wasted no time in swindling Charleston investors and planning an escape on the next ship heading back across the Atlantic. But not before his trip to the Cherokee territory as a self-appointed emissary of the crown.

For guides, Cuming enlisted white traders and Indian fighters familiar with the Cherokee land and people. On March 11, 1730, they set off from Charleston toward the southern mountains. Along the way, the party shot a wild bison in South Carolina, and were warned to avoid Cherokee territory because of the natives' toward the English.

Cuming never hesitated, but sped forward. At that time, there were about 64 Cherokee villages in parts of four present-day states, 30 to 60 houses per town. In an incredibly short time, Sir Alexander visited many of those villages, was greeted with exceptional generosity wherever he went, and forged extensive alliances with Cherokee leaders, culminating with the April 3 ceremony. He must have impressed the Cherokee people, because very soon after his arrival they hailed him as a 'lawgiver, commander, leader and chief' and presented him with the scalps of their enemies.

His whirlwind tour among the Cherokees began in the Lower Villages along the headwaters of the Savannah River, like Keowee, and then proceeded to Nequassee and the other Middle Settlements along the upper part of the Little Tennessee. He crossed the Unicoi Range past Murphy and visited the Overhills Settlements, including Tellico, before starting back to Nequassee.

He somehow convinced seven Cherokees (depicted in the illustration above) to return with him to the royal court as evidence of the agreement he had negotiated with the Cherokees. Cuming and his entourage arrived back in Charleston on April 13, just a month and two days after starting their expedition to the mountains. They boarded a ship on May 4 and landed in Dover, England on June 5, 1730. He was promptly thrown in jail for debt. The Cherokees thought it a counterproductive punishment in that it rendered the debtor unable to repay his debts.

What a day it must have been, 277 years ago today, when Sir Alexander went to Franklin and was crowned with a possum’s hair cap.

One "embellished" book on this episode is William O. Steele’s "The Cherokee Crown of Tannassy" which expands on the contemporary accounts of the expedition.

[The illustration: Seven Cherokee men show off English costumes given to them by King George II on a walk in St. James Gardens, London, summer 1730. Engraving, British Museum.]

Showy Orchis

 [From April 1, 2007]

For me, Showy Orchis is a harbinger. It has a quiet, self-assured way of announcing the arrival of spring. 

Orchis spectabilis is one of 29 different orchids found in the Great Smokies. It's considered rather rare, though what patches of showy orchis there are can be fairly extensive. Prefers moist, wooded areas with loamy soil at elevations of 1,500 to 3,000 feet.

Plants will speak volumes when we reclaim our ability to listen. It's amazing to consider the various impoverishments of the modern world and just how much we've lost from what we were once a part of. In "The Self-Organizing Mind of Plants," (1989) Kevin Kelly writes:

The unparalleled richness of knowledge about plants kept by aboriginal peoples is the most valuable green wealth of undeveloped countries. Destroying a rainforest not only destroys a gene bank, it also destroys a meme bank - all the future solutions, models, discoveries, and deep, replicating ideas that were held in the genes and partially extracted over centuries by careful shamans. That native scholarship with plants is a vanishing resource.

Biology, particularly botany, has always flourished with the amateur scientist's admirable skills - a reliance on empirical knowledge, and a capacity to engulf the subject in its entirety by means of unbridled passion. The whole-systems approach of an amateur is so suited for the green cybernetics of plant life, and the plant cortex is so uncharted, that an amateur could pick a green spot on the world map by throwing a dart, and quickly become the world's expert on what those plants know.

Transported

CLICK HERE FOR THE AUDIO VERSION OF THIS STORY.

 [From April 1, 2007]

It’s a funny thing, dancing with technology.

We load up the car, take off and and cruise along the interstate. A brief stop at a rest area opens the door on a microcosm of modern transport:

Weary, but relieved, truckers amble back to their rigs. 

Vacationing families look harried, as they must. 

A young couple unloads two sets of dumbbells and an enormous black and white cat who climbs up the hillside. The cat watches their exercise routine as they face each other squatting and stretching with the weights. 

In a few minutes, we’ll all be hurtling along on the pavement again…bound for every destination imaginable.

Our destination was to "almost Tennessee", the northeast corner of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, skirting the Appalachian Trail, across the Pigeon River, up from Waterville. 

Speed and gasoline can take you lots of places fast, some places not at all. Simply walking along the right trail brings a conflation of space and time. While you cross over the next ridge to view an unexpected bend in the river, you transport to another realm of time, approaching the ancient as well as the remote.

How long since this boulder field was a streambed, a riverbed no less? And these rocks, the size of houses! How and when did they tumble into place? And do they really defy gravity with their balancing acts? Or are they continuing their free-fall, be it ever, ever so slowly? Pulled back to and into the earth while plants spring forth from the ground, expressions of color escaping and exploding from the cold darkness.

Linger by the mossy horseshoe of a cascade on the creek and the secrets of Egyptian pyramids will start to reveal themselves. It’s all right there.

Phenology is just one way of understanding these plants and their place in time. We start at 2000’ elevation and over the next four miles gradually climb another 800’…progressing from shades of green to brown to gray, with multiple strata of colors along the way.

First is a lily field of sorts, full of yellow trillium, its foliage rich and variegated, its blooms a loose bundle of pale yellow.

Higher up a spectrum of violets from deep purple to lavender to white and yellow. Yellow? Yellow violets? That’s almost as priceless as finding blue oranges…and I’m still looking for those.

Higher still, the purple phacelia flows from the rocky crags above…and down the hill toward the creek.

And so it goes the whole way on the trail upstream. Beyond the bridge, we continue along the old rail bed to Walnut Bottoms. In this valley, the black walnut trees could have been six or eight feet in diameter. But as soon as a train could reach them they were gone. We don’t get as far as Walnut Bottoms, but do pass Brakeshoe Spring. Brakeshoe Spring? Aaaahhaa, I get it. This must be where trains, loaded with monumental walnut timber, would stop to cool their brakes, overheated on the long downhill run.

I’m not sure, but things seem to be blooming unusually early, from another abnormally warm winter. It’s March 31, and we see the blooms of Sweet Shrub (Calycanthus floridus), Fire Pink (Silene virginica), Great Chickweed (Stellaria pubera), Dwarf Iris (Iris verna). I wonder what will be blooming along here a month from today, and what will be blooming a year from today. [See "Bloom Times for Wildflowers of the Southern Appalachians."]

Late in the day, our feet are aching. We retrace our steps and return to the car and return to the highway and return to the city and return to what we think of as our lives.