[at-l] Hills of Glory - Part III

[cballs@mindspring.com (Curtis Balls)]

I Have Seen the Hills of Glory - Part III

I  woke up in the clouds . The mountains had disappeared and the forest
was, at last, quiet. I made coffee and oatmeal and watched as the sun
burned off the vaporous clouds racing through the forest and shrouding the
mountains in great waves of billowy whiteness.  The only sound was the
sound of the clouds catching in the tree branches. It was beautiful and
eerie. After a leisurely breakfast, I packed up and headed back to the
mining camp.  I enjoy morning walking the most, especially this morning
before the August heat made the hiking so uncomfortable. I had the perfect
stroll back through the woods in the dappled green light pierced through
with beaming shafts of yellow making the rock outcroppings I'd passed on
the way up glisten like gold. Just before reaching the coal tipple on the
bridge, a man in what looked like one of those three wheeled security
vehicles you see everywhere in New York City pulled up to the far side of
the bridge.  As I was coming to the end of the bridge, he got out of the
truck and began changing the trash can liners in the trashcans setting at
the end of the bridge.

"Good mornin'," I said.
"Mornin', he answered.
He was a big man.  A tall, thick, round man with long brown hair and a
cigar stub wedged between his fingers.  He looked to be somewhere around 40
years old and like he'd just gotten out of the shower.
"You comin' from Nancy?" he asked.
I explained where I'd spent the night and we talked about how beautiful the
woods are.  He said he'd grown up in McCreary County and had often gone
hunting in the woods as a young boy.  (Unless they're from Louisville or
Lexington, nearly all Kentuckians, if asked where they're from, will give
you the name of the county, automatically, at times even before telling you
the name of the town, but nearly always together.  In Ireland and in the
English and Scottish countryside today you will hear the same thing. ) He
never told me which town in McCreary County. He said that the county was
80% owned by the Federal Government and was listed as the poorest or nearly
the poorest county in the state.  He'd been on welfare, he said, when the
call came asking if he wanted the job of maintenance man at the Blue Heron
Mining Community Museum.  He said he couldn't believe they were asking him
that question because of course it was better than being on welfare,
although he understood why some people get on it and stay on it.  The jobs
just don't pay enough. We both agreed that we'd worry about the millions in
public money given to poor people just as soon as Congress stopped giving
away the billions to rich people in the form of corporate welfare, tax
abatements, land deals, the defense budget and God alone knows how many
other ways the government has of giving away money to people who don't need
it, don't deserve it and to whom it doesn't belong.  As he talked about
having to live with his brother-in-law for awhile in the double-wide and
how hard it had been, I got the notion that this was a sweet old bear of a
guy who was likely generous with what little he had and had probably tried
to deal with his demons through alcohol and was maybe turning a corner and
I suspected his friends called him "Bubba Peewee" just because he's so big.
But I don't know.  He coulda killed somebody.

I asked him about where the trail went from where we were and he tried to
tell me but he hadn't walked it himself so I'd do better by asking one of
the Rangers that was then down at the rest area, he said.  He told me
exactly how to get down there, I thanked him, and we wished each other a
good day.  Once at the rest area, a building with soda machines and
bathrooms and a pay phone, I stopped to talk to one of the Rangers.  The
Ranger, a tall, wiry, late middle-aged man, told me that the Blue Heron
Mining Camp Museum had been opened in the late 1980's and averages about
100,000 visitors a year, a figure I thought was incredible.  "Most of the
visitors come on the Big South Fork Scenic Railway from Stearns, " he said.
"But a lot of 'em drive in too."  The train, operated by a Park
concessionaire, runs about five miles from Stearns down to the Blue Heron
Mining Camp, down 600 feet, the brochure says, hugging clifflines and
following roaring mountain streams, passing through a tunnel and over a
bridge on its way to the floor of the river valley.  I told the Ranger how
much I was enjoying my hike and where I'd been and where I was going.  He
said that the Cumberland River was prettier and that I should not miss the
Cumberland Falls, the only place to see a moonbow in the Western
Hemisphere.  He lives on the Cumberland.  He told me how the Park Service
had brought in the bears that had then gone right back to the Smokies and
then the pregnant bears that stayed.   He told me where the Blue Heron Loop
continued from the Camp and since I had interrupted him and his co-worker
in doing landscape work around the rest area, we parted.

I decided to go into the restroom and clean up, brush my teeth, wash out my
cooking pan and refill my water bottles.  While I was washing up, Bubba
PeeWee came in to sweep and carry out the trash.  "Jus' take ya time," he
said.  "I'm jus' sweepin' up a little. No need ta rush."  It didn't look
like it needed sweeping, but it was his job, so he had to sweep it anyway.
He swept around, picked up a dust ball or two, and then went into the
supply room behind the towel dispenser.  As I was closing up my pack, he
came out of the supply room and offered me a new roll of government quality
toilet paper.
"Here, ya need this?"
"Well, yes," I said reluctantly.  "Thank you,"
"Well, I'd 'druther give it to ya, than have ya steele it," he said.
It hadn't occurred to me to steal it.  I had some. I was almost out, but I
really hadn't thought about stealing toilet paper.  I guess Bubba Peewee
has had experience with people taking the toilet paper.  Day-hikers
probably who get out there in the woods and find that they haven't planned
very well.  Who knows how many rolls a year they loose out there or how
many rolls Bubba Peewee has given away.  As I said, I'd already guessed
that he was a generous man, and his generosity apparently extends to
government property as well.  I stuffed the paper in my pack, harnessed up,
and on my way out the door said, "Thank you again, and thanks for looking
out for the needs and interest of the taxpayers too."
"Yeah," he said, "so long.  Enjoy yer hike."

I walked around behind the rest area, across the back parking lot, and
found the trail as it followed right along the banks of the Big South Fork
River.  I walked down to the river and looked out across it.  It was moving
quickly and seemed much further across than the views of it from up in the
mountains made it seem.  In the mid-morning light, the river, the bank and
the trees around vibrated with life and activity.  Grasshoppers were flying
about and butterflies darted from grass to flower to tree and spider webs
were strung everywhere.  The birds were having a shindig; if the owls had
been up it would have been a hootenanny.  I walked back up to the trail and
continued on.  I passed a man with a fishing pole coming from the other
direction.  We both said good morning and I asked if he was going fishing,
which was really stupid but all I could think to say.  "Yeah," was all he
said.  Neither of us stopped.  This section of trail follows near the
river, which is visible through the trees on the bank.  The area was shaded
well in a full canopy of trees but with sun filtering through the treetops.
There were lots of rocks and tree roots in the trail.  I came on a terrapin
making its way across the trail going toward the river.  I stopped to
admire it for awhile.  It didn't hide itself inside its shell.  It just
stopped and peered back at me over its shell, waiting to see what I was
going to do.  It was exciting to see the terrapin since I hadn't seen one
since I was a kid so I talked to it for awhile, asking it where it was
going and where it had come from, in that way you talk to wildlife in the
woods when no one else is around, like it's going to answer you.  It just
looked at me with that look that said, "If you can't figure it out stupid,
don't expect me to tell you."  Which is fairly sophisticated conversation
for a land turtle, complete with attitude.  He must have come from New
York.

The trail veered off away from the riverbank and began a gentle ascent back
up the mountain, through some fine stands of stately poplar, oak and beech
trees.  The woods were dark here and mysterious.  There were a couple
switchbacks and plenty of spider webs.  I was wiping spider webs off my
face about every 100 yards or so.  Eventually, I came to
Crack-in-The-Rocks, which I'd seen signs for the day before.  Not ever
having seen a photograph of Crack-in-The-Rocks, I didn't know what to
expect. It's a rock outcropping about 80 feet overhead and runs about 50
feet on one side and then another 50 feet after forming a 90-degree turn.
It's in the middle of the woods, not at the mountain's edge, with trees all
around and trees growing on top.  In the middle of the first side you come
on, the rock is "split" open in an upside down V configuration about 10
feet wide at the base of the rock.  You can enter the rock, a cave-like
room which is roughly  40 feet from the mouth to the back and about 25 feet
across with a very tall ceiling.  It's split nearly to the top.  There's a
rock mound about 10 feet high in the center over which the Park Service has
built a set of stairs and a short bridge to another set of stairs on the
other side of the rock mound that descend down 15 feet or so to the other
side of the rock which is also "split."  The far side of the rock is split
more narrow, but you can walk out the other side.  It's like two upside
down Vs at a 90-degree angle to each other.  It's an amazing natural
formation.  Being in it and looking at from certain angles you could easily
imagine you are in Utah or Arizona.  I strolled around for awhile and took
a few pictures, none of which came out because it was too dark, which is
just as well.  I was glad that I hadn't seen any photographs of it before I
came to it.  I think photographs lessen the joy of discovering natural
places like this because it robs you of the surprise.  I've often wondered
what the earliest Native Americans and the earliest Spanish explorers must
have felt like when they came on the Grand Canyon for the first time.  I've
had people argue with me about my belief about photographs, saying, "Oh, I
don't think that's true.  The Grand Canyon is really beautiful."  As if I'd
said that seeing photographs of the Grand Canyon made it ugly once you get
to it or made it a disappointment or made it uninspiring.  Since feelings
are a completely temporal and subjective experience, how do they know what
they would have felt like if they had been taken to the Grand Canyon
without ever having seen a picture of it or known that it exists?  Having
seen a photograph, there's no surprise in the discovery.  You've already
"seen" it.  Impressions and expectations have already been established
before you  have the real experience. You're not going to have the same
experience.  It seems to me that the memory of the photography colors your
experience.  It's unavoidable.  It doesn't mean you're going to have a bad
experience, it just means it won't be the one that people had who walked up
on the natural wonder of the Grand Canyon without ever having known it
existed.   Why is that so difficult to understand?   I think in our
image-soaked and virtual-reality shaped world, people are in denial about
being photo-altered.  I realize I just told you about Crack-in-The-Rocks so
you should forget everything I said and just go see it for yourself.

The trail was pleasant and hot and uneventful after Crack-in-The-Rocks.   I
rested often because of the heat.  It occurred to me why I didn't see
anyone on the trail.  It was August and saner people had enough sense to
stay out of the heat.  The trail looked well used so I suspect that spring
and fall are the busy seasons.  At one rest stop I had an argument with my
boss in my head basically because I think he's an arrogant twit and
incompetent to boot.  He's from New Jersey.  After a few minutes of telling
him off, I got hold of myself and told myself to snap out of it.  I was in
the woods on vacation, he was a thousand miles away.  I didn't have to
waste my energy or my time on him here.  I didn't want him to intrude on
this place.  I remembered the Tibetan Buddhist story of two monks walking
through the woods who came on a woman needing help crossing the river.  One
of the monks picked her up, carried her across, and sat her down.  Since
Tibetan Buddhist monks are forbidden to touch a woman, the other monk began
to berate the monk who'd carried the woman across the river for what he'd
done.  He went on for the rest of the day about it.  For the rest of the
day the monk who'd carried the woman across the river said nothing.
Finally, he said,  "I carried that woman for twenty feet, and you've been
carrying her for twenty miles."   I sat my boss down on the river bank and
went on with my hike.

There was a lot of storm damage on this portion of the trail and at one
point I had to go around some of it that was directly down on the trail.
As I neared where I had parked the car, I began to wonder if it was still
there and was relieved to find that it was.  I threw the pack in the car
the first thing and then took off my shirt and rang out the water.  A cup
of water came out of it.  I laid it on the trunk to dry in the heat for a
while as I munched on some trail mix. It was about 1:00 o'clock.  After I
rested, I gathered everything and took off to find fresh water.  I drove
back toward Stearns along US 27.  I asked the clerk at a service
station/grocery store how to get to Yahoo Falls.

Yahoo Falls used to be part of the Daniel Boone National Forest, which
surrounds Big South Fork National Park in Kentucky.  When Big South Fork
was established, the Daniel Boone people deeded over the portion of the
land that includes Yahoo Falls so that it is now in Big South Fork.  Like
Crack-In-The-Rock I hadn't seen any pictures of Yahoo Falls.  I had not
read anything about it either, just enough to know that it existed.  Just
inside the Daniel Boone National Forest, the road to Yahoo Falls turns
gravel.  After descending and winding around the gravel road for about a
mile you come to a rest area with bathrooms and trail markers.  The
trailhead sign said it was less than a mile to the  Falls.  At one point
along the trail, you descend a metal staircase of nearly a hundred steps
around to the hollow in which the Falls are.  As you near the Falls, the
forest begins to take on a very primeval feel, dark and dense and
moss-covered from all the moisture.  It is easy to imagine antediluvian
creatures roaming here, Tyrannosaurus Rexes, giant Armadillos, mammoth
catfish and snakes big as trees.  As I rounded the lip of the hollow I
could hear the water crashing against the rocks.  The first glimpse of
Yahoo Falls is heart-stopping.  The rock shelter over which the Falls come
stretches the entire distance around the hollow.  The marker that sets just
around the corner of the hollow explains that it is one hundred thirteen
feet from the top of the shelter to the ground and that it's the tallest
Falls in Kentucky.  Archaeological work in the area indicates human
activity extending back more than nine hundred years.  It's about sixty
feet from the back of the rock shelter, which slopes outward as it goes up,
to the outer edge of the capstone where the Falls break and fall.  You can
see trees on the capstone along the stream that forms the Falls growing to
the very top edge of the shelter.  The forest also comes to the shelter
along the pool at the bottom.  The dim light caused by the dense woods all
around and the special beauty of the place makes the whole scene take on a
feeling of sacredness.  I kept thinking I was in church.  No, it was better
than church. No church or synagogue or mosque or temple in the world can
make you feel as transcendent, as fully present as does Yahoo Falls.  Since
no one else was there, the experience was intensified, the remoteness more
pronounced. I stood in awe for awhile and simply watched the water tumble
over the edge and crash against the rocks at the bottom.  As I walked
around behind the falls, the echo off the back of the shelter made the
Falls seem to splash directly in my ear.  I felt like praying.  I didn't
know about what exactly, just a prayer of thanks.  I prayed to whatever
forces had made this place, to time, the elements, the cosmos.  I prayed to
the rocks and the trees and to the waterfall. I walked back to the marker
and stood and stared a while longer. I decided to do what no half-sane
person would come here and not do.  I stripped off all my clothes and went
under the Falls. The water was cool and powerful as it pounded my head and
my back and my feet, washing away the heat of the day and lifting my
spirits.  I wanted to sing. "Thank you God, for this. Thank you.  I love
the earth," I said out loud.  I stepped out of the water and then I went
back in.  I stayed under the Falls for 10 or 15 minutes reveling in the joy
and sacredness of the place.  Of course the Native Americans would have
hung out here, anyone would.  I then began to fear that some church group
would round the corner and catch me and they wouldn't understand.  I don't
think church groups understand stuff like stripping off naked in a National
Park, even if it is the right thing to do.  I dried off a little with my
bandana and put my clothes back on.  I then went exploring around the rock
shelter and found a few used condom packages.  I thought, what a wonderful
place to make love. (But please don't leave the evidence behind.)  To make
love in such a place, it seems to me, would make you fall so completely in
love with another person that it would transform you somehow and every time
you looked at that person from then on those Falls would break over the
high up places in your heart and bless all your memories of that person so
that no matter what happened to your love after that you'd never be able to
forget them because you had shared such an experience in such a place of
magnificence.   Maybe that's why they call it Yahoo Falls.  But I was
alone, and I too felt like shouting "Yahoo!"   I could have stayed there
forever listening.  I tried to imagine how it looks at different times of
the day or different times of the year or in the moonlight.  It must
amazing in the light of a full moon.

--------------------------

Curtis