Hardy Hardly mountain women

Immediately after the guided tour I described in yesterday's post, my sister and I decided to explore the Nature Trail and Gardens area of the Oconaluftee Indian Village. For this little hike we were on our own, free to explore at whatever pace we found comfortable as long as we stayed on the marked trail and didn't pick any flowers.

It felt really freeing to step into the woods so many miles away from home, not knowing where the trail would lead and whether or not we would encounter any wildlife along the way. In the past I've never been much of an adventurer, and, at least in my eyes, hiking this (slightly tamed) wilderness area constituted a genuine adventure.

We walked across a little wooden bridge and were on our way.

The beginning of the dirt trail rose gradually and, except for the tripping hazard of tree roots, wasn't too hard to climb. In areas where the angle of the earth was sharper, there were stairs to make the climb easier. Actually, there were quite a few flights of stairs. (Here were stairs, there were stairs, everywhere were stairs, stairs.)

We kept on going, higher and higher. It was certainly beautiful deep in the woods, with velvety moss covering almost every flat surface and a wide variety of plants and flowers, most of which we didn't recognize.

After we'd climbed a long, long way up, we were happy when the trail turned very slightly downward. That's where we saw our first wildlife of the day. (If you can't see it in the photo below, click to enlarge it.)

Okay, so it was only a butterfly, but it was very, very pretty as it flitted among the flowering branches.

Did I mention it was high noon when we started up this trail? And did I mention that the temperature had climbed along with us? All the way to the low 90s?

We kept going. We hadn't seen another tourist since we first stepped onto this trail, and our theory was that the trail was laid out in a big loop on the mountainside, so that the upward climb would be balanced by a downward hike of approximately the same length. Since we were now moving downward, we were feeling hopeful. Hot, but hopeful.

We stopped to rest near a little cabin with a sign hanging from its roof identifying it as an "Indian Herb and Vegetable Garden." While we looked at the garden, we noticed that there was a lot of dust on the trail. And pollen, too. Lots of pollen.

On we went, down, down, down the path and down some stairs and some more stairs. We were getting really tired.

Still, I couldn't help but feel blessed to be alive in such beautiful surroundings. Just look at the glorious way the light filtered through the leaves on this part of the trail:

And look at the way the color of this flower just pops against the green background:

We walked a little farther. Through the trees we caught a glimpse of one of the demonstration stations in the Indian Village, so we thought we were getting close to the end of the trail. That excited us, because we were longing for an icy cold drink by then.  And we were starting to get hungry, too.

About then we came upon this gorgeous little pond:

We discovered that there were fish in the pond, our second encounter with native wildlife that day:

The trail ended in a very small loop near the fishpond. It ended, but there was no exit there, at least none that we could find. We stood there for a few moments in disbelief, looking around and finally accepting the fact that we were going to have to retrace our steps over the entire length of the trail to get back to the parking lot.

We began walking again, our faces glum as we climbed up the trail we'd just gone down. My pulse was pounding and I was breathing heavily, taking big gulps of air. We both had sweat dripping from our foreheads, and we almost never do anything that causes us to break a sweat.

About the time we passed the "Indian Herb and Vegetable Garden" for the second time, my sister said, "You know, this is why they find old people dead in the woods. They walk in and they can't walk out."

I said, "Well, I recently wrote on my blog that I wanted my ashes to be scattered near trees."

"Yeah," my sister said, "but I don't think you planned to just drop and decompose on the spot, did you?"

At the highest point on the trail-in-reverse, we met a couple of young, athletic men. They seemed to be doing fine. For a fleeting second I thought of begging them to help us out of there, but we just smiled politely and didn't tell them anything. A little further along we met an older couple. Again we smiled, and I made a comment about the trail being difficult for old knees. They laughed and kept right on going. Too bad for them.

Just past the place where we had met the older couple, we had our third encounter with wildlife. Some kind of bird hopped perkily across the trail. "Screw you, bird," I thought to myself. "I'm not taking any more pictures."

**********

Despite the difficulty of this hike for us "hothouse flowers," I'm glad we did it. My sister and I have had a great deal of fun in the telling and retelling of this tale. Each time we've talked about it, the trail has grown longer and steeper, and the number of bear encounters has grown higher. By now, our story is that we hiked more than thirty miles, during which we had to fight off several black bears, including at least one ferocious mama bear bent on protecting her cubs. It was hellish, but we survived it. We are fearless, hardy mountain women, women who might have been named Danielle Boone and Davina Crockett.

Only you know what really happened.

Cherokee spirit

As a side trip one morning, my sister and I left our hotel and ventured about an hour westward to the town of Cherokee, North Carolina. Our destination was the Oconaluftee Indian Village. There, for a couple of hours, we immersed ourselves in the culture of the Cherokee Indians as they lived in the mid-18th century.

Our barefooted guide, who apologized upfront for his "period-inappropriate" sunglasses, took us and a handful of other tourists from one tour stop to the next, explaining at each station what we were seeing. The guide also assured us that we were welcome to take photos, making me a very happy tourist.

We watched demonstrations of cloth weaving...

...basket weaving...

and weapon making...

...and we saw the man pictured above shoot arrows from a blowgun and hit the bullseye three times straight in quick succession.

We watched a tool-making demonstration, too, and were impressed enough that we respectfully refrained from making any comments about "period-inappropriate" C-clamps.

Another demonstration explained the process of making the canoes the Cherokees used.  Though they're called "dugouts," the cores of the long logs were actually burned out.

Several types of traps were on display, and our guide explained how they were used and what types of animals were caught. The Cherokees relied on trapping and hunting for food  and for hides.

At various stops along our walking tour, our guide showed us the types of houses the Cherokees built, log cabins as well as clay structures. We were allowed to go inside each of these houses, where we saw dirt or wood floors, rough-hewn furniture, fireplaces and cooking pots.

The man in the photo directly above was our tour guide. He and many of the young males who were working in the village the day we were there wore their hair in a style that was apparently favored by their ancestors: shaved except for a circle of hair that was grown long and tied at the back of the head.

The young man above wore the most elaborate costume we saw in the Oconaluftee Village. He was the one who sang out (or chanted) the songs when some of the guides and craftspeople gathered at the end of the tour to demonstrate Indian dances for an enthusiastic audience. I especially enjoyed this part of the tour because the dancers themselves appeared to be having such a good time. The dances may have been authentic and appropriate to the time period, but the joyful dancers seemed more like a group of modern-day co-workers, old and young alike, laughing and sharing their favorite part of the workday.

I loved every minute of it.

Church on Sunday, rain or shine

Church was important to the God-fearing settlers in the Smoky Mountains, not only as a place to worship, but also as a place to get to know one's neighbors, some of whom might have lived miles away.

My sister and I visited three churches on the Cades Cove Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and before I end the park segment of this travelogue, I want to show you those churches.

They all look very much alike, at least on the outside.

First up was the Primitive Baptist Church, exterior and interior:

Then came the Cades Cove Methodist Church:

And the Missionary Baptist Church, established in 1839:

Each of these churches had an adjacent cemetery. We didn't walk through all of them, but we did spend some time looking at individual gravestones in the cemetery behind the Primitive Baptist Church.

The genealogist in me wanted to know more about the people buried beneath these old markers, and some of the inscriptions assured me that these folks would have had interesting stories to tell.

This grave, and so many others in this small cemetery, 

reminded me how high the infant mortality rate was back in those days.

This man would have been 69 years old when he died, 

so the word "murdered" may have been an accurate

description of his cause of death.

What brave people the Olivers must have been to settle where they did.

Their home was the subject of the lead photo in my last post.

Cabin fever of a different kind

Way back in 2006, I wrote about finding peace in an imaginary cabin in the woods. On vacation with my sister recently, I found peace in and around real cabins, some more than a hundred years old, in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

At the same time I was enjoying the serenity of these remote structures, I was also imagining how hard the original occupants of these cabins must have had to work to live and raise a family in a place like this. It must have been a chore just to keep the lush growth of the forest from reclaiming the space that had been cleared for a cabin.

We went inside several of the cabins, and I felt like a giant in there. The rooms were small, the ceilings low. No doubt they were built that way intentionally to make them easier to heat in cold mountain winters, but I guarantee you there must have been a lot of elbow bumping when the cabins were occupied by families.

Nevertheless, I loved them all. I've probably looked at these photos at least a couple dozen times since I've been home, trying to recapture the feelings I had when I stood in the presence of these rustic structures and imagined the men who built them and the women who made them home.

The John Oliver Cabin in Cades Cove (shot with a zoom lens 

because it stands about a quarter mile from the road). 

The barn at Cades Cove Visitor Center

The Elijah Oliver Place in Cades Cove

Interior of the Elijah Oliver Place

Corn crib in Cades Cove

Cantilever-style Cable Mill Barn, Cades Cove

Tipton Cabin in Cades Cove 

(This cabin, like many structures we saw in the park,

is leveled and supported on stacks of flat stones.)

Carter Shields Cabin in Cades Cove

Old Jim Bales Place on Roaring Fork Nature Trail

Rear view of the Ephraim Bales Place on Roaring Fork Trail

Seeing the forest AND the trees (and the leaves, too)

There are plenty of wide open spaces in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, large, relatively flat fields where the farmers of yesteryear may have planted crops to feed their families through cold mountain winters. Those vast fields hold their own kind of beauty, but the mountain views in the background were less spectacular than the ones we saw on the Blue Ridge Parkway, and I was happy to pass through these spaces and get back in the thickly forested areas.

The auto trails were mostly narrow, one-way roads through the woods, and I, a lifelong tree lover, couldn't have found myself in a more enchanting place. Trees grew tall all around us, a huge variety of them, setting the scene for my favorite part of our vacation trip (topped only by the joyful opportunity of spending so much  time in the company of my sister).





I love being in the woods. I love the smell of the air there. I feel sheltered and safe when I'm surrounded by trees, and that sense of security stayed with me throughout our time in the park. Except for that one time when my sister ran over a fairly large fallen rock where there was a sharp drop-off on my side of the car and for a brief second I fully expected us to go tumbling down the mountainside. Except for that I felt safe. Oh, and except for a few minutes late in the afternoon when the trees were so thick that no sunlight got through their branches, and we couldn't see another car either in front of us or behind us. That was a little spooky, too.





So, I love the woods, and I also love the individual trees. There's something about tree bark that appeals to the old soul inside of me. It has a timeless quality, I think, and I especially appreciate the texture of wood in its rawest form.








Sometimes it's the shape of a particular tree that catches my eye.

Or a graceful posture that sets it apart from all the others, the way a prima ballerina stands out from the rest of a dance troupe. 

Employing an even narrower focus, what would a forest be without the leaves on those trees?

The beauty may be in the shape of the leaves...

...or in the way the light shines through them...

...or in an unexpected pop of color like these...

...and these:

The Smoky Mountains are famous for cloaking themselves in vibrant colors every autumn. We arrived a little too early in the year to enjoy the full display, but every now and then, scattered among late summer's lush greenness, we came upon a few clusters of over-achievers and got the tiniest hint of the color that would surely arrive shortly after we returned to our homes:

I envy the tourists who will travel these trails in the next six weeks. They're sure to see some of Mother Nature's finest work.