A few years ago I read the account of Dick Proenneke with great fascination and admiration. At age 51, he built a cabin by hand in a remote part of Alaska, then spent the next 35 years meticulously documenting his solitude with photography, video footage and writings.
His narrated video is available on DVD, and this clip is well worth a look if you have 10 minutes.
The Appalachian Trail meanders through a landscape strewn with American history. The problem is that I usually donn't know what I'm looking at. I find myself seeing things such as this beautifully laid chimney picture below and having plenty of questions without anyone to ask.
Who were the people who lived here? Why did they leave? Am I looking at a Civil War remnants, the modest dwelling of a reclusive subsistence farmer, or was this area even a thriving center of life at one point?
The forests had changed so much in the last 200 years. At one point nearly every tree east of the Mississippi has been cut down so it is sometimes impossible to picture what was once here. A thick forest of today may have been an apple orchard just 100 years ago.
Fortunately our hosts for the night, Walt and Pat, were able to tell us a little bit about this chimney we passed yesterday morning. It is the remains of the old Lowe House, where 10 children grew up and the men would walk the 5-10 miles into Waynesboro to sell their crops.
For me, the most compelling remnants on the trail were from the Brown Mountain Creek Community pictured and described below.
The Appalachian Trail strolls for 1.4 miles through this shady valley that was once the site of a share-cropping community of freed slaves.
This was a very powerful area to walk through, experiencing so much human history woven into the landscape. In my mind I could hear could hear the songs of those proudly working the first piece of land they could call home and the laughter of children playing in the chilly creek.
It was established in the early 1900's and disbanded in the 1920's when the Forest Service purchased the land for the Appalachian Trail. Makes me wonder if they voluntarily sold it or were more-or-less run off the land.
Last time I was in the Smokies was on a spring break trip in 2000. I carried a 6.5 pound backpack, 3 pound boots, 5 pound tent, water filter and more. I covered about 25 miles in 3 days and when I was done my feet hurt so badly with blisters and bruises I could hardly walk.
This time around my load was a fraction of the weight, we covered all 72 miles of the A.T. in approximately the same amount of time and my companion was a lot better looking -- no offense Dave!
It was powerful to visit the section of the A.T. where I had met my first "Southbounder" (a person walking from Maine to Georgia) and to relive a time when I had first aspired to do a thru-hike.
