August 1 to August 5, 2016—”Berea, I Just Met a Town called Berea”
From Cincinnati our destination was Berea, Kentucky, just because it was the right driving distance, I had heard of the town, and the campground was $10/night cheaper than elsewhere. In hindsight we should have stayed in Lexington, KY as we wound up driving there two nights, 40 minutes away.
The first night we went to Lexington so Brenda could play with an old time mountain music jam. It was worth the trip—a small gathering of nice people who gather every week in a bicycle repair shop/café in the North Limestone neighborhood of Lexington.( I saw the neighborhood referred to more than once as NoLi and, honestly, this practice needs to stop. SoHo in NYC and London is SOuth of HOuston Street, and Tribeca in NYC is the TRIangle BElow CAnal Street—these are ancient and longstanding shorthand references and should be honored, but every berg on the planet is turning neighborhoods into these types of abbreviations and it has gotten old. We have time to say “South Limestone” or “North of Massachusetts Avenue,” don’t we?) I was quite impressed how Brenda handled herself with the jam group– jumping in, starting a song, even teaching them a number (Year of Jubilo which they did not know presumably because it is a northern yankee song. Seriously.) It was a fun trip even if the downpour flooded the streets of North Limestone.
We drove back to Lexington the next night to meet up with some friends who now live in Lexington. Jenny Neat is a friend from Chaptico, stationed there when her husband Jess was rector of the Episcopal parish. They have traveled all their married lives, relocating every few years, the 21 years he was an Army officer and the years after he was ordained. Now they are back where they met–Jenny is a native of Lexington KY and met her husband when they were at Eastern Kentucky University. He now has a parish in Frankfort, KY. Jenny arranged for us to meet at a food co-op that served a great hot buffet, really one of the top meals of the trip.
Joining us was an old comrade of mine, Richard Farkas and his wife Julie. Richard was director of manufacturing at a DC publishing house and a customer of mine when I was in the typesetting business. He and I and a handful of others started an association for DC publishing professionals called Bookbuilders of Washington which had a successful run of ten years or so, hosting monthly meetings with guest speakers and publishing a monthly newsletter which I wrote. Richard retired from the University of Kentucky Press a couple years ago, founded a Buddhist temple in Lexington and wrote a primer on Tibetan Buddhism. The Dalai Lama wrote the introduction to his book!
Having been traveling amongst strangers, kind and well-intentioned as they may be, it was good to hang with old mates and find them doing well.
Berea, KY is home to Berea College and the center of Kentucky arts and crafts. The college is noted for its early and unwavering support for civil rights. The weather was brutally muggy but we enjoyed touring the town and the arts neighborhood. The Kentucky state arts center is only a few miles away and worth an hour of your time—textiles, woodwork, printmaking, basketry, and a wide array of foodstuffs flavored with bourbon. There is no comestible on the planet, sweet or savory, that some Kentuckian has not thought could be improved by the addition of bourbon. They are awfully proud of this substance, and rightfully so; strange, then, that in some places you have to drive through two counties before you can buy any.
Brenda struck up a conversation with a docent at the state arts center and told her we were looking for a good hike. She produced a photocopied sheet that gave written instructions and a hand drawn map to Anglin Falls. We sought it out the next day; it was located about 20 minutes from our campsite. Only a few miles in the road became very twisty and almost one lane; we encountered a barrier and huge sign reading “Road Closed.” It was curious to me that the barrier did not actually bar entry to the road entirely so we drove around it. Sure enough a half-mile later a good half of the road had slid down into the creek below, but there was enough room to sneak by on the intact part and we weren’t towing the trailer so we kept on gettin’. The directions and map were mistaken in some particulars and we had to double back a couple times. The final direction told us to turn onto the dirt road “with the mailbox.” And sure enough a good ways later there was a trailhead. The Anglin Falls hike has become my favorite of the trip. It was only a little over a mile round trip but climbed steep. It was old forest; massive limestone bluffs above; boulders everywhere that had broken off and fallen from above ages ago and were now completely covered in moss and vegetation. And of course at the top was the Anglin Falls, not a spectacular torrent but a steady flow of water falling 75 feet. What made it special was that we had the entire place to ourselves. “To walk in quiet reverie these ancient hills” was an honor. There were many sights and places recommended to us that were, I’m sure, more spectacular, but we had this place all to ourselves the entire time we were there. You wonder why some people live out their lives in hardship in places of little opportunity with danger of floods and other natural disasters and you see a place like this and you know, it’s the land they love and don’t want to leave. Okay, I’m laying it on a little thick; let’s just say we had a nice walk in the woods.
This area around Berea is Daniel Boone’s stomping ground. I had just started a book by Hampton Sides on Kit Carson and was surprised by the coincidence that Carson was born only a few miles from our campsite. In the early 1800s this area was the frontier. People were pouring through the Cumberland gap and pushing west. It is astonishing how much change came in such a short time. A European guy “discovers” the opening through the mountains in 1750. Daniel Boone and his pals widen it in the 1770s and start leading settlers through. Something like 300,000 settlers come through the Cumberland Gap over the next 40 years, felling trees and natives as they go. Seems like recent history, the older I get.
It’s easy to imagine how this rough terrain and a Boone-fed self-image would foster a sense of self- and kin-reliance and a lack of interest in central government, and a political and cultural conservatism. In a region where the topography prevents easy transport of grain for sale it makes sense to turn the grain into liquor for sale, leading to more conflict with government. And of course the original settlers themselves were temperamental Scots and Irish who had already been badly-used by and alienated from their previous overlords. So how did trade unionism among the coal miners take hold and become such a vital part of their story? How did these rough-hewn individualists come to buy into that sort of solidarity across holler and hill? Every mile you go further up into the hills you feel like you are entering a very different world that is older, more primal, and holding some secret. Okay, I’m waxing again; let’s just say I find this area fascinating. And if it weren’t so damn hot and humid we might not head to Tennessee in the morning.