The Big South Fork of the Cumberland River forms at the confluence of the New River and Clear Fork River. From here it winds ninety river miles cutting a six hundred foot deep gorge through the sandstone highlands of the Cumberland Plateau, flowing north into Kentucky where it lends its waters to the Cumberland River. The Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area encompasses 125,000 acres of the watershed of this wild, free flowing river. Formed in 1974, the BSFNRRA protects rugged mountain land that had been stripped of timber and mined for coal from the late 1800’s until the middle of the twentieth century. The extractive activities left the land scarred and the environment of a once pristine place in a dubious state. But nature heals her wounds and through photosynthesis and the freeze and thaw of the seasons the efforts of man crumble when left unattended and green creeps back over denuded landscapes.
It was in this high terrain that a friend and I retreated with a couple of good trail dogs to take breather during the fall break of my first college semester in fifteen years. Conceived as a get away three years previously after I first got out of the Navy the initial plan had been to wander cross country with my dog and a back pack with nothing but a compass and topographic map to guide me. But plans change. Still, we had planned on backpacking but that turned into car camping (a tip of the hat to Mark Sundeen’s cult classic of outdoor/slacker living), and ultimately what had started as a trip into the backcountry of the Big South Fork became a somewhat rollicking sampling of the surrounding region.
After the interminable twisting, drive over pretty country roads through the ever intensifying colors of autumn we arrived and set up camp in Bandy Creek Campground, site 49. At $19 per night to tent camp the park is proud of their camp sites. But the location is really good and central to anything one would ever want to do in the southern portion of the park.
Though a ranger had advised us against taking dogs on the Honey Creek Loop, we decided to do it anyway, starting a bit late in the afternoon and jumped into the woods. The trail walks down a very small creek which was soggy after days of rain though every day of our trip would prove to be nothing but outstanding with the painfully blue clear skies and increasingly warm days of an Indian summer. An unusually wet summer season had left the ground well primed for a plethora of fungi which we marveled at and photographed over the entire three days we were in the area. Along the trail we also found a fine example of a euonymus called strawberry bush or hearts a bustin’.
After three miles or so we came to a place to either continue on the long loop trail or take an abbreviated side trail directly to the Honey Creek Overlook, a spot the Audubon Society Field Guide to the Southeastern United States calls one of the most beautiful overlooks in Tennessee. The terrain is rugged and there was no easy way to get to the overlook…I tried to find it for the sake of the dogs. It turns out the only way up about forty feet of rock face is to climb up a couple of steel ladders that are pitched at a good 55 or 60 degree slope. Lilly, the smaller dog was hesitant but managed to go on up with a little encouragement. Maze Dog, sixty pounds of wild energy who has intrepidly lunged into raging rivers from the Cascade Mountains to flooded low country rivers in middle Tennessee, got about a third of the way up then started to whimper. I stood immediately behind her, helping her raise one paw above the other until at last she made it up.
The effort to get the dogs up was worthwhile. Honey Creek Overlook is a beautiful spot, looking down a long gorge where the oaks, hickories, and poplars were turning with the season. The river below was slightly flooded and powerful. The overlook is situated on a wooded platform. Countless visitors had left messages to lost loved ones written in Sharpie or carved into the railing…and on the benches…and on the posts. Below by one of the rockhouses (the overhang of a bluff where one can go in and rest on a dry bed of sand) we passed there was an unopened pepsi can which had been placed ceremoniously on a rock and a somewhat ambitious memorial spray painted on the rock. “Remember the sunrise has never failed us” was the quote my friend and I took and ran with as the recurring theme of our upper Cumberland expedition.
Leaving the overlook we walked a pleasant mile down a gravel country lane, testing our acumen as naturalist by spot identifying winged and staghorn sumac, sourwood, and dogwood.
Driving back into the park proper around loopy highway 297, we parked at the East Rim Overlook and hiked the 1.3 miles at the perfect time of day to Sunset Overlook. When we got to the narrow sandstone shelf the sun was at that perfect angle to set the world on fire. It’s the time of day I like to look into its brightness and imagine all that can be in the world. Its when everything is cast with the pall of that 1970’s film haziness that dissolves the sharpness of lines until the trees, rocks, people, everything in my field of view lose their sharp edges and blend into one, like some Siddharthic awakening. And like such awakenings these moments are brief and the most must be made of them, from both a photographic sense and as concerns rejuvenating the soul within.
Walking back out the trail we noted that the grey brown leaves of Umbrella magnolia that had fallen on the forest floor looked like litter. Then I found an umbrella magnolia tree and collected a specimen for my herbarium.
Getting camp going that night was rough. We fought wet wood and plunging temperatures but finally turned out a decent camp supper of roasted potatoes, onions, squash and zucchini, served along side grilled chicken breasts. Car camping with a color and little grill is really the way to go. A crystalline sky filled with a million stars and a bottle of Red Truck put us over the top, making the crawl into cold sleeping bags not quite so bad.
The next morning was coffee, boiled eggs and shivering until the sun had climbed a ways in the sky revealing another beautiful day and it was evident that the day would be considerably warmer than the day before.
After some consideration we drove down a narrow gravel road to the Twin Arches trailhead. The trail wound around the base of sandstone bluff past a number of rockhouses. We stopped and inspected each one for signs of sandwort, a plant my hiking partner had spent time protecting in nearby Pickett State park, and flint chippings and arrowheads. I really wanted to find another arrowhead but alas all we found were chippings and leaves that tricked us into picking them up.
We wandered onto the first of the arches almost without noticing it. This seems like it would be hard to do since these two arches constitute the largest formation of its kind in the eastern United States. The trail rounds a bend and suddenly the first arch is there. But unlike the formations in Arches National Park which are red and exposed the twin Arches of BFSNRRA are made of a whitish grey sandstone and well concealed by lush vegetation. But make no mistake, they are impressive. The South Arch is 70 feet high and spans 135 feet. We stood awestruck at the beauty of it for a moment. I can only imagine what the first longhunters thought in the 1760’s when they came across the arches for the first time. Undoubtedly some of them had seen the Natural Bridge in Virginia and, when viewed together, this formation is substantially larger than that one. A trail to the left leads to the North Arch. We paused for the obligatory pictures and enjoyed a cigarette. Then we climbed a series of wooden steps to the top of the arch.
A spectacular panorama of canyon and ridges revealed itself bringing up the obvious comparisons to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. The chasm wasn’t as wide, the gorge not as deep, but this is about as big as one will find in the east. And it is big. Of all the reading I’d done researching trails none of the literature had talked about the view from on top of the arches. It provided us with the inspiration which people are looking for when they go out in nature. Under a sky of cobalt blue we sat on the edge and ate some lunch, enjoying the sixty-five degree sunshine after the long, cold night. Small Virginia pines grew from the slightest cracks in the rock, contorted and windblown like ancient bonsai trees. Later, walking along the ridge above the arches we Schumard Oak, glade privet, and sassafras in profusion. We came across a phasmid, or stick bug, laying immobile in the sandy trail. It looked like one of the dogs had stepped on it. But on closer inspection it turned out that these were two bugs mating. What I had thought was a broken leg was the much smaller male latched onto the female.
We walked a short side trail that led back to the parking lot. Here’s is where plans changed. Sometimes spending days hiking in nature one feels a sense of obligation to note every last feature on every single trail. I call it the beautiful waterfall- beautiful tree-beautiful rock formation syndrome. Having already walked a good bit and seen the best we decided to see something different. We drove out and got on the highway bound for Rugby.
Rugby is a relic of the last days of English colonialism, formed in the good faith of Christian Socialism with just an air of Victorian superiority. It was the brainchild of Thomas Hughes, a second son of England who was determined to establish a settlement where the second sons of the English gentry could come and make a rough living with their hands while retiring to the cultured world they were used to at the end of the day. Founded in 1880 on such high ideals the colony lasted seven years until at last it dissolved through poor management and what remains today are some Victorian carpenter gothic houses, an Episcopal Church (smack in the land of Church of Christ and Primitive Baptists) and an old cemetery.
I’d also heard there might be a winery nearby. Turns out there was. Highland Manor is Tennessee’s oldest winery. We stopped in and sampled all the varieties they had to offer. The reserve chardonnay was extra special. But cost/taste analysis dictated our purchase so we bought the cheapest red they had along with some fancy cheese and dearly, dearly, way overpriced rosemary crackers. Then back to Rugby.
It was late afternoon when we arrived at the Gentlemen’s Swimming Hole trailhead which is a part of the BSFNRRA. But rather than immediately jump on the trail we wandered around the old Laureldale Cemetery, noting the curious English names on the headstones and the many types of fungi growing on the ground. A pair of pileated wood peckers flickered in and out of the large cemetery trees. Four British people walked around, I presume looking for some curious ancestor who had sailed off to America to settle in the Tennessee backcountry in an attempt to establish a utopia in an imperfect world.
Finally we hiked the half mile trail down to the Gentlemen’s Swimming Hole which is a short stretch of the Clear Fork, photographing fungi all the way. We saw large poplars and hemlocks, a couple of which were dead, possibly victims of the wooly adgelid which is certain wreak total devastation on the beautiful hemlocks of the Big South Fork when it arrives…if it isn’t there already. By the river we sat amid a tangle of rhododendron, watching the dogs play in the sand under river birch and silver maples. The light of day faded from the gorge and we walked just fast enough to reach the plateau before total darkness sat in.
That night, back at camp was pleasantly warmer, the fire easier to start, the meal a smorgasbord of expensive cheese, roasted ears of corn and mixed vegetables. The setting made the local wine phenomenal.
Sometimes we have to find renewal in little doses: a cup of coffee, a night out with friends, an afternoon run. But sometimes we need a couple of days away from everybody we know and every distraction that can come in on a cell phone or email. Sometimes we need rugged land and a failed utopian dream. Nothing fails that is attempted and nothing is attempted but that there’s a hole in us we need to fill. Big South Fork is a place of renewal where man can scratch the surface looking for coal and timber or a better way to live. But ultimately Mother Nature embraces her ever striving sons and daughters in the wilderness of the mountains and river, holding them close, eroding away all the karma they bring with them until all that is left is the sound of water rushing over the rocks and the wind blowing through the canyons.
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