June 8, 2020
We spent America’s week of bitterness driving through the high country of northwestern South Carolina. Main Street in Greenville was quiet when we passed through, folks strolled without masks and crowded into outdoor seating at restaurants. Local people demonstrated downtown calmly, while the state sent National Guardsmen to Washington “to assist local law enforcement,” the Guard said.
Meanwhile South Carolina, one of the first states to reopen, now is seeing covid cases increasing again.
Our daughter, son-in-law, and two grandsons have settled in Upstate, the nickname for this region, tucked between North Carolina and Georgia. It’s hugely different from the coastal Low Country, which offers tidal marshes, Spanish moss and, in summer, stifling heat and beach tourism–for me, an alien world.
Upstate is frontier country, on the southern fringe of the Blue Ridge. Greenville is an hour from Asheville, North Carolina’s gateway to the Pisgah National Forest, which merges with the Great Smokies and crosses into Tennessee. You can see the pale blue silhouettes of the mountains from downtown.
So we escaped the tragedies racking the country for a few days. South Carolina, after all, is mainly a hard-red state; the governor, McMaster, and the two senators, Graham and Scott, are Trump groupies. The anger and grief playing out elsewhere seems muted here.
We explored the rough-edged country north of Greenville. The mountains show up quickly as the traffic falls away outside Greenville County. U.S. 25, the road to Asheville, takes you first into rugged foothills then to thick forest, sharp peaks, and cold lakes. This country isn’t the Rockies, but brings me images of the Shenandoahs and Massanuttens minus the granite carpeting.
I hiked a few miles on the Carrick Creek Trail, through deep Carolina forest along the narrow, thundering creek as it rims the sheer, balding face of Table Rock Mountain. The trail links to the 80-mile Foothills Trail, which runs to Oconee State Park through a series of spidery trail connections in both Carolinas to the Appalachian Trail.
The Greenville-Asheville axis has become a refuge for wilderness defenders, climate-change crusaders, and let’s face it, old folks. If you head west or north along winding backcountry roads you probably will traverse the 370,000-acre Sumter National Forest, then enter a larger and richer ocean of wilderness: the Cherokee, Pisgah, and Nantahala National Forests. The Chattahoochee NF then spreads out across northern Georgia, split by the fierce Dragon’s Spine west of Blairsville.
We skirted the area years ago, heading home from Nashville. We had stopped for a quick visit to Frozen Head State Park northwest of Knoxville, with its angry, jagged peaks, site of the infamous Barkley Marathon, the race almost no one finishes. The Barkley course passes through the site of the now shut-down Brushy Mountain State Prison, for a time the home of James Earl Ray. We stayed one night in Johnson City, then pressed on to Elizabethton and into the dense, not to say impenetrable Cherokee on U.S. 91. We drove around 15 mph for a couple of hours to Shady Valley, Tenn., a minuscule, shining gem, as close to Shangri-la as I’ve ever seen. It’s just south of Damascus, Va., another tiny, near-mythical place, but a key marker along the A-Trail. Anyway, that’s how I remember it.
These places and roads stay with me. Years ago we traveled east from Nashville into Appalachia to Pikeville in Bledsoe County, Tenn. We used to visit Sandy’s aunt and uncle on their farm just outside town, in majestic country, the Sequatchie Valley along the Sequatchie River. The Valley extends north-south between nearly sheer cliffs, the Cumberland Plateau to the east and what’s called Walden Ridge to the west. Eventually they sold the farm and moved to town. We kept visiting Pikeville until they passed.
The memories become keener farther along the mountains to the southwest, still rugged and massive into Franklin County, where Sandy grew up. “Sewanee Mountain” was the summit, and 41A the road through Cowan, her hometown. Her family is long gone, scattered through the Volunteer State. The last time we visited we stopped at the cemetery. Sewanee, site of the prestigious University of the South, is just up the mountain. From there it’s an hour either to Chattanooga or Huntsville.
If you push southwest from Sewanee you’re still in rough country, and will find the Talledega National Forest in Alabama, and the state’s highest point, Mount Cheaha. It sits astride the Pinhoti Trail, which starts or finishes in northwestern Georgia, with half of its 330-mile length in each state. I ran part of Pinhoti’s pine-needle carpet two years ago.
If instead you head west, the mountains smooth into gentle hills and valleys through Huntland, Fayetteville, and Lawrenceburg. By Jackson the hills have flattened, the soil is just right for growing cotton. The country is transformed. Prairie stretches west for a thousand miles.
We tried going west two years ago, interrupted (I repeat myself) by medical things. We won’t be attempting it again. From here in S.C. we’ll climb back up the mountains in the opposite direction to get home—for a while. We started some projects we should finish. The place needs work.
So we’ll backtrack through Charlotte, Durham, Richmond, Fredericksburg and wait for better days. Covid-wise, northern Virginia has not yet reopened. We’re still watching Mass on the internet, old folks are asked to stay home. Just as important, maybe more, the blasts from Mattis, Mullen, Powell, and other former four-stars are having an impact with the Republicans, or a few of them. I have faith they will go the way of all corruption. Meanwhile, we have three other kids to visit.
On the Road 