[From September 17, 2017]
A worldwide phenomenon, “The Hum,” remains a mystery. Generally described as a low-frequency droning or pulsing sound, it is often compared to the sound of a distant diesel engine.
[From September 17, 2017]
A worldwide phenomenon, “The Hum,” remains a mystery. Generally described as a low-frequency droning or pulsing sound, it is often compared to the sound of a distant diesel engine.
Fishing is not an escape from life, but often a deeper immersion into it.
– Harry Middleton
My friend, Jonathan, is the best hiking buddy a person could ask for. If not for some arm-twisting on his part, I would have missed out on adventures at remarkable places of the Southern Appalachians - the Black Mountain Crest, to name just one. And this week, he made the necessary arrangements to get us onto another memorable trail.
Several years ago, I was trying to identify the most remote section of the Smokies. I had a large map and a small saucer. After sliding the saucer around on the map for a minute, I found one spot where it did not touch any roads. And that was in the middle of Hazel Creek. Park as close as you can to Hazel Creek, find a trailhead, and then...good luck hiking to Hazel Creek and returning to your car in one day.
The alternative is to cross Fontana Lake by boat and proceed up the Hazel Creek arm of the lake. I tried that in a kayak once and it took me a couple of hours to get there. I had time enough to explore the remains of Proctor, a town built to handle the timber and copper ore extracted from the Hazel Creek watershed. After construction of Fontana Dam during World War II, most of Proctor was inundated.
On my prior visit, I had lunch near a hilltop cemetery and enjoyed the company of some other kayakers I'd met on the way. But the day was not long enough for me to go past Proctor and hike any distance up Hazel Creek. So, after lunch, I hurried to the lake shore at the mouth of Hazel Creek and paddled back to Cable Cove.
This week brought a long-awaited return to Hazel Creek, a day-hike made feasible by taking a shuttle from Fontana Marina. On a big motorized boat, the crossing takes less than 15 minutes. We disembarked at 8:30 AM with the understanding that the shuttle would pick us up at 3:00 PM. A lack of punctuality would have severe consequences. There was no time to waste for the trek up Hazel and then to the end of the Bone Valley Trail followed by the return trip along the same route, about 15 miles in all. That's not an unreasonable distance to cover in six and a half hours, but hourly water breaks, a leisurely lunch, and meanders to mysterious century-old structures were out of the question.
The need for speed did nothing to lessen the excitement of exploring the area. As soon as we jumped off the boat, we saw footprints, very large footprints, of bears that had been ambling along the water's edge not long before our arrival, and we wondered if there would be more ursine encounters along the way.
Most long hikes in the Smokies involve an arduous gain in elevation. Hazel Creek is a notable exception. The trail alongside the creek is smooth and wide with a very gradual climb. Long ago, it accommodated a rail line for transporting timber and ore.
The overall ambience of Hazel reminded me a bit of Noland Creek or Deep Creek. But this was distinctly different. The trail seemed bigger, the creek seemed bigger, the flat terrain bordering the creek seemed bigger. And compared to Deep Creek, which attracts hundreds or even thousands of visitors daily, Hazel Creek was pristine and quiet. We hiked all day without seeing another soul, which is unusual in the National Park.
Hazel Creek holds a certain mystique. I knew that already, though I'd never experienced it myself. The allure is especially powerful for fly fishing enthusiasts. There might not be another trout stream in the Southeast that rivals the legendary draw of Hazel Creek. Part of the credit goes to two outdoorsmen who could wield an ink pen as deftly as a fly rod.
Horace Kephart (1862-1931) was a St. Louis librarian with a passion for camping and hunting. In 1904 he moved to Western North Carolina and began to explore the Smokies:
When I went south into the mountains I was seeking a Back of Beyond.... I wanted to enjoy a free life in the open air, the thrill of exploring new ground, the joys of the chase, and the man’s game of matching my woodcraft against the forces of nature...
He was methodical in selecting a place to settle:
I took a topographic map and picked out on it, by means of the contour lines and the blank space showing no settlement, what seemed to be the wildest part of these regions; and there I went....I picked out the upper settlement of Hazel Creek, far up under the lee of those Smoky Mountains ...scant two miles from the post-office of Medlin, there was a copper mine, long disused on account of litigation, and I got permission to occupy one of its abandoned cabins....
From his base camp on Hazel Creek, Kephart got acquainted with the mountains and the mountaineers, wrote numerous articles for hunting and fishing magazines and collected stories for "Our Southern Highlanders" (1913), a classic volume of Smokies lore.
Harry Middleton (1949-1993) was an outdoors columnist for Southern Living magazine in the 1980s. He had a passion for fly fishing and made frequent trips to Hazel Creek. His 1991 book, "On the Spine of Time" recounts adventures in the Smokies and remains a book beloved by many anglers and other readers.
Trout are excellent company, creatures of noble and admirable and perplexing qualities, much like human beings only more honest and sincere. They are totally unpredictable and therefore totally bewitching, at once brutal, beautiful, suspicious, graceful, and powerful, fastidious and wary, cautious and aggressive. Raw instinct burns like electric current through their cold, wild flesh. There is a charming snobbery about mountain trout, a stubbornness that is absolutely unbending. Their needs are specific rather than arbitrary and capricious. They know nothing of compromise. Life means moving water, fast water, clean water, water rich in prey and with at least a measure of wildness, meaning a solitude free of the whirl of cities and civilization....
Our hike through the wildness became an even more immersive experience after turning up the Bone Valley Trail. At one point, the trail led to the edge of the creek.
Any possibilities to rock hop the 20 foot distance to the other side? No, not at all. For the first crossing I took off my boots and socks. The water was so cold on my feet that I could feel my sinuses open up. After another stream crossing or two, I grew impatient with taking off and putting on my footwear, and remembered that leather and wool will dry out...eventually.
I don't naturally have the temperament to be a fly fisherman, which is all the more reason to learn. I wonder if I could find my proper place in the choreography of fly and fish, dancing on the water, casting and playing the line to bring it to life. What a place for such reverie!
It is easy to recognize what Horace and Harry found here on Hazel Creek.
From my backpack, I pulled out a paperback copy of "On a Spine of Time" and declaimed one of Harry's lyrical passages:
It was a good day along the creek. Just before noon, the sky turned black as wet coal and it snowed hard for hours, a great whirlwind of snow, and still I fished. Snow was soon piled up on the backs of dark, smooth stones, and the sudden cold, the unexpected turn of weather, stirred me as much as it did the trout. I had almost forgotten how much fun it is to fish the high country in a good snowstorm.
I don't think I'll ever forget how much fun it is to be on Hazel Creek, snowstorm or not. After hiking past what remains of Proctor, we got back to the lake shore with time to spare. And just a few minutes later, our shuttle appeared from far down the lake, a welcome sight!
Captain gave us the news that the weather had been blustery on the lake and at the marina, and that Newfound Gap Road was shut down because of high wind and falling temperatures ahead of the precipitation. GSMNP officials were encouraging visitors to leave the Park.
That was surprising news, considering how pleasant had been the weather along the creek all day - barely a breeze, mild temperatures, overcast skies and no rain. Ideal hiking weather. How could the weather be so agreeable on Hazel Creek, while conditions were deteriorating everywhere else?
I came to the conclusion that it really is Shangri-la. And I know that Horace Kephart and Harry Middleton and a host of dedicated fly fishermen would agree.
If events proceed according to plan, I will watch this morning's sunrise from the deck of a boat crossing Fontana Lake. I anticipate a chilly voyage, but once we embark on the trail to Hazel Creek, it shouldn't take long to warm up. I've been assured that a much-needed rain is still one day away. It will be a time and a place to concentrate on the present moment, but I can't go near Fontana without recollecting how it used to be. I've always been intrigued by Fontana Village, though my first visit came long after it had morphed from a company town to a vacation resort. When a French existentialist toured Fontana, almost 80 years ago, he saw it as a harbinger of America's future. Maybe, in some sense, he was right...
[From October and November 2009]
As reported here several days ago, John C. Calhoun examined the Tuckasegee Valley in 1836 as a possible route for a rail line from Charleston to Cincinnati. That trip is mentioned in an 1891 book by a Calhoun family friend, Dave U. Sloan.
From October and November 2009]
Who was this man…
Long, long ago mastodons frequented the banks of the Tuckasegee River. Or so suggests one old newspaper clipping. But this discussion requires some background before we investigate the evidence found in Dillsboro, North Carolina.
Mastodons and other megafauna
First off, mastodons and mammoths were two distinct creatures. Mammoths originated in Africa and migrated through Eurasia and North America. The woolly mammoth, which went extinct about 10,000 years ago, was closely related to the elephant.
Mastodons lived in Central and North America before their extinction, also about 10,000 years ago. Compared to mammoths, they were slightly smaller, with shorter legs and flatter heads. They were anywhere from seven to fourteen feet tall and covered in long, shaggy hair. Both animals were herbivores.
During the Pleistocene Era, 12,000 years ago, humans and megafauna (including mastodons) quite possibly encountered one another on the Great Smoky Mountains. Though glaciers did not reach this far south, the climate was much colder than today. The highest peaks must have been tundra-like environments with permafrost and few trees. The fossil record reveals many large mammals inhabiting the park region prior to the Quaternary Extinction: Jefferson’s ground sloth, Harlan’s ground sloth, tapir, horse, half-ass, long-nosed peccary, flat-headed peccary, stout-legged llama, helmeted musk-ox, bison, white-tailed deer, caribou, elk, giant beaver, black bear, Florida spectacled bear, giant short-faced bear, cougar, jaguar, saber-toothed cat, scimitar-toothed cat, coyote, dire wolf and mastodon.
Spear-points found in this area indicate that migratory hunters came to this area in search of mastodons and other large prey. A paleontological site near Nashville, Tennessee has provided abundant information about mastodon-hunting in the Southeast. The Coats-Hines-Litchy site has yielded portions of four mastodon skeletons, one of which was directly associated with Paleoindian stone tools such as blades and scrapers, signs of a successful hunt on one day 10,000 to 14,000 years ago.
Ominous events at the Cowee Tunnel
This brings us back to Dillsboro and the year 1882. Construction of the Western North Carolina Railroad was underway and the “Cowee Tunnel” adjacent to the Tuckasegee River was posing many challenges for the convict laborers digging their way through the mountains.
An ominous note from “Sojourner” appeared in the September 18, 1882 issue of the Asheville Weekly Citizen:
I did not intend to convey the impression in my last letter that the entire Cowee tunnel had fallen in. The workmen on the west end of the tunnel came to dirt, and it has fallen in several times. Mr. Dick Wilson says they are having much trouble in bracing it up, the dirt falls in so fast. Many thousand yards of rock and dirt have been taken out, and some think the trees from the top will come through soon. It is a serious drawback in the work on the tunnel, and there is some talk of having to make it a cut, but that seems impracticable. If the dirt can be removed, and the hole walled in safely, the work will proceed on the tunnel as usual.
The ”big” story coming less than six weeks later, was reported in North Carolina newspapers and reprinted in papers across the country:
The skeleton of a full grown mastodon has been found in the Cowee tunnel on the Ducktown branch of the Western North Carolina railroad. When the monster was discovered the convicts fled in terror, and it was by hard work that they could be induced to return to their picks. It was found six feet below the surface of the earth. It was in a perfect state of preservation, and crumbled to dust as soon as exposed to the air. The mastodon is the Russian term of fossil elephant, and is extensively found in Russia and all over Europe. It became extinct, according to geology, near 10,000 years ago, died on the Pleistocene beds. In 1799, one was found in the icy districts of Russia, the hide of which was in a fair state of preservation, and was of such weight that it took ten men to support it a distance of 150 feet. The one found in the Cowee tunnel was stretched out a distance of forty feet – supposed to have been devoured by carniverous animals, and the bones disengaged from their original position. The largest mastodons range from fourteen to twenty-four feet in length, and from nine to twelve feet in height. - The Greensboro Patriot, Oct. 27, 1882
Questioning the newspaper account
The temptation is to dismiss the story as fake news, something too preposterous to be believed.
Maybe so.
On the other hand, as the earlier story reported, the tunnel was not cut through solid rock. Is it plausible that an unfortunate mastodon, grazing alongside the Tuckasegee River on a chilly day 12,000 years ago, was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was buried by a landslide?
Perhaps.
Steam locomotive emerging from Cowee Tunnel, ca. 1892
But isn’t it almost too convenient that the bones of the Dillsboro mastodon practically vanished into thin air before the discovery could be verified? It turns out that long-buried bones can crumble fairly quickly when exposed to the air. That issue was broached in a 2017 newspaper report of mastodon bones unearthed at a Michigan construction site:
Eagle Creek Homes, the developer behind the Railview Ridge housing project, reached out to University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology Director Dan Fisher. Fisher has 40 years of experience investigating claims of prehistoric remains found in the region….
Most remains of mastodons and mammoths found in Michigan, Fisher said, are somewhere in the range of 11,000 to 15,000 years old.
"That was at a time that humans had found their way to North America," Fisher said. "These were some of the animals that they were sometimes lucky enough to bring down or otherwise get access to. So people butchered them, ate them and stored their meat."
As glaciers moved through Michigan several thousand years ago, they created lakes, ponds and swamps that became surrounded by vegetation attractive to the American mastodon and Jefferson woolly mammoth. Fossils of both are prevalent in the southern two-thirds of the state.
The age of the bones means they are often very fragile, and can sometimes disintegrate when exposed from the sediment that has been preserving them all that time.
"They dry, shrink, crack and sometimes they literally fall to pieces," Fisher said.
But not completely.
Overshadowed by tragedy
If workers actually found a mastodon skeleton in Dillsboro, why haven’t I heard about it until now?
One reason could be that the event was overshadowed by a tragedy that occurred two months later, on December 30, 1882. As convict laborers were crossing the river to start another day’s work on the Cowee Tunnel, their barge capsized. Nineteen men, shackled together, drowned in the Tuckasegee.
Is it any wonder that some crumbling bones of an ancient animal were soon forgotten? On January 3, 1883, the News and Observer in Raleigh reported on the accident:
"A few days since we published an account of the trip of Governor Jarvis to the Western North Carolina Railroad, and gave an account of the operations at the Cowee tunnel, which is near the bank of Tuckaseegee River, in Jackson county. On that section of the road are employed about 200 convicts. Yesterday Lieutenant-Governor James L. Robinson, who came down from his home in Macon county, brought the news of a horrible disaster at the crossing of the Tuckaseegee River, the news of which he received from Mr. W.B. Troy, the officer in charge of convicts on the Western North Carolina Railroad.
" It appears that the camp of the convicts, that is, the stockade in which they are quartered, is on the bank of the Tuckaseegee river, opposite the Cowee tunnel. The river is at that particular point deep, with a current somewhat sluggish as compared with parts immediately above and below, where it breaks into rapids and rushes with the swiftness peculiar to those mountain torrents. The means of ferriage across the stream has been a large barge or flat boat, capable of containing fifty convicts, a rope stretched across being grasped by the hands and the boat then pulled over.
On Saturday, while thirty convicts were being thus transferred, they became alarmed on seeing some water and ice in the boat, and despite the fact that there was no danger, rushed panic-stricken to one end of the boat, which was at once capsized and all the men thrown into the cold river, there deep, though not more than fifty yards wide. A white guard who was on the boat went down with the rest.
A terrible scene followed, as the men struggled to get out, each man looking only after his personal safety. Many of the convicts swam ashore, or after being washed down a short distance reached the bank ere they came to the swift water. Twelve thus saved themselves, but eighteen clasped each other so closely that they became a struggling mass and were all drowned. The guard was taken from the water to all appearance dead, and it was only by dint of great and long continued efforts that his life was saved.
" The gang of convicts at this particular place, or rather section of the road was in charge of Mr. J.M. McMurray. Yesterday afternoon Capt. E.R. Stamps, chairman of the board of Penitentiary directors, left for the scene to make investigation of the disaster, which as, he state to a reporter, fairly appalled him. It was one of those accidents which seem to be unavoidable, and due to the sudden panic which seized the convicts in the boat, which it is said was in no danger of sinking, the water having fallen in it from the rains. Some of the drowned men were found some distance below, locked together in a last and fatal embrace. Many who could swim were hampered by others, who clutched them in a death grip.
"This is the greatest disaster that has happened on the road. A portion of the Cowee tunnel was of so treacherous a character that it caved in on a number of convicts, and they narrowly escaped death. The utmost precautions were used to prevent a repetition of the occurrence, an immense “cut” being made and arched over. The dirt was replaced, and all made secure. The tunnel is eighteen miles from the Balsam mountains, and thirty-four miles from Pigeon River, and is on what is known as the Ducktown branch of the Western North Carolina Railroad.
- News and Observer (Raleigh, N.C.), January 3, 1883
[From November 3, 2008]
With the turning of the seasons, I suppose we've seen the last of the butterflies until next spring. From what I observed this year, and from what others mentioned to me, butterflies were unusually abundant. Here are a few of my favorite shots from the past couple of years.
[From November 8, 2017]
This evening, I was watching a documentary on Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849) when something caught my attention. The narrator mentioned Poe’s 1844 story “The Premature Burial,” which was based on a phenomenon often reported in the nineteenth century – the burial of those who were not yet dead.
After collecting a few details, I found the article, published February 21, 1885 in the New York Times under the headline “What His Friends Discovered When the Coffin Was Opened”
ASHEVILLE, N.C., Feb. 20 –A gentleman from Flat Creek Township in this (Buncombe) County, furnishes the information that about the 20th of last month a young man by the name of Jenkins, who had been sick with fever for several weeks, was thought to have died. He became speechless, his flesh was cold and clammy, and he could not be aroused, and there appeared to be no action of the pulse and heart.
He was thought to be dead and was prepared for burial, and was noticed at the time that there was no stiffness in any of the limbs. He was buried after his supposed death, and when put in the coffin it was remarked that he was as limber as a live man. There was much talk in the neighborhood about the case and the opinion was frequently expressed that Jenkins had been buried alive.
Nothing was done about the matter until the 10th inst., when the coffin was taken up for the purpose of removal and internment in the family burying ground in Henderson County. The coffin being wood, it was suggested that it be opened in order to see if the body was in such condition that it could be hauled 20 miles without being put in a metallic casket.
The coffin was opened, and to the great astonishment and horror of his relatives the body was lying face downward, and the hair had been pulled from the head in great quantities, and there were scratches of the finger nails on the inside of the lid and sides of the coffin. These facts caused great excitement and all acquainted personally with the facts believe Jenkins was in a trance, or that animation was apparently suspended, and that he was not really dead when buried and that he returned to consciousness only to find himself buried and beyond help.
The body was then taken to Henderson County and reinterred. The relatives are distressed beyond measure at what they term criminal carelessness in not being absolutely sure Jenkins was dead before he was buried.
[From April 13, 2008]
"...We fall asleep in a room fragrant with the scent of apples and pears, and when I wake up during the night I think for a moment that I am a boy again. For then my father not only had an orchard of his own, but purchased the fruit of other orchards....Every bedroom had heaps of apples on the floor, as well as those adorning the window-sill. At bedtime my brother and I had to pick our way between the piles of Tom Putts, Beauty of Baths, Orange Pippins, Bramleys, and the rest, all of which we could then identify by taste in the dark..."
- Ralph Whitlock, A Little Heap of Apples Under the Stairs, Letters from an English Village, Bradford on Avon
Francis Orray Ticknor (1822-1874) was a country doctor in Columbus, Ga., who wrote poetry and submitted horticultural articles to southern agricultural journals. This Ticknor poem is from April 1, 1859:
NANTAHALEE
A famous Apple
You’ve heard, I think, of the beautiful maid
Who fled from Love’s caresses,
Till her beautiful toes were turned to roots,
And both her shoulders to beautiful shoots,
And her beautiful cheeks to beautiful fruits,
And to blossoming sprays her tresses!
I’ve seen her, man! She’s living yet
Up in a Cherokee valley!
She’s an apple tree! and her name might be,
In the softly musical Cherokee,
A long-drawn "Nantahalee!"
‘Tis as sweet a word as you’ll read or write;
Not quite as fair as the thing, yet quite
Sufficient to start an old anchorite
Out of the ashes to bless and bite
The beautiful "Nantahalee!"