by Lin Stepp
Later that morning, as John arrived at Lydia’s with the boys, he corralled her to tell her that Mary Beth would be singing that evening. “Neal and Mary Beth really want you to come,” he said. “Mary Beth will be singing with Vance and the Cross-Creek Boys, which she often does, but I think she’s a little nervous about having an evening with Neal totally on her own.” He grinned. “I wish you’d seen her face when the word ‘date’ got thrown out.”
Lydia’s face flushed as she leaned over to tighten the laces on her hiking books. Obviously, the word ‘date’ made her a little nervous, too.
“Neal assured her it was just an evening with friends, a chance to hear some good music, clog a little, and enjoy some fine dance groups.” He picked up her waist pack to hand it to her, shooing one of the kittens off of it first. “I hope you’ll come along with us,” he added. “Mary Beth would never admit it, but I know she’s wanting you to hear her sing. It was you who always encouraged her to sing—even paid Molly Simmons to give her lessons on the sly.”
Her eyes flashed. “All of Mary Beth’s singing had to be done on the sly because your mother didn’t approve of it.”
“Mother did let Mary Beth take piano. She made her practice, too—even after school when you were working.”
Lydia rolled her eyes. “She considered the piano an appropriate accomplishment for a young girl, John, and she only let Mary Beth play classics, hymns, and the pieces in her exercise books.”
“Funny, I seem to remember her playing boogie-woogie and rock ’n’ roll songs.” He grinned at her. “You and I even showed the kids how to jitterbug one evening while Mary Beth played.”
“If you’ll check your memory, John Cunningham, you’ll realize that all those times happened when your mother went to committee meetings at the church or to one of her civic clubs or gatherings.” Irritation threaded her voice. “Most of our fun occurred when your mother was gone.”
Before he could reply, Bucky pulled open the screen door. “Hey. Come on. Me and Billy Ray are ready to go. What’s taking you guys so long?”
“We’re on our way.” Lydia picked up her waist pack before turning to John. “Did you pack all those lunch items into your backpack?”
“I did,” he said, draping one of the straps of the backpack over a shoulder, glad the subject of his mother was past. “And everyone is carrying their own bottle of water and other personal items they need in their waist packs.” He tapped her nose. “Did you pack some sunscreen?”
“Yes.” She lifted her chin. “And I hope you remembered to pick up a hiking map.”
He pointed to it sticking out of a pocket of his backpack, then reached to open the front door for her. “Looks like we’re ready to go.”
They headed east from the farm on Highway 19 through Maggie Valley and then onto Rural Route 276 at Dellwood. Soon, they sped through the small community of Jonathan heading toward Cove Creek Road, which would take them up over the mountain and down into the Cataloochee Valley.
“How come Maggie Valley is named after a girl?” Bucky asked.
“Well, there’s a story there,” John answered. “Back in the late 1890s, when the valley was first getting settled, Jack Setzer wanted to establish a post office. He submitted several names for the post office that got rejected. He sent in more, but had the same thing happen again.”
“Why did they reject them?” Billy Ray asked.
“Because another post office was already using the names he sent in.”
“I guess they can’t have two with the same name,” Bucky said.
“That’s right, so, getting kind of desperate for name ideas then, Setzer sent in the names of his three daughters as backups the next time he submitted possibilities.” John slowed to follow a farm tractor onto the highway. “In 1904 he got a response back from the government telling him their new post office and town was to be called Maggie, North Carolina, after one of his daughters.”
“Cool. I’d like to have a town named after me.” Billy Ray waved at the farmer on the tractor as they passed him.
John laughed. “Actually, I always heard that Maggie Setzer got real upset and embarrassed that the post office and town was going be named after her. Old stories say she even burst into tears over it.”
Bucky wrinkled his nose. “Sounds like a dumb thing a girl would do.” Then he glanced at his grandmother. “Sorry, Nana Lydia.”
Lydia smirked at John. “Just imagine—if the town had been named after you, Bucky, it might be called Buckyville, or Bucky Town, or Buckner Dean Township today.”
While Billy Ray and Bucky giggled over this, Lydia launched into an old 1960s “Name Game” tune, singing in the light, familiar voice John remembered and inserting Bucky’s name over and over into the repetitive lyrics. Then she turned to John with a grin as the boys laughed, looking for a new victim and moving into a new verse using his name.
The boys were bouncing in their seats by now. “Do me!” Billy Ray begged. “Do me!”
Lydia tweaked his nose and launched into yet another singsong chorus using Billy’s name. She soon had the boys giggling and singing along with her, substituting all the names of their friends and family members into the song’s lyrics. Then, just as the boys began to tire of the rhyme song, she moved them on with ease to other tunes.
John felt transported, listening to her—remembering car trips with her and their children, filled with singing, games, and laughter. So different from the formal car trips of his childhood, traveling with muted conversation or silence if they went anywhere at all. He hadn’t grown up with laughter. It was Lydia who had brought joy into his life.
“You’re not singing, Daddy John,” Bucky chided him.
Lydia sent him an arched look and John, with his deep baritone, joined in singing the familiar words of “Kookaburra.”
The Cove Creek Road, winding over and down from the Cataloochee Divide, was a rough gravel road that led, surprisingly, to a lovely, well-paved road through the base of the Cataloochee Valley. John had never heard an explanation that made sense to him of why North Carolina had paved the flat valley road but not the rocky access road across the mountain to it.
At Lydia’s insistence, John stopped to buy two tour booklets near the entrance of the valley. She kept one and gave the other to the boys to share, telling them which page to turn to as they passed the historic structures along the Cataloochee Valley Road. They stopped to explore the old Palmer House and the Palmer Chapel, both built in the later 1800s. And the boys were fascinated with the white, one-room Beech Grove Schoolhouse, its old, battered desks still in place.
Passing through a long stretch of grassy valley, they spotted a herd of elk grazing. John pulled over to let the twins jump out to watch.
“Look! Two little calves!” Billy Ray pointed toward two small, stubby calves cavorting near their mother. “And look at those giganticous antlers on that big elk.”
Bucky giggled. “Elk look kind of like Santa’s reindeer, don’t they?”
“The males do.” Lydia leaned on a rough split-rail fence to study the herd in the field. “It’s good to see the elk here. I read the park service reintroduced them to the Smokies and that they’re doing really well—thriving and reproducing.”
John put a restraining hand on the boys’ shoulders to keep them from climbing under the old fence. “In the fall the males bugle to attract the females, or cows, and to make challenges to other bulls. They often rut with their antlers then.” John pointed to the two young males poking at each other with their antlers. “Those two young ones are practicing for the real thing later.”
“Ouch.” Bucky frowned. “I bet it hurts to get stuck with one of those antlers.”
“Yes, and that’s why the rangers warn that you should always keep your distance from the elk. Like bears, they are wild animals and unpredictable.”
After the boys tired of watching the elk, John drove them through the rest of the valley. They skipped walking the half mile up Rough Fork Trail
to the historic Woody House, but they did trek across the rustic bridge to see the two-storied Caldwell House the boys had asked to visit.
“Neal said Hiram Caldwell, who built this house, was one of his great-great-granddaddies or something.” Bucky peeked into all the rooms of the old whitewashed home with interest.
Billy Ray pushed out his lip. “I think it was mean the park made everyone move out. Neal said lots of people didn’t want to give up their houses or land.”
“That’s true.” John ran a hand along the top of the old rock fireplace. “But the timber companies were moving in and if the park hadn’t saved and bought the land when they did, we might have lost all the forest and wildlife here. Timber companies didn’t know how to be conservative in those days.”
Quickly losing interest in too much historical talk, like most young children, Bucky headed toward the door. “Let’s go do our hike now. Okay?”
John loaded them back into the truck and then drove to the parking area near the trailhead of Caldwell Fork Trail. The start of the trail began by heading across a long, split-log footbridge spanning high above the Cataloochee Creek.
“Cool! Look at this!” Billy Ray’s face lit as they came to the beginning of the bridge.
John moved to block him from starting across the bridge. “This is a high and long bridge, boys—twenty-five feet in length. It’s said to be the longest bridge in the whole park. Out in the middle, the bridge has a little bounce to it. Because it crosses so high above the creek, we need to cross the bridge very carefully, holding to the rail and not fooling around.” He made eye contact with both the boys. “Do I make myself clear?”
They nodded, recognizing his no-nonsense voice.
John continued. “I want one of you in front of me and one in back.” He gestured toward Billy Ray to go first. “Put one hand on the bridge railing and the other out for balance, Son.” He looked toward Lydia. “Lydia, you follow and keep an eye on Bucky behind me.”
The water cascaded in a riot below them, and John felt relieved when both of the boys had crossed safely.
“That was awesome.” Bucky literally danced in place. “Let’s walk back over it again, okay?”
Lydia shook her head. “Absolutely not. That’s quite enough for me. Besides, there are more bridges up the trail as we walk on, and we’ll get to cross this one again on our way back.”
Billy Ray grinned at her. “Were you scared, Nana Lydia?”
“Absolutely terrified.” She shivered for effect. “But I felt better when I stopped looking down.”
Laughing, they started up the trail, a happy group of hikers.
CHAPTER 13
Lydia had forgotten how much pleasure she found in walking a quiet backwoods trail in the mountains. She’d hiked some of the pathways behind Hill House leading toward the Smokies boundary, but she hadn’t dared to venture too far on her own.
Here the trail wove deep into the wilderness on an old settlers’ roadbed with the tumbling Caldwell Fork ever alongside. To the boys’ delight, the trail crisscrossed continually over the creek on rustic log bridges. At each crossing, the boys begged to stop to jump on the rocks, to take off their shoes to wade, or to dig for salamanders near the streamside.
Pleased to still find summer flowers in bloom along the trail, Lydia pointed these out to the twins. “That’s a white bloodroot by that old log, and the small blue flowers growing beside that pile of rocks are woodland bluets.”
“What’s the name of those red ones on the hill by that big tree?” Bucky asked, pointing to a cluster of vibrant, star-shaped crimson flowers.
“Those are fire pinks.”
The boy wrinkled his nose. “How come they didn’t call them fire reds? They’re not pink.”
Laughing, John answered, “The term pink comes from the fact that the ragged petal edges look as though they were cut out with pinking shears—you know, like the scissors your mother uses when she sews.”
“I guess.” Bucky romped off, unimpressed.
Lydia walked closer to study the flowers. “I didn’t know that, John. That’s interesting.”
He chuckled. “I’m glad someone thinks so.”
“Oh, they remember more than you imagine.” She started back up the trail beside him, keeping an eye on the boys walking ahead of them.
“Come look!” they shouted a short distance later. “Bunches and bunches of butterflies!”
Catching up to the boys, Lydia saw dozens of swallowtail butterflies clustered all over the ground. They’d gathered right in the middle of the trail, creating a dazzling sight with their bright yellow wings edged in black, each one glittering in the afternoon sunlight.
“How lovely,” she exclaimed.
“You mean yucky.” Billy Ray made a face. “They’re sitting on horse poop.” The twins squatted down for a closer look.
“Super gross.” Bucky stuck his finger into his mouth in a mock gag. “It looks like they’re eating the poop or something.”
“They are eating it, in a sense.” John laughed. “Butterflies cluster on horse piles to pick up minerals and nutrients.”
Billy Ray made another face. “Well, I wouldn’t eat horse poop to get my vitamins,” he threw out before he and Bucky started up the trail again, eager to move on.
Lydia lingered to watch the mass of lacy-winged creatures gathered on the trail, their delicate wings flashing in the sunlight. She frowned. “It does seem hard to understand why something so lovely would cluster on excrement, John.”
He leaned closer to whisper in her ear, “If the boys had rubbed horse manure on their arms and hands, the butterflies might have gathered all over them. But I decided not to tell them that.”
Lydia’s eyes flew open. “Please don’t. Those boys would probably try it just to see if you’re right—they’re such daredevils at their age.”
He looked ahead. “And we’d better move on to catch up with those daredevils.”
At about three miles from the trailhead, they all paused to enjoy McKee Branch tumbling down the mountain into Caldwell Fork. Soon after, they crossed yet another log bridge before coming to a trail intersection with the McKee Branch Trail.
John gestured around, as they paused at the trail intersection. “The Caldwell Fork School used to be here, although there are no remains of it now. Quite a community of folks once lived in this section of the valley. There was even a gristmill near the bridge we last crossed.”
“What’s a gristmill?” Billy Ray asked as he coaxed a caterpillar to crawl up his finger.
“A gristmill is a water-powered mill used to grind corn or grains into flour and meal. You saw a working gristmill when we visited Cades Cove.”
“And we saw one at Dollywood,” Bucky chimed in.
Looking around, he changed the subject. “Did Neal Caldwell’s relatives live here, too?”
“Yes, I’d say so.”
“Then I can tell him we came here.” Bucky raced ahead then to catch up with Billy Ray, who’d dumped the caterpillar and moved on.
“I think the boys like Neal,” Lydia commented as they followed them over a slight rise in the trail.
“Yeah. Neal’s got a way with them.”
A mile and a half later, 4.6 miles from the beginning of the trailhead, they stopped for their lunch at their hiking destination at another trail intersection where Hemphill Bald Trail dropped down from the mountain above.
Settled on a rock by the stream, Billy Ray waved his peanut butter sandwich toward the intersecting trail. “Is that the same trail that goes along the ridgetop above our farm, Daddy John?”
“The same one.” John fished out a ham and cheese sandwich for himself.
“Can we hike back that way?” Bucky asked.
“Well, you could, but our farm is still a long way from here,” John answered. “First you’d need to hike this section of Hemphill Bald Trail three miles up to Double Gap. You know that part of the mountain. It’s about four or five miles from Purchase Gap, where you vi
sited the Science Learning Center with your kindergarten class, and less than a mile east, heading toward our farm, to Hemphill Bald. You’ve ridden horses to that bald from the Cataloochee Ranch.”
“I remember.” Bucky nodded. “It was way high up on the mountain and you could see forever.”
“Yes, Hemphill Bald is over five thousand feet and one of the highest elevations in this area.” He took a swig from his water bottle before continuing. “After the bald, you’d hike downhill about two miles more to Sheepback Knob above our place. From there you could head straight down the trail at Buck Knob and come in right behind the lodge and cabins on the Upper Farm. You know that area well.”
Billy Ray wrinkled his nose. “How far is that altogether?”
John stopped to add the mileage in his mind. “Probably about eight and a half miles from this intersection down in the Cataloochee Valley. If we hiked it today, we’d need to get someone to drive us back to the valley to get the truck.”
“But maybe someday we could do it?”
“Sure.” John smiled. “Or someday we could just hike across Hemphill Bald Trail from the back of our farm to the bald. There’s a stone table for picnicking there under a tree with great views. Then we could walk on and cut over to Cataloochee Ranch farther up the trail, if you can make it that far. The whole distance would only be about five or six miles, maybe ten to eleven miles round-trip.”
“That would certainly be enough for me until I get more conditioned,” Lydia put in. “This round-trip hike of over nine miles is taxing for me. I’ll probably have sore legs tomorrow.”
“What’s ‘conditioned’?” Bucky frowned.
John grinned. “It means until Lydia has hiked some more and gotten in better shape.”
“Oh.” Bucky studied her. “Are you not in good shape ’cause you’re getting old?”
John laughed. “You did set yourself up for that one, Lydia.”
She lifted her chin. “Everyone can hike farther distances when they hike often, Bucky. I’ve been living in the city a long time, that’s all.”
