The splendor of solitude

Stephen Vincent Benét, in his lilting, lyrical poem, “The Mountain Whippoorwill,” opens with “Up in the mountains, it’s lonesome all the time.” In the next few lines, which provided inspiration for Charlie Daniels’ enduring fiddling classic, “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” Benét repeatedly returns to the word “lonesome.” The usage is fitting because from the earliest settlers to the present those who made these highlands their homeland have cherished solitude.

Historically, mountain folk have felt most comfortable when their nearest neighbors were invisible, living across the closest ridge or down the next hollow. Being a staunch son of the Smokies, albeit one who grew up in a small town (Bryson City, N.C.) rather than some remote mountain fastness, I have always appreciated their perspective. On one occasion my good wife, in a moment of exasperation, said, “You like to wander alone so much, your epitaph will probably read—‘Jim Casada hated people.’”

That’s not the case, but there are times when I prefer to enjoy people in mighty small doses. Indeed, the high country’s defining feature is the way it provides escape.  Take to backwoods trails or venture off trail, and you can wander and wonder largely unfettered by human presence. In the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, or in Cherokee, Pisgah, and Nantahala national forests, taking shank’s mare readily provides refuge from modern life’s maddening pace.  The scream of a hawk replaces the roar of traffic. Avenues of asphalt give way to paths shrouded by rhododendron and doghobble. In such settings one readily appreciates why mountain poet Leroy Sossamon chose the title Backside of Heaven for one of his books.

I hike and fish in remote places whenever possible, and at least once each year, I seek a few hours of sublime peace by journeying high up on Juneywhank Branch, a feeder of Deep Creek in the Great Smokies Park, to view vestiges of the old home site, nestled in an upland beech flat, where my father grew up. There among the rock walls, the spring enclosed by carefully stacked field stones and remains of the house foundation provide poignant reminders of the truth found in the historian’s adage: “You can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been.”

It is good to look back on that hardscrabble way of life and reflect, inspired by the setting and a still clear window on yesteryear’s world provided by a 99-year-old father. His was a world, at least in youth, dominated by solitude. His love of lonely places and quiet mountain spaces is one I am thankful to have inherited. To walk in his footsteps, or to gaze at the simple tombstones standing as silent sentinels reminding us of a world we have lost, is to move through a world of wonder.

Standing in a place which I’m fairly confident no one other than my brother, our children, and me have visited in years, I realize that only a mile away thousands of hikers annually view sparkling Juneywhank Falls. Like me, they love the majesty and incredible ecological diversity of these mountains, and I suspect that more than a few of them have the same yearning for loneliness which long ago laid a firm hold on a corner of my soul. 

For all of us it remains possible, thanks to hundreds of thousands of acres protected in perpetuity, to be lulled to sleep by the changeless, yet ever-changing music of a mountain stream close by one’s campsite, to stand atop a lofty ridgeline on a winter’s day and see nothing but more ridgelines stretching as far as the eye can see. Each time I venture “out under the sky of the Great Smokies” (to borrow from the title of a book by Harvey Broome, a vibrant voice for wilderness preservation), my spirits are uplifted by solitude’s sweet song.

They are also sustained by awareness that previous voices, far more compelling and celebrated than mine, have recognized the magic and mysticism to be found in the Smokies and other parts of the Southern Appalachians. Horace Kephart, arguably the best known of all chroniclers of mountain folkways, gets a lot wrong in Our Southern Highlanders. The same holds true for his contemporary, Margaret Morley, author of The Carolina Mountains. Both books were published in 1913, just short of a century ago, and they are characterized by far too much stereotyping, condescension and paternalism.  

Nonetheless, when Kep waxed enthusiastic on the joys of being “back of beyond,” and when Morley mused on the wonder of wandering “in imagination when weary of the dust of the world,” they were on to something. They realized the soul-filling sustenance and splendor of solitude to be found in these storied mountains, and both would have appreciated Stephen Vincent Benét’s thoughts on those ancient hills:

Up in the mountains, so still it makes you skeered.

Where God lies sleepin’ in his big white beard.

It is my fervent hope that these mountains marking the horizon, at times cloaked with blue haze and at others adorned with looming thunderheads which well might be God’s beard, remain forever lonely and little touched by the hand of man. As long as they do, it will be possible for the solitary winter hiker to marvel at the incomparable loveliness of rime ice touched by the sun or for the backcountry angler to rejoice at the sight of rising trout in seldom-waded waters far from the nearest maintained trail. That’s the blessing and the bounty offered by what that grand chronicler of the high country, John Parris, rightly described, in the title of one of his books, as These Storied Mountains.

Note:  Shank’s mare is a Scottish term dating from the 18th century. The verb, “to shank” or “to shank it,” meant to go on foot. This is from standard English shank, the part of the leg from the knee to the ankle. This verb developed into “shank’s naig” or “naigie” and later into “shank’s mare.” It was a wry joke: I haven’t got a horse of my own for the journey, so I’ll use shank’s mare to get there, meaning I’ll go on my own two feet. Such a phrase provides additional linguistic evidence of the close connection between the Appalachian highlanders and their Scottish and Scots-Irish origins. There are many such connections in the language, music, children’s games, dance, folk stories, and other cultural traditions.

Editor’s Note

Jim Casada is a full-time freelance writer who is currently completing a book, Pursuit of Passion:  An Insider’s Guide to Fly Fishing in the Smokies, which takes an in-depth look at fishing in the Park and the region’s human and natural history.  It will be published later this year in connection with the Park’s 75th anniversary. His web site is www.jimcasadaoutdoors.com.