Chimney Rock

May 3, 2021

We headed north towards the North Carolina state line, starting from the burbs on the usual route up U.S. 25. My daughter Marie drove, the two boys were in their kid seats behind us. The destination was Chimney Rock, maybe an hour southeast of Asheville. She cut onto I-26 just south of the border then abruptly onto U.S. 64 east, which took us quickly into the mountains. Just after passing through Bat Cave, N.C., we craned our necks to look up at the peaks, which seems to rise suddenly from the fast-flowing Broad River.

We pulled into the village just outside the Rock, gaping at the sheer bare granite wall that we learned was formed before the Cretaceous Period, and now looms above the river and nearby Lake Lure. Chimney Rock became a state park in 2006 when the state purchased the 1,000-acre tract from the family that established it and opened it to the public in 1902. You can walk 449 stairs from the parking lot to the observation tower or take a 26-story elevator ride. At the summit the visitor stands before a panorama of the valley and the lake that extends 50 miles or more to the hazy eastern horizon. You then can teeter up a narrow walkway to the top, where the rock tower has separated from the mountain. There’s a railing, some folks venture close to the 2,280-foot drop. I kept my distance, yelling nervously at the boys, who showed no fear.  

The place is one of those phenomena of God’s creation that seizes the visitor’s emotions. Nearly everyone has had the experience somewhere: the humbling recognition that something before us, something we may have stumbled on, not only takes our breath away but also demolishes our presumption that we’re too smart, too world-weary, to be awed.

The Grand Canyon would be another such place, among countless others. As we crossed a stone bridge to Chimney Rock, watching the Broad River rush almost in anger over giant rocks took me back, the way old guys get taken back. I was on a bus from the Bozeman, Mont., airport to the hamlet of Big Sky for some now long-forgotten conference.

From the bus window, as we left the Bozeman suburbs and entered thick evergreen forest, I watched the road curve close to the rushing Gallatin River. The white water slashed in torrents through narrow gorges, announcing that I was in a different world. The dark, wild river spoke of the creation of beauty in that faraway, alien place.

That bus ride now was nearly forty years ago, the early 1980s. I got off the bus and let that unsettling impression form in memory. Soon afterward I reoriented to office life, staff meetings, and tamer bus rides along city streets and interstates at the less-than breakneck pace of the bureaucrat-commuter. But the images remained, along with the certainty that that brush with the unrestrained, indifferent power and loveliness of the natural world can transform human souls.

That lesson, which seemed insightful and complicated when it occurred to me, actually is simple, childlike, crystal-clear for anyone who ventures outdoors and looks around. I felt it elsewhere, on rough hikes in Virginia mountains, on wide beaches, but also on urban streets and sidewalks where men have succeeded in creating beauty and grace.

After escaping the unearthly Chimney Rock tower we settled at a picnic table for our peanut butter sandwiches. Marie noticed an older guy wearing a Tennessee Vols cap seated nearby. We chatted, I mentioned we lived in Nashville years ago, he asked where. “Near Vanderbilt,” I told him. He said he’s from Clarksville, up near Kentucky; he had ten years on me. His wife had passed, he’s now dating a woman from Knoxville, his high-school sweetheart, who also lost her spouse. Unlike us, they walked the 449 steps. I told myself I’ll try that if I can last ten more years.

We walked the winding two-mile Hickory Nut Falls trail to the base of the falls, which tumble 2,580 feet to a rocky pool then cascade on to the river. The observation platform wasn’t enough thrill for the boys, they hustled down over the wet, slippery rocks where the exploding water bathed us in spray. Finally we retrieved them, the younger one ran back down the trail ahead of us. As we walked to the car the Tennessee couple passed us and waved. On to their next four-score years’ adventure, I guessed.

Outside the park we walked down to the river, which curls through the little town and watched the blue-green water crash over giant boulders. As the kids waded in the shallows and threw rocks, I recalled that day I watched the Gallatin in Montana, also lined with deep mountain forest but 2,000 miles away, in a different mountain range, history, and culture, replicated here in this rough and beautiful eastern wilderness.

We thought we should get on the road, but others passed by and chatted a bit, about what a pretty place this is next to New Jersey—why do they pick on Jersey? We let the kids play along the river a bit longer, getting some extra time in that mountain woodland, maybe creating their own memories of a few hours in touch with the serenity of God’s natural world. Maybe when they’re in their thirties or forties, even later, with kids of their own, they’ll think of that day. And maybe remember that grandpa was there.