Ghost Homesteads of the Blue Ridge MountainsWhat remains after the forests reclaim the homes and lives that once filled them
Deep in the forest behind our home off Irish Creek Road is an old stone chimney. It rises out of the ground among the trees built of old rocks chinked together with mud made of dirt and creek water. The chinking is long since cracked and often crumbling out from between the rocks. The top of the chimney is slightly crooked and collapsing, yet it has survived many a branch that has come hurtling down alongside it during windy rainstorms and resisted longer still the relentless pull of nature as it absorbs into itself all in the course of time.
The chimney and the cabin that once surrounded it is not on any map or viewable from any height except perhaps by bird in the winter when the trees shed their leaves and leave the chimney exposed. You have to know how to find it by the way of the trees, have to trust your feet to lead you there against the judgement of your conscious, and have to believe you’ll find your way back again once you leave the old deer trails and set off into the vastness of the woods alone with only the whisper of your consciousness and the twittering of birds to keep you company. The Homestead That VanishedAround the chimney lies the ruins of an old cabin, the capital of an old homestead built back when an enthusiastic family sought to clear the trees and begin a farm enticed by the abundance of clear running water and the potential of fertile land. Certainly, the nearby churches sit on land taken back from the forest and cleared of briar and bramble that grass may grow and the ground made ready for the living and dead alike. The dreams of the people who built the old chimney were crushed by the thickness of the deep lying tree roots, but they persisted long enough to build their log cabin with a fireplace and stone chimney to direct the smoke outwards. They stayed on, moved on, or their numbers dwindled until no one was left to take care of the place or no one wanted to. Now the cabin lies in pieces. An old log half buried under a thick covering of moss, scraps of wood soft and half eaten by the moist ground, coca cola bottles filled with dirt and moss. The coca cola bottles may have been a later addition to the landscape of the abandoned homestead, a desecration by passersby or wanderers in the woods who stopped to look at the old chimney with coke bottles in hand and left the bottles there as a kind of homage given with the shake of a head and a deep sigh. The ShoeThe most striking object I found at the old chimney was an old shoe. A singular old shoe half hidden under moss and rotten logs. There never was a second shoe to be found and somehow that made looking at the one shoe even sadder. Who was the owner of the shoe and what caused him to leave it behind?... Continue reading this post for free in the Substack app
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