Today I need some aimless, no-talking, nature time alone, so it’s off to Cumberland Falls State Resort Park, another project made possible by the backs of the CCC. (Given the economy, why don’t we reinstate something like that program, put our more aimless youth to work on state and local infrastructures, and send money to their families from their paychecks, like they did back then?)Cumberland Falls is southwest of London, KY, and not (as I would have thought) affiliated with the Cumberland Gap park, which is to the southeast. This part of the Cumberland River is one of ten river sections still kept as “wild” in Kentucky. I take a couple of hikes, catch a few rainbows in the mists as clouds shift across the sun, and generally have a long-needed full-of-thought day about some concepts that have been niggling at me as I’ve traveled.
This park is particularly proud of its reputation for having a “moonbow”—a rare kind of spectrum that shows up in mist during a full moon (see pics at wikipedia.org, Moonbow). I’m here at the wrong time of the month to see it, and it’s just as well; the viewing spot is several miles in, accessible only by hiking. I suppose the trail is pretty well trodden by now, but after my starlit adventure at Arches, I wouldn’t be so eager to head out in the middle of a cold clear night just to see light playing on water droplets.
I lunch at the DuPont Lodge, a stone rebuild of a wooden CCC lodge that a fire took out in the 1940s. That’s the same DuPont we all know from the chemical/paint/agricultural industries. He stepped in with a large donation to get the state park built after the land passed from private hands into the ownership of a power utility.
Like so much of the U.S., this area was once prime forested living space for native peoples, and the idea of a husband and wife actually walking up to these falls in the late 1800s and saying, “This is great! We now claim all this area for ourselves,” and then later selling their homestead to someone else who allowed the rest of the public to partake by opening a bathhouse and hotel, completely baffles me, but that’s how this whole thing started.
I mean, whether it was a nation or a private party who said it, what gave anyone the initial right to claim, own, and sell a piece of ground that never, by its very nature as part of an exploding universe, came with a deed attached to it?
No wonder centuries of non-land-owning peoples have been wiped out and eons of nations have fought territorial and resource wars. Entrenched in the belief that there’s only enough land/resources for me and mine, not also for you and yours, this idea of “It’s mine!” “No, it’s mine and, by golly, I’ve got the paperwork to prove it in court!” has driven billions of people into thinking they have to pay someone else to live where they once could live for free.
But land on this planet belonged first to none but itself, and it will be here long after we silly possession-focused bipeds, with our artificial boundaries and man-made permits and heated legal battles over who owns what with what rights attached, are but memories of light in the stars.
And if the planet is really lucky, the grand tiny region of wild river called Cumberland Falls will still be around on that day—as long as the next highest bidder hasn’t obtained the deed and cleared it for tract housing or a golf resort.
The Cumberland River, still wild after all these years.
These rocks used to be open for beach parties.
Called Little Niagara, or Niagara of the South, the fall is about 68' high. The leading edge continuously erodes like a receding glacier.
Looking downriver from the falls.
An easy path into the woods.
Surprising find at the banks.
Wash-in.
Brittany was here.
Thundering texture.
Summer on the hillside.
So am I in the Cumberland woods or a Colombian forest?!
Sneak peak.
Shades of home--rhodies!
Upriver.
View from the hike to Eagle Falls, on the other side of the river.
DuPont Lodge.
A lunch with a view; birdfeeders outside the window were busy with goldfinches.
