“The way is the goal,” - Confucius
“The best way out is always through.” - Robert Frost
We figured that the climb to the summit of the Appalachian Trail encompassed somewhere about 3,500 feet in elevation change. Not that any measurement of the climb really mattered all that much. Abrams Creek, draining Cades Cove of the Smoky Mountain National Park in Tennessee, was our jumping off point for our goal, Hazel Creek. The goal was a good walk over to the North Carolina side of the mountains.
Rough estimates of time to summit were all but non-existent. It didn’t seem to be of any importance at this point. Like some sage once said, it’s the journey that’s often just as significant as the destination. The journey is good enough.
Over analyzation of the length of the walk, wrist watches and time spent climbing didn’t seem all that much of a necessity on this fishing trip. No hurry up a wait here, just one foot in front of the other sort of a lengthy escape unfolding.
Getting on Hazel Creek by boat would have been far easier. Possibly even a tad quicker. A boat didn’t have to contend with much of an elevation change. Why we elected to hoof it into this remote piece of North Carolina, over serious peaks that danced with the clouds around 5,000 feet, wasn’t exactly rocket science level logic. But, it must have had a lot of something to do with the fact that we simply didn’t own a boat.
We lounged in the cool breeze and cloud borne mist that bathed the summit bald on the trail that ran the peaks and studied the map. The view of what lay below was purely mesmerizing. From the top of the mountain it was clearly all downhill to our destination drainage and the native trout infested mountain tributaries of the Little Tennessee River.
The map indicated a rather lengthy and circuitous route, a series of steep downhill switchbacked trails to the Hazel. Maybe it was the climb, maybe it was a touch of native trout fever, but an almost imperceptible need for speed crept over our view of the magnificent purple and green valley below. Watersheds holding promises of pristine pools, shaded by laurel and rhododendron, full of feisty natives, hungry for a Grey Wolf dry fly skittered on the crystalline surface of a long deep pool.
This whole adventure had been perpetuated by a book, published around the Great Depression, authored by someone who spoke volumes about the wilds of Hazel Creek and her wild trout. I’d pay good money if I still had that book. If only I’d ‘borrowed’ it permanently from the University of Chattanooga librarian who checked it out for me, on one lazy summer afternoon.
I’d likely spend more decent money if I could remember the name of the book or even the long dead author’s identity. The author artfully detailed life in this remote section of North Carolina before it was confiscated by the Government’s Park Service. Before all roads in and out of the area were flooded into non-existence by Fontana Dam.
The book chronicled the pioneer families and industry of the wild North Carolina side of the mountains opposite Cades Cove. Tales told of bear hunters, moonshiners, hermits, miners, wood cutters and hillbillies of the highest order.
This was an introduction to Plot hounds and the family who conceived these famous mountain dogs. Stalwart, deep throated, brindle warriors that never met bear or hog that intimidated them, not even for one solitary breath.
But, the best part of the book, in my mind, was the secret spilled about the intricacies necessary for subduing the fat and wild fish that thrived in the pristine streams that fed the untamed Little Tennessee River.
The author recounted being completely flummoxed by his failure on the Hazel with his selection of flies and his self-assured fishing techniques, often successful on other trout waters. But, the Hazel whipped him, humiliating him, rendering well intentioned efforts, completely unsuccessful, as he prowled this high mountain stream.
Call it serendipity, call it dumb luck, or fisherman’s luck, or maybe even Devine providence, the day he stood at the bottom of a pristine cascade, with his empty creel, (unlucky trout were maintained for the table in wicker creels in that era) as he watched an “Old Timer” hoisting one large trout after another out of one Hazel’s long plunge pools.
Studying the white bearded, overall clad old man, as he worked the pool, the author watched dumbfounded as the highlander skittered and dappled the surface with his dry fly using only a cane pole. No reel, no backcast, no fancy anything, just a short shank of line and a small grey glob of some sort of animal hair and some ‘yeller hammer’ feathers.
It took an offer of pipe tobacco to unleash the secret of success from the old bearded native; “You got to dance that there fly, like hit’s trying to escape, and hit’s got to be grey. Them ole fish like a grey bug. Not sure why, but hit’s about all that works if you really want to eat some fish.”
The old man finished his pipe, hefted his laurel branch of fat fish over one shoulder, and slowly disappeared downstream towards a hot iron skillet of lard and a fine meal.
Like most jealous fishermen, the author had ogled the old man’s terminal tackle as they shared the tobacco and passed time together. The book goes into considerable detail about how the author soon mastered the Hazel with his newly acquired fish catching secret.
I was hooked, and the map we were studying seemed to indicate a faint shortcut of a trail. A small dark ink mark was our new path of choice down into Bone Valley. Our detour trail wasn’t marked or well traveled. The first mile or so of the trail proved to be easily observable. The second mile resembled a trail worn down by a bear or two. Then it quickly turned into a deer trail, before it was completely eaten away and erased by the mountain.
We pulled up at the peak of a steep drop and re-studied the map. The copyright date jumped out at us after considerable discussion. 1947 seemed like a long time ago. The mountain had made a liar out of the map. We looked down into the green folds of the watershed and hotly discussed the steep option of back tracking. Then, we looked downhill again.
The Oxford Language Dictionary defines the noun; “Bushwhacking - 1. The activity of living or traveling in wild or uncultivated country. The activity of cutting or pushing one’s way through dense vegetation, not following an established trail.”
We looked at the end of the ‘established trail, circa 1947’ and plunged into, pushed into what was best described as dense vegetation. At least it was all downhill. I wondered if the boys back at Oxford, who made up definitions for a living, had ever seen this side of North Carolina.
If you’ve ever been badly afflicted with a burning case of Smoky Mountain Native Trout Fever, and lived to tell about it, you may in fact be a retired bushwhacker. Or, if you feel a bad case of trout fever coming on, let this public service announcement be hereby committed to memory; “Do not leave the established trail! Bushwhacking into Bone Valley is for MORONS only!”
The drop-offs were significantly severe. The laurel and rhododendron thickets were aptly named “Hells.” The rocks were more like sleds or slick snow shoes. We continually told ourselves it was all downhill. Saving time and distance quickly became immaterial. Breaking bones and becoming irrecoverable by anyone who cared to remove mangled bodies from a National Park became an issue at the forefront.
The Cherokee sparsely inhabited this valley according to ‘Miss Wiki’; — “A well worn Cherokee path connected Bone Valley with Cades Cove.” Other bushwhackers settled this valley — “Like most of the North Carolina side of the Smokies, the small population of Hazel Creek supported the Confederacy. This put them at odds with their cousins on the Tennessee side of the mountains in Cades Cove, who were staunchly pro-Union. Bushwhackers and vigilantes in Cades Cove and Hazel Creek launched raids against one another, usually to steal livestock and crops. The community of Bone Valley was largely settled by Confederate veterans, six of whom are still buried there. Bone Valley gained its name from a large pile of bones left from a cattle herd that froze to death somewhere about 1888. By 1928, the W. M. Ritter Lumber Company, beginning in 1902, had cut 201,000,000 board feet of lumber in the Hazel Creek watershed. The last families left Hazel Creek in 1944 before rising Lake Fontana waters inundated the only road out.”
We knew we had finally reached Bone Valley when we stumbled out of the laurel into an old homestead that was a moss covered log structure with no door and a shambles of a hearth. No door, but enough of a roof for a bear to den inside during the last winter. Fresh bear sign was in abundance.
What was left of the of the place was being slowly devoured from a recovered forest, ravaged by W. M. Ritter’s wanton thirst for wealth in hardwoods.
We skittered and dappled #12 Grey Wolf flies as the book directed, for probably ten to fifteen miles up to a series of cascades on the Hazel. It was as fine a creek as any we had ever fished for native trout. Fish Camp Prong of the Little River on the other side of the mountain, on our way out to Elkmont, was about as good. At least the hike down the Fish Camp Prong was all downhill.
Was it worth the walk? The simple answer is, most definitely. If there’s a finer stream around, I’m yet to find it.
The second trip, we took a canoe. Google Hazel Creek and enjoy the trip if you don’t walk mountains anymore, or if you don’t have a boat.
In 1904 Horace Kephart, a librarian from Saint Louis, arrived in Hazel Creek after his nervous breakdown, with plans to study the wilderness areas of the Southern Appalachian highlands. Kephart’s book “Our Southern Highlanders” published in 1913, was the first widely read study of Southern Appalachian culture.
I don’t think this is the book in the University of Chattanooga library that started all this walking in the Smokies, but it’s a pretty decent start if you’re interested in Southern Mountain culture.
My best guess is the book I should have stolen was titled, “Twenty Years of Hunting and Fishing in the Great Smoky Mountains” by Samual J. Hunnicutt. This epic was originally published in 1926 by Swain County’s first published author, a mountain man who humbly claimed to have killed bears by the hundreds and coons by the thousands. Look him up, he’s the real deal.
Thanks, Sam.
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Two bushwhackers, Paul Winters and Bill Godbolt and Bone Valley graffiti circa 1942