Wind Songs: We're Off To See The Gizzard

On a day that was perfectly wonderfully warm and sunny LC, Jamie and I took a drive and then a walk up on the mountain.

The picture above was taken from the truck as we were driving over a bridge that crossed Interstate 24.

I-24 is the major highway between Nashville and Chattanooga.

Tullahoma is about half way between both of those major cities and we had initially taken I-24 intending to get off at Monteagle and then head for a natural area close to Tracy City.

Instead, my Mountain Boy unexpectedly pulled off the interstate near the small community of Pelham.

Instead of taking the interstate we would be driving on quieter roads that wandered through farm country.

After living in this region for many years I felt like I should know this area better than I actually do, and as we happily relaxed in the country and in the sunshine, I realized that this was all new territory.

As we drove through each tiny-toon-town whose names I tried to remember but have ultimately forgotten, and then each time we found ourselves again surrounded by farm country and mountains, I realized that we are now (again) living in a very lovely part of the country................

20 minutes after we pulled off the interstate we could not stand it anymore.

Jamie had been whining and barking non-stop since leaving the house and we had to pull over and let her out, so that she could wander and sniff and mark and let off steam for a few minutes.

I already knew that she did not have any physical issues to take care of.

Rather, she was so excited to be in the truck, to be out and about, to potentially have a walk in her future, that she simply could not contain all of that excitement in her 48 pound body.

Either that or she is just spoiled rotten.

Either way both LC and I had maxed out on the noise and we stopped briefly in a church parking lot located in the middle of farms and fields.

A picture taken right behind the church..............

And the very small and very sweet and very rural church.

A large dog with very similar coloration as Jamies surprisingly came from behind the church to greet us.

The dog had no collar and was very thin with a slight case of mange, but was also very friendly and very sweet.

I wish I had taken a picture of him but did not think of it at the time.

Looking down at this sweet thing my heart melted just a little.

I have, over the years, fought inclinations many times to simply scoop up sweet and lost animals and take them home with me.

Nice church. Jamie calmed down. Time to move on................

LC had pulled the truck over into one more church parking lot so that I could take these pictures of farmland and mountains.

As my Mountain Boy and my dog waited for me in the truck, I walked across the road to take pictures.

This place was beautiful and thankfully, wonderfully very quiet.

LC and I speak a lot about Wyoming.

It's wide open spaces, its mountains, its conservative people, its limited number of people, its wildlife.

In a small and populated state such as Tennessee I am aware of constantly seeking (and succeeding in finding) quiet and solitude away from people.

Standing on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere I found it again today...............

Scenes through the front windshield of winding paved road climbing up to Monteagle and Tracy City.

Leafless hard wood trees were visible on both sides of the road and also completely filled the surrounding hills and mountains.

Every once in a while I would catch a glimpse of the valley below.

Once the trees have leaves again the valley views will be completely obscured..............

Tracy City is a small community close to Monteagle and Sewanee, that has a population of about 1400.

Located in the area of this small town are South Cumberland Recreation Area and Grundy Forest State Natural Area.

Today LC and I were headed to the Fiery Gizzard Trail in Grundy Forest.

I had planned on taking a long hike there with a group of people last weekend but pulled out when LC and I decided to go to the rodeo in Shelbyville instead.

Today my Mountain Boy, my sweet adventurous pup and I were doing a 2 mile loop that began on flat trail, wandered down to a beautiful stream with multiple waterfalls, and which saw the trail at the stream turn into a demanding and technical root-filled and rock filled and narrow trail on the way back to the parking lot.................

Log picnic shelter close to one of the trail heads...............

Also close to the trail head was this stone marker dedicated to workers of the CCC.

Located in Grundy County, Grundy Lakes and Grundy Forest are part of the South Cumberland State Recreation Area. Grundy Lakes began as an environmentally devastated mining property, part of a complex of 130 coke ovens established and operated by the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company in 1883. In the late 1930s, after the property had been donated by the Tennessee Consolidated Coal Company, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) reclaimed the land, built the lakes, planted new trees and foliage, and constructed recreational facilities. The considerable CCC effort turned a wasteland into new recreational opportunities for a community that had been devastated by the Great Depression. Grundy Forest began as another CCC project in 1935, after local residents purchased 211 acres and donated it to the state for use as a CCC camp. CCC Company 1475 moved to the site on June 29, 1935. It built the first section of Fiery Gizzard Trail, which was extended by the state parks division in the late 1970s and early 1980s to connect to Foster Falls. Fiery Gizzard refers to the name given to an experimental blast furnace built there in the 1870s during the height of the coal industry in Grundy County.

I had been on most of the trails in this forest in the past, both alone and with training partners, but had never taken this trail before.

On a sunny and way-too-warm-for-February day, the three of us happily set off on the trail.

Looking back towards the picnic shelter..............

It had been years since I had been in this park.

I did some long hikes with team-mates, moving from rooty up and down dirt trail, to trail filled with more rock than should be allowed in one place, to flat and wide open.

The very first time I came out to Fiery Gizzard many years ago I grabbed a trail map at the information kiosk and headed onto the trails alone.

Before heading in I took a cursory look at the map.

The trail looked pretty straightforward and I stuffed my map deep into a pocket and did not give it another thought.

I had little food with me. One bottle of water. No first aid supplies or headlamp or additional clothing.

I took a different trail than we did today - easily maneuvering over rocks and roots and across bridges, taking the hills easily and walking cautiously when close to big drop offs.

Life was good and I was having a great time.

A couple of hours after I began the hike I ran into three people walking the trail coming from the opposite direction.

We smiled and said friendly hellos to each other as we passed by.

90 minutes later I passed three people walking the trail coming from the opposite direction.

We smiled and said friendly hellos as we passed by.

Within seconds of them passing me I stopped walking, and my brain suddenly began to run at full speed as I tried to make sense of what had just experienced.

Slightly stunned, I turned to look at the trio of hikers.

And instantly felt as though I had suddenly become an unwilling actor in the movie Groundhog Day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_yDWQsrajA

Yes...............they were the same three hikers I had run into before.

I dug out my map. I looked at the sky. I looked at my watch. My heart sank just a little.

Without realizing it I had taken a spur trail and I suddenly realized that there was a real chance I would not be able to make it out by dark.

Backtracking I picked up the pace and eventually picked up the correct trail.

But I was a LONG way from the parking lot.

I had been out of food for a while, and was soon out of water.

Once daylight started to disappear it disappeared very quickly.

By the time it was almost completely dark I was at a place where I knew exactly where I was, but with the technical trail filled with roots and rocks and drop-offs down embankments and over a mile still left to go, I began to face the possibility that I might have to spend the night in the woods.

Being stuck healthy in the woods overnight was preferable to being stuck injured in the woods overnight.

Because of the increasing darkness my pace slowed but I did eventually make it out of the woods.

There was not one second of daylight left by the time I arrived at my truck.

I had squeezed every drop out of the day...............

After moving from Wyoming where often-times there were very few trees, it is still astonishing to see trees everywhere here in Tennessee.

This picture, filled with thick woods is so very typical of Tennessee................

We had not walked far before coming to our first wooden bridge.

It spanned a small creek that gently rolled downhill, dropped down in a small waterfall, and then continued flowing further down (most likely feeding into the much larger and fast-flowing stream that we came across later in our walk)............

LC and James stayed closer to the bridge while I cautiously made my way down to the edge of a drop-off so that I could take a picture of the small falls................

It did not take me long to realize that I was loving this walk.

The early part of this new-to-me trail was flat and easy to walk, I was with my guy and my dog, and because we were in the mountains we were enveloped in green.

Abundant holly, mountain laurel and pine trees - evergreens when lower down the mostly hard woods were stark and brown at this time of year.

It was a wonderful and very welcome change, and I loved being here..................

We were walking high on a ridge and about 20 minutes after starting our walk I looked down the hill to my left and could finally see the large stream that we both knew we would eventually come to.

Soon after that first sighting we came to a steep set of wooden steps that wound down to another trail................