Rivers and Rainforest

(Cherokee, Yuchi, Koasati, Shawnee, Chickasaw, and Quapaw Land)

I was born in the house my dad built in the cedar glades of middle Tennessee. I grew up shimmying up trees, running barefoot through the forest, and learning to ride my bike on the gravel paths that connected the homes in our little community. There was no bathroom in the house, instead we made the trek to the outhouse or the closest tree. I’m sure most of the neighborhood heard my echoing calls when, as a 3 year old, I needed help in the outhouse. “Daaaaaad, can you help me wipe my buttttt?” I realize this is sounding like a Southern stereotype, but let me clarify that we were hippies. Everyone outside of our community had indoor toilets and wore shoes.

We moved into town when I was five and, although we no longer lived in the woods, we made frequent pilgrimages. Many days with my family were spent building dams in creeks, feeling tiny fish nibble our toes, trying and failing to catch said fish, writing in the air with the smoldering ends of sticks we stuck in the fire, scrambling over boulders, making forts in fallen trees, trudging up mountains and skittering back down, and being sprayed by the mist of thundering waterfalls, and also trickling waterfalls. But as I grew, my interests changed. In high school I spent most of my time at band practice, or being afraid of falling off my skateboard, and time spent communing with the trees diminished. 

In college I occasionally took advantage of my proximity to the Smokies. I played with boats in whitewater until a particularly scary experience caused me to take a years long hiatus. I failed to convince friends to go camping and, as a consequence, went on my first solo camping trip. Once, I succeeded in convincing friends to go camping. When we finished all the chili we made in the dutch oven we cleaned it out and made a pineapple upside-down cake over the fire. On my first ever day hike over 8 miles I saw a massive red salamander stretched across the trail. A mile or so later I had my first bear encounter.

I left Tennessee in 2011, itching to see more of this massive continent. Since then I’ve lived in 9 states and visited all 50. I’ve been back to Tennessee many times over the years, always discovering a place I had overlooked. In college I drove past the brown sign for Big South Fork each time I traveled between school and home. It wasn’t until one of those return trips with my partner Ceili that I finally visited. It was an unusually cold November evening when we arrived on the Kentucky side of the park. Big wet snowflakes fell not long after we pitched the tent. In the morning we hiked to Yahoo Falls. We marveled at the lush forest, scrambled under sandstone shelters, and stood in the alcove behind the falls. We entertained each other by pronouncing the names of the falls and trails in the funniest ways we could think of. Later, when we told the ranger at the visitor center we’d just been hiking at Yahoo Falls he replied “you mean ‘Yay-hoo’ Falls?”