The Kindness of Rangers

Monday I spent way too long in the park gift shop ogling beautiful toys, the work of Kentucky and Tennessee artists and crafts people. And yes, I succumbed to temptation, buying a birthday gift for a friend–a small, framed watercolor of a cockatoo. I drove through the rest of the day determined to spend the night at Pine Mountain State Resort Park. Doing so, I would have a short drive to Cumberland Gap National Historic Park the next day.

It turned out that the campground at Pine Mountain was closed, though the woman at the desk of the lodge did not remember why. In looking over the impressive log lodge that was open, I found a beautiful dining room with timbered ceilings and huge windows with fantastic views of wooded mountain slopes. The room was filling up with elderly people (you know--in the ages I will be in 10 to 20 years.) Looking at the menu, I could see why the place was busy. Not only was there a mesmerizing view, there was a nice looking salad bar buffet for six dollars. The soup and salad was delicious, yet I can brag that I did not over-eat, as I am often wont to do on buffet occasions. The incredible close up mountain display was really filling enough.

The closed campground meant some extra driving that evening, but I managed to pull into Cumberland Gap’s Wilderness Road Campground just after dark, maybe around eight o’clock. There were plenty of spaces open and registration was on the honor system -- take a tag, find a spot, then come back to the station to put your money and form in the slot provided. I picked a spot on a hill not too far from a shower and biffy house and then pretty much collapsed into bed.

Looking at a map in the morning, I realized I was in the state of Virginia, though the main park was in Kentucky and part of Tennessee. I fell in love with the area and stayed at the campground for six nights total, abandoning thoughts of moving on towards Florida. The campground was sparsely populated in the non-electric area, and not overcrowded in the area with RV hookups. Showers were included in the $12 per night fee, and the neighbors were generally peaceful and friendly.

I kept thinking I should head on down the road to facilitate keeping my ambitiously long agenda, but it was such a perfect spot for me: solitude for writing, beautiful surroundings, people nearby for company, and trails available that were open to The Dude. Another bonus–it was practically a zero grocery bag litter-site. The first site I stayed in was clean but for a couple of paper towels, a white bottle cap, and a dozen cigarette and cigar butts. I had seen much worse.

Later speaking to the volunteer caretakers, I found out they deserved thanks for keeping the campground so clean. The married couple told me they didn’t go litter collecting on the trails much. I picked up only a few cans and some paper on the trails, so apparently the visitors here were being tidy. Once a ranger came around with some schoolchildren to clean up fire grates, doing their part to keep the place clean. The park provided recycling barrels for cans, bottles and plastic containers. I was happy to see them at many of the parks.

Whether or not they pick up all the trash, I will say that the park employees I meet while visiting national parks are great! At Mammoth Cave, the rangers who bring up the rear of the lines of shuffling tourists were all polite as they tried to keep folks moving along the cave paths. Depending on the tour, they could have anywhere between 40 and 120 people to keep out of trouble in the deep caverns. The people selling tickets or postcards, giving out information at the visitor centers, or staffing the campgrounds were all NICE! All of these people, no doubt underpaid and perhaps worried about future funding for their jobs, were all doing their jobs without being crabby or rude, as service workers can sometimes be. They seemed genuinely happy to sell a postcard or to answer odd questions even from annoying people. I could add “like me,” but I wouldn’t really mean it. On my 2005 trip, I remarked on the phenomenon to three women rangers at Mesa Verde National Park. They had been helping me figure out where to find camping on my way to another park. They did an on-line search and showed me some options at national forest sites. They looked surprised at my declaration of the happy helpfulness of rangers. They agreed with each other that it is probably because they love their jobs.

After reconnoitering the next day on a walk around the entire campground, I carefully selected what I thought would be the nicest site. I am picky about the perfect campsite, and if given my lead, I will sometimes spend too much time evaluating the merits of various available sites. (See next chapter.) Trees are nice but some sun is nice too for the solar panel. Brush and trees to make some privacy from adjoining sites is ideal. If a lake or a stream is nearby, that is so much the better. I prefer a site that is not surrounded by other campers, and if it stays that way during my stay, then I consider myself lucky. I like not having to listen to other people’s music and conversation. Some of the sites were too near the busy highway for me, but with the hills, there were many sites sheltered from the noise. I found a spot surrounded by trees and rocks with no immediate neighbors, and it stayed quiet the other five nights I was there. I didn’t have hookups at the site I picked, but as I said earlier, I was set up for that situation.

As well as hiking on the trails near the campground, I enjoyed sitting in my “yard” in my canvas chair reading or watching The Dude obsess about his ball. When he tired of that, he would often lay down by my feet, especially if I had chosen to sit at the picnic table, which offered him the possibility of falling food.

Most days were pretty laid back. Here is a list I made the second evening at the Gap campground as I tried to figure out where the time was going:

Today I:
Slept late
Called the VISA people (To assure them my card had not been stolen. Hurray for them for watching! It made me feel very “traceable” though I'm not running from anything that can trace me.)
Distributed my waste to various containers
Fixed the Stair!!!  (The result of another good move on my part. I caught a piece of the metal steps on a curb while exiting a wayside rest.)
Took down some shelves and put up other shelves
Planned a leg of my route
Wrote in my journal (the kind where you use a pen and paper)
Took a couple of short walks
Spoke to the campground hosts and their dog, Banjo
Found out where to get water
Did the dishes
Ate good–had the last of the Swiss cheese and tomato

So as you can see, it was a very productive day of hanging out and putzing.

On most days that we stay put, The Dude begins by grabbing his tennis ball and standing by the camper door. What better life than to have someone to play ball and go for walks and give you treats. For The Dude the bummer is when that someone drives a lot. I’m assuming that he enjoyed the time of pretty much staying in one place exploring great smelly trails.

One sunny afternoon, The Dude and I enjoyed walking along the Wilderness Road Trail, a re-creation of the Cumberland Gap Trail made famous by Daniel Boone. Roads for cars and trucks had once been built across it, but now the park service is trying to restore it to the conditions that existed 200-plus years ago. The highway had been rerouted and a long tunnel dug through the mountains under the naerly 2000 foot high Tri-State Peak. Some of the trail was still a dirt road and some was hiking trail. The area at the Gap itself had been landscaped and planted to approximate the conditions the settlers would have seen in the late 1700s. It will be many years (if ever) before the trail is once again the densely wooded forest of Boone’s time.

Scholar of history that I am (not), I was unaware of the importance of The Gap to the European expansion west on this continent. I remembered Boone as some kind of “courageous pioneer” only because there was a TV show about him when I was a kid. He shot a “baar” or something, right? And as the song says, he “was a man, A REAL MAN!” (My friend Karin informs me that it was Davy Crockett who shot the baar when he was only three. Fess Parker did play both characters, thus no doubt, my confusion.) The Gap has been memorialized to Boone, though he was not the original European discoverer. Boone was considered a hero for exploring it and opening it to settlers. Of course the Native Americans had been using trails through the Gap for hundreds of years. The tribes in the area called the route The Warrior’s Path. For them, our migration was an intrusion by unwanted immigrants. (Is this a reason we are so afraid of immigrants in today’s United States? Because we know how much trouble our immigrant forefathers caused for the original residents and we fear being the underdogs this time around?)

Europeans bought Gap-area land from the Cherokee in 1775. Too bad the Cherokee were not the only tribe to use the area. They didn’t have “title” to it. That’s because the native tribes didn’t use the concept of individual ownership of land. So the Shawnee disputed the transaction. Ensuing violent disagreements over access prevented most settler traffic until the 1790s. Daniel Boone lost two sons, ages 16 and 21, in two different attempts to bring a group of settlers including his own family over The Gap. To lose two sons in the attempt to live in a land where you obviously weren’t wanted, how sad for Mrs. Boone. Could it have been worth the loss? Boone lost all his Kentucky lands to legal battles by 1788.

Native Americans had believed the mountains would hold the white man east of the Appalachians forever. The European’s breaching of the mountains at the Cumberland Gap was equivalent to a dam breaking, flooding Kentucky and beyond with settlers. Notice that we call our people “settlers,” a nice peaceful name, not “invaders” as the existing inhabitants considered us. After all, we felt entitled to take this “unused” land, and were aghast that the current residents should object. The natives didn’t have homes and farms there, “so why shouldn’t we?” must be the way we thought of it.

Imagine being one of those prospective settlers, whether not knowing or not caring about the concerns of the native inhabitants. Even those who were not attacked must have been afraid on the trip. Were they so desperate that the risk was worth it? The movie I saw at the park visitor center depicted the first settlers walking, riding or leading packhorses. Everything they owned had to be in their packs. Mostly tools and food I suppose? No haven at the end of the road, except what you could build for yourselves. I wonder how long it took to widen the path enough for carts and wagons?

Locals in the town of Cumberland Gap advised me that if you want to get an authentic idea of how these people experienced the historic crossings, you must see Wilderness Road State Park. Just a few miles east of the Gap campground on U.S. 58, it’s a great re-creation of Martin’s Station, a stop on settlers’ journey to The Cumberland Gap. Many tourists apparently would scoff at visiting this modest sized Virginia State Park for most of a day. A few other tourists came and went in minutes, while I spent several hours, taking photos of the fabulous building reproductions, talking to the actors and enjoying myself immensely. I found the place fascinating for its living history and for its scenic beauty. The fact that it was a warm, sunny day didn’t hurt.

Although the park and its Martin’s Station re-creation is located next to an operating modern farm, you can easily imagine yourself on the frontier as you look at the authentically restructured fort and buildings against a backdrop of rolling fields and mountains. Staffing the park that Saturday were three men and one woman in historical costume, all gracious and well able to spin their tales while staying in character.

While I was taking a photo of the land office, a man came out and asked if I was traveling alone in this dangerous territory. Then he offered to sell me land across The Gap in Kentucky. I was pleased to make the acquaintance of Daniel Boone. His cohort, Joseph Martin, proprietor of the fort, soon joined us in the office as we discussed ways to obtain land with cash, livestock, goods, or by indenturing oneself. Of course they couldn't sell anything to a woman, but they could sell to my husband. I offered to indenture Tom for some acreage and was given a sample of a document for doing so along with samples of documents that would have been used to purchase the land.

I learned from the woman, who was not playing a specific historical character that day, that they were all state park rangers. They had helped build the structures only the year before and a great deal of care had gone into historically accurate detail. They had constructed the fort, and the cabins inside and outside the fort, using methods that would have been used in the original Martin’s Station, although it was not built on the original site.

As I was poking around the cabins and animal pens outside the fort, three of the characters headed off anachronistically in a car for a lunch break. I wandered back to the fort and spent a pleasant half hour or more talking to a ranger who told me he had given himself over to being Captain Elias Titus of 1775. They were a seriously authentic group. It had taken fourteen men six weeks to build the original Station. It had taken many more modern day people much longer to make what most people who visit see as “simple” buildings. There had been a learning curve to rediscover the old methods and materials. To take the illusion further, the park service had stocked the fort with a loud and gregarious goose, whose name I have sadly forgotten, as well as chickens, horses and sheep. The buildings were fitted with reproductions of period furniture and in the Section Manager’s cabin, even replicas of books from the time period.

There was a shady area with picnic tables where The Dude and I lunched. We walked around the grassy park and picked up some litter that had caught in low rock formations poking out of the grass. Over and over I would find trash in picnic areas that had plenty of nearby trash barrels. I suppose one can blame squirrels for spreading some trash, but mostly I blame the humans who create it.

Daniel Boone and Joseph Martin were riding horses past the picnic area when The Dude decided to embarrass me by barking furiously at the horses, making them shy. I shouted an apology and hoped that the rangers had not been too inconvenienced by The Dude’s rude behavior.

The day had turned hot as we drove off in search of a good place to hike. I felt like a Minnesota Eskimo who had not figured out the mild climate in Virginia. I had worn a pair of jeans, hiking boots and a light jacket, but found it all much too warm as The Dude and I hiked to a small cave near a stream. I wanted to take it all off and throw myself in the stream, but I settled for a shower as soon as I got back to the campground, changing into shorts and t-shirt for the rest of the evening. This was living.

Cumberland Gap’s campground was one of my favorite stops on the trip. The weather was like midsummer back at home in Two Harbors, hot during the day while cooling to good “sitting” weather in the evening. The bugs were not bad, though the black gnats were becoming annoying. Cardinals sang in the trees while Blue Jays screamed in the distance. How nice to have such colorful birds in abundance. While I see Jays fairly often at home, I only rarely see a Cardinal.

One morning we woke to rain pounding on the roof. There were lots of things I could have done – make coffee at least. But the rain made me feel lazy, wanting to stare out the window from the warm covers and scratch The Dude’s neck. He was up on the bed with me because he was worried about the thunder. As I ran my fingers through his thick black fur, I found a wood tick attached to his neck. As he was already upset about thunder, I made a mental note to pull it later. The tick would not be going anywhere for a while. (Ha! Jocelyn has permission to skip the following paragraph, as I am sure she is already more than grossed out!)

Wood ticks are creepy little things that I have learned to put up with and not freak out about. I figure ticks are a small hazard in exchange for encountering wild flowers and wind in the leaves. I have a couple of friends who won’t even take a walk in the woods or fields because they might encounter ticks. It is not the fear of Lyme Disease that keeps them out of the woods, but the dread of an insect attaching itself to them. I don’t get it. If you pay attention to yourself, they won’t be on long! What’s the big deal???? (Can you tell I am a woods-woman? A REAL WOMAN?) I suppose we all need our phobias. I won’t tell you what mine are. You’ll probably deduce enough of my idiosyncrasies from reading this account! Actually, I’ll admit to being phobic about leeches, so who am I to talk?

Anyway, listening to the rain I dozed off again until almost noon. Being on vacation did not have to mean I was always hurrying to the next scenic view or tourist trap, behavior I am no stranger to. I tried to recreate by thinking and dreaming, as well as seeing and doing. By the time I crawled out of bed, the rain had stopped, and The Dude was more than ready for some outdoor time. While he watered the bushes, I sat at the table and drank yesterday’s cold coffee. (Oh, oh, now Debbie is choking.) I admired a semi circle pool of redbud petals against the black tar road. A Pileated Woodpecker screamed and I watched his red crest disappear into the trees. An unknown bird screamed “Makita, Makita, Makita!” I wish I had the discipline to learn more bird names and their songs.

We played ball, took a short walk, and I brought my cans and bottles to the recycling bins. Then I devised a latch for the screen door of the Toy House. It kept popping open, perhaps because it was unhappy with the level and plumb of the camper, or perhaps it was just a lousy latch. Bungee to the rescue. I put a hook just inside the door and used a small bungee to hold the door closed. Bungees are a camper’s best friend. You never regret having a nice assortment of colorful bungees.

As I spoke to Tom on my cell phone, (how rare to have cell coverage at a campsite!) another storm was rolling in. I stood in the doorway and watched a huge streak of lightening shoot across my field of vision. There was a lot of thunder and lightening and The Dude did not abide it well. He curled up on the driver’s side floor, while I enjoyed an afternoon of reading, writing, and looking at photos on my laptop.

I love digital cameras. I can take as many pictures as I like and it won’t cost me a thing unless I pay to have them printed. The memory chip I had in 2004 allowed me to take about 100 photos before I need to download them to the laptop. Then I erased the chip and started over. I had to be a lot more choosey about what I took photos of when I had to buy film and pay to develop it. I had brought my film camera but abandoned using it shortly into the trip, as I learned more about my new digital camera. I took about 2000 shots on the entire trip. Maybe I should have taken more. Now I have a much bigger memory chip so I could take nearly 2000 shots on one chip, even at my camera’s best resolution of three megabytes.

Neighbors arrived. An RV pulled into a site down the road from me. A couple of young bike enthusiasts pulled in to the site above me, got out their bikes, and sped off in the pouring rain. Soon after, the rain let up and The Dude and I enjoyed an evening stroll on a nearby trail. What a perfect vacation day.

One day I checked out the town of Cumberland Gap, a most compact town. The surrounding mountains keep it from spreading out. A cute little town and so historic! At least, signs pointing out the two roads that run in and out of town from the highway describe it as “Historic Cumberland Gap.” Half a dozen-some streets intersect blocks of older houses and a small business district. I imagine it gets quite crowded with tourists at peak times, but the day I was there it was mostly locals and only few of us tourists. Businesses all seem to be directed at tourists: cafes and gift shops. I was told that to find a grocery store, I needed to go to one of the bigger nearby towns.

An impressive new Community Center was closed, along with the gift shop next to it. The new national park visitor center being constructed on North Cumberland Drive was not open yet. I found a parking spot in the shade so The Dude wouldn’t overheat. After dropping some postcards at the Post Office, I walked down the main street, poking my nose into the shops that were open. My favorite was the Old Drug Store and Antiques. At first I thought it was an awfully small store full of bad tourist junk, fudge and a few shelves of over-the-counter headache and heartburn remedies. I didn’t see any antiques. As I purchased a couple postcards, the friendly woman behind the counter gave me a sample of fudge and asked if I liked antiques. Well yeah, I do. She directed me to the doorway at the back of the store, explaining how it led to other rooms and a stairway to upstairs rooms as well.

Thus I spent another half hour or so, checking out the interesting mix of old framed art, knick-knacks, furniture, and books. They had a book store upstairs with quite a selection of new and old books. I managed to pare my choices down to three: A book of Annie Proulx short stories, Context is Everything; The Nature of Memory, by Susan Engle, a study of research on the ways our minds remember events, and The Secret Language of Life, by Brian J. Ford, a look at communication among plants and among animals (that last of which I still haven’t gotten around to reading). I devoured the short stories and the memory book during my travels. I was blown away by the memory research showing that, given a particular situation being remembered, what we think we remember may not be something anyone else remembers. Which means you have to question any given version of reality. Which means I suppose that you should take everything I say in this book with a grain of salt. (And how the heck did that phrase come to mean “be suspicious of?”)

Another favorite shop was The General Store, which was not a general store at all but a treasure trove of doodads. Most of it was actually manufactured in China, so it did not make for “authentic” area souvenirs. If I want a souvenir of an area, I hope to find something made in the area or at least relevant to the area, rather than plastic things manufactured and shipped with petroleum products, not to mention possible slave labor. Nevertheless, I enjoyed browsing the store and its hundreds of resin statues and frames and wall hangings. I also explored a shelf in the back of the store that seemed to be the clearance section. Some of the doodads looked like they had been on the shelf since the 1950s. And there, I found my favorite souvenirs of the whole trip.

They are toothpick holders, so old they were made in Japan back when that was today’s equivalent of “made in China.” When I was a child all the weird junk you got for party favors or state fair prizes had stickers that said, “Made in Japan.” Today Japan makes excellent cars and electronics while our biggest source of cheap labor is found in China. How things change in half a lifetime. Anyway, the holders were three-inch high ceramic cups held by a disembodied hand. Only one had the tiny pack of toothpicks that originally came with each of the pink, blue, or yellow oddities. I bought all nine that were left. These were the treasures I presented to friends as my gift from the trip. Too bizarre to pass up–a serendipitous coup of souvenir success! Not everyone I gave them to recognized their cachet. Can’t understand why.

After a great lunch at Webb’s Country Kitchen, (Six dollars for a platter of stewed pinto beans, corn bread, cooked greens and fried potatoes – yum!) I collected The Dude for a walk on the Tennessee Road Trail. This quiet trail starts near the Berkau Picnic Park and the Iron Furnace. The Iron Furnace is a pyramidal rock building, the remains of an iron smelting facility from the 1820s. Descending from the mountain behind the pyramid was a stream that once turned a water wheel to power part of the smelting system.

The Dude and I scrambled up the rocky waterfalls and followed a path to The Gap Cave. The route took us past many brightly blooming wild flowers, views of distant hills, and an impressive waterfall that crossed the path itself. Slow walks like this were one of our greatest pleasures on the trip. It felt like everyone else we encountered that day was hell bent for leather. (Another mysterious phrase.) A group of red-faced young hikers were polite in passing, but apparently on a mission to get back to the parking lot. The only other relaxed hikers were a little boy and his dad. The young man, about five years old, told me he was not afraid of the cave because he could see in the dark.

There’s usually not much to tell about our hikes unless we see exciting wildlife, like the wild turkeys we saw that day or the alligators we saw later in the trip. The photographs I take on hikes are quite nice, and looking at them makes me want to get back out there. So I’ll just let you imagine that walk going on forever, The Dude smelling the great outdoors and me taking pictures of it, while my story moves to the next national park.