An Easter Hike: Path to the Past
1. A ladder that allows hikers to bypass a barbed wired fence seems to separate one world from another.
2. Once we cross over, our mood becomes somber, as we discover and explore an abandoned house site.
3. We come upon an old bed of springs from which a mass of bramble bushes is growing out of. Next to it is the rusty outline of a couch. I think about all the forts and outdoor clubhouses my girlfriends and I used to build when we were kids.
4. “Here’s the matching chair,” Joe shouts from further up the path.
5. “The family car!” I shout back. The road it drove on to get here is no longer visible.
6. I’m excited to find a patch of pink phlox growing nearby the metal remains because I know it had to have been planted there. The hands that planted it have long ago left this world, but the beauty of their efforts still returns in the spring.
Post note: More Easter Adventure is HERE.
April 13th, 2007 9:33 am
You always do a good job with your pictures.
I heard that the minerals of the rust helps flowers grow.
Has anyone else heard this?
April 13th, 2007 9:47 am
If you were down in Rock Castle Gorge, most of those old homeplaces belonged to my direct ancestors, at least on the upper end. Sad that they had to be abandoned.
April 13th, 2007 10:18 am
Sherry, Maybe the rust gives plants a good dose of iron and combats plant anemia?
Leslie, I hope to visit the Greenberry House soon and hear more about why people (your kin!) had to abandon their homes along the parkway. There are some abandoned house sites in remote places down the escartment (big drop off behind our place) which I assumed happened because they have no road access.
April 13th, 2007 10:25 am
That picture of the bed springs is amazing. Fantastic!
April 13th, 2007 10:33 am
I see a good tattoo image in the bed springs. You know, like Mara’s triple spiral.
April 13th, 2007 11:06 am
I love to come upon the evidence of an old homeplace while hiking. Sometimes it is just some errant daffodils or a rock wall half buried in leaves and dirt. It reinforces the fact that we do not own the land, we are just visitors passing through. It sounds like a great hike, thanks for taking us along.
April 13th, 2007 12:32 pm
i love stumbling across these kinds of things…. and daydreaming about the history and lives that were lived there.
there is a place called cataloochie mountain in NC that was abandoned when the government made it into a protected park area….you have to drive up miles of windy, dirt road but the homes, old school, and churches have all been preserved. it’s beautiful…..
April 13th, 2007 12:41 pm
Is it anywhere near Asheville? I’ll ask Josh about it. He’s loving the town of Marshall, by the way! Just started on the kiln building.
April 13th, 2007 3:16 pm
I used to love building forts in the woods behind my house in Brockton. This brings it all back.
April 13th, 2007 8:01 pm
Ah! Wonderful pink phlox! I hope spring is really happening there now!
You always wonder about the people stories that must go with abandoned houses!
April 13th, 2007 10:01 pm
What a great hike! I love the pink flowers amid all the rust and abandoned things.
April 14th, 2007 7:26 am
All things pass away, yet the flower seem to leave a spirit of hope, don’t they?
April 14th, 2007 10:21 am
I like phlox because of its resilience along with its beauty.
Nice pictures…I like all the swirls and contrasts.
April 16th, 2007 4:04 pm
colleen: here’s the link to cataloochie….
http://www.nps.gov/grsm/planyourvisit/cataloochee.htm