Whitetailfreak. I met him here on this forum many years ago. Over the years, we wound up talking and discussing things on many of the same threads. We soon discovered we had many things in common. We have had many long PM exchanges, and talked and texted on the phone a lot over the years. But we had never met in person. Somewhere, somehow, I don't remember exactly how, along the way; we figured out that we had a very strong real-word connection: both our families bear hunted and fished and hung out together regularly back in the 50s and 60s. Particularly my uncle Charlie and my dad, and his grandpa and great-uncle. Apparently, they were all really close friends back in the day and shared many, many adventures together. We soon realized that we had both grown up hearing the exact same enduring often-told hunting, fishing, and camping stories, told from two different perspectives, but matching to a tee. We had to meet up and continue the tradition. Not to do so would be somehow unthinkable.
There is a watershed in the Smokies that is very dear to him, like Cataloochee is to me, and for the same reasons: deep family roots that were ended when the NPS bought up our ancestors' farms and sent them packing to build a national park. Many of our families' shared stories we both grew up hearing were set in this watershed. It is one of the most remote places in the Smokies, cut off from the rest of the world when a lake was built in the 40s to supply electricity to a top-secret facility that would make the bombs that ended WWII, and an industry that would produce the aluminum to produce the aircraft that would drop them. I have never been into it, nor fished it. He has, regularly, for most of his life. A trip was needed.
We have planned this trip over and over for years, only to have family emergencies, work, or epic floods destroy our plans each year. We started planning it again this year about a month ago. As it turned out, we only had one setback: a semi-epic minor flood that set our plans back a day. We were set to leave out Thursday morning and stay back in the mountains until Sunday. Wednesday night and early Thursday, the storms and torrential rains came rolling in. We decided to postpone until Friday morning, which was a good idea, because it rained and stormed all day Thursday, nearly 3" worth. When I was driving out to meet him Friday morning, tree crews were still sawing fallen trunks out of the roads, and as @whitetailfreak texted me when we were both en route, "There are creeks where there shouldn't be."
We finally met in person early in the morning at a marina, where we were scheduled for a boat shuttle. His dad, who is a fine person, came to see us off, and rode across the lake to the trailhead with us. Soon, we unloaded all our stuff, the boat backed away and started back down the lake, and we were left utterly alone for two and a half days, completely deserted and isolated from the world by miles and miles of wilderness. No people, no cell service, just us and the gear we had brought. We started up the trail, our ultimate destination for the weekend a little over six miles away, all uphill. It was all up to us. There is no plan B.
There is a watershed in the Smokies that is very dear to him, like Cataloochee is to me, and for the same reasons: deep family roots that were ended when the NPS bought up our ancestors' farms and sent them packing to build a national park. Many of our families' shared stories we both grew up hearing were set in this watershed. It is one of the most remote places in the Smokies, cut off from the rest of the world when a lake was built in the 40s to supply electricity to a top-secret facility that would make the bombs that ended WWII, and an industry that would produce the aluminum to produce the aircraft that would drop them. I have never been into it, nor fished it. He has, regularly, for most of his life. A trip was needed.
We have planned this trip over and over for years, only to have family emergencies, work, or epic floods destroy our plans each year. We started planning it again this year about a month ago. As it turned out, we only had one setback: a semi-epic minor flood that set our plans back a day. We were set to leave out Thursday morning and stay back in the mountains until Sunday. Wednesday night and early Thursday, the storms and torrential rains came rolling in. We decided to postpone until Friday morning, which was a good idea, because it rained and stormed all day Thursday, nearly 3" worth. When I was driving out to meet him Friday morning, tree crews were still sawing fallen trunks out of the roads, and as @whitetailfreak texted me when we were both en route, "There are creeks where there shouldn't be."
We finally met in person early in the morning at a marina, where we were scheduled for a boat shuttle. His dad, who is a fine person, came to see us off, and rode across the lake to the trailhead with us. Soon, we unloaded all our stuff, the boat backed away and started back down the lake, and we were left utterly alone for two and a half days, completely deserted and isolated from the world by miles and miles of wilderness. No people, no cell service, just us and the gear we had brought. We started up the trail, our ultimate destination for the weekend a little over six miles away, all uphill. It was all up to us. There is no plan B.
To be continued......
) up the trail to a stretch of creek that Kris knew well and was one of his favorite places to fish. We finally crested the last ridge and dropped off through the woods, to behold as fine a stretch of water as I have ever beheld. This was the first hole we fished:
