Noodlings & Natterings from the Edge: Heron, Fish, Pigeon, Duck

With a bear thrown in for good measure.

Our departure from New Orleans on April 25 (sorry, our time since leaving Yuma mid-March is not yet blogged) has us going through Columbus, MS, to get to Savannah, TN, for a visit to the Shiloh civil war battlefield. Then it was on to Pigeon Forge/ Gatlinburg, TN, to spend a few days near Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

In Mississippi, we gathered important information about surviving in the wildlife-rich South from Sandy, our check-in lady at the state park. She warned us to avoid all the “no shoulders” (snakes) near the water and to be on the lookout at night “for ’coons, ’possums, and ’possums on the half-shell” (armadillos).

Upon learning that we Southern Californians had not yet sampled a crawdad meal, she launched into the proper way to eat one: strip off the head, unwind the legs from the body, squeeze the sides of the tail, and scrape the meat from the shell with your teeth. “Down in the bayou,” she added, “the real crawdad eaters also suck out the heads. But I don’t do that.”

Uh, thanks. Neither would we.

(Viewing tip: Click any picture to scroll through them in larger format without captions.)

Mississippi is amazingly green and refreshing to travel through. Most of this day's 300-mile drive through the Coastal and Pine regions was on tree- and grass-lined parkway (Hwy 59/10).

Our state campground in Columbus was along the man-made, 234-mile Tenn-Tom waterway. It was built for barging goods between the Tombigwee and Tennessee Rivers to get commerce from New Orleans to inland locales. (Don't ya just love the word "Tombigwee"?) This is one of its many locks and dams, a good place to watch heron.

Shiloh National Military Park in Savannah, TN, is a sprawling place dotted with placed artillery, color- and shape-coded signage, and marble monuments all accurately placed to indicate which state regiments were where for camping, fighting, and retreating during the two-day battle. We drove the 13-mile tour road (map shown here, click to enlarge) through swelling grassy fields and past forested hollows to follow the action of one of the bloodiest fights of the war: 23,000 men killed, wounded, or never found. The Confederates took Day 1, beating back Grant and his men to the Tennessee River, and the Union took Day 2 after reinforcements finally reached Grant in the middle of the night from the same river. In the adjacent national cemetery, thousands of white tombstones stand row by row, state by state—all of them Union soldiers. The Confederate soldiers were buried in mass graves on the battlefield, thousands piled into six or seven shallow holes. Odd that the Union buried Confederates as if they were from a separate nation, even though they were fighting to keep them from seceding as a separate nation.

Visiting Pickwick Dam in Savannah kept me occupied for an hour photographing herons and people. All of them were fishing, with the herons holding their own quite nicely. The three herons on the shoreline were unperturbed by their human neighbors. This dam was a TVA project to bring electricity to the backwoods of Tennessee; it still powers much of the area.

Lineup at the fish bar.

Sam comes to the dam almost every day to fish. He was so overloaded with gear and catch that he was pausing every few yards to rest. He accepted our offer to carry his four fishing poles (one of them a bamboo stalk) and tackle box (heavy with lead sinkers) to his truck.

Sam’s catch of bluegill. Good eatin’, according to him.

Legging it through the rocks for a good fishing spot.

This catch was much too large, and the heron lost it.

A more normal-sized morsel by heron standards. He deftly turned it ’round to send it head-first down the gullet.

We continued through Tennessee, where the scenery was much the same as through Mississippi…swaths of green,

farmsteads and grain silos,

and roads carved through rock that looked more crumbling than it was.

Amish travel by horse and buggy on errands in Lawrenceburg, TN. For miles, highway 43 into, through, and out of this town has super-wide, paved shoulders for carriages. Piles of horse poop testified to its frequent use. Even as far south as Columbia, MS, we saw a two-horse Amish buggy tethered to a street lamp in a Piggly Wiggly parking lot (local grocery chain). Also seen in Lawrenceburg: a pharmacy proclaiming “We Now Have Unker’s Medicated Salve!” and a rolling marquis sign at a health clinic that read, “Stop Smoking Get Free Diapers.” We think that was targeted to pregnant women, but we had passed it too fast for me to read any more of it.

In Crossville, TN we went to an outlet mall to check out an excellent model railroad exhibit and stumbled onto a local artisans/indoor market day. Painters, wood carvers, soap makers, gospel singers, and the like. This fellow was caning chairs using golf tees as bobbins. You just don’t find this kind of stuff out west.

And then came Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, a twin-city gateway into Great Smoky Mountains NP and mecca for all things “fun” according to every poster, billboard, and brochure. It’s a jarring contrast between miles of visual and physical noise in the name of entertainment, and the quiet, natural environs of the park.

Moonshine distilleries drew the biggest crowds. Show your ID, sample ten or so of XXX juice by the thimble-full, and walk out sauced if you're not careful. Boutique flavors ranged from peach pie to fiery cinnamon, and proofs shot from 40% to 135% (think throwing back a jigger of ethanol...). Some offer tours, others viewing windows, and still others placards for self-paced learning of this regional craft liquor. At Ole Smoky Sunshine Holler distillery, we took a break from the heat under their covered patio to listen to live Appalachian music while sitting in rocking chairs and munching free popcorn.

Also available: Lumberjack Feud, Hatfields vs. The McCoys, Dolly Parton's Dinner Stampede...

At this Everything Is $9.98 (Or Less) store, you get a free hermit crab with every purchase. Hmmm.

Tulip poplar tree in a pocket park in Gatlinburg, a welcome respite from the fudge shops, souvenir shops, and Ripley’s museums just around the corner.

Driving through Smoky Mountains NP, a haven of trees, mountains, and rivers.

Many a Smokies mountaintop was covered in winter-bare trees, not yet ready to bud. An insect pest has also been sucking the life out of the park’s hemlocks and firs, leaving crispy brown snags at the highest elevations.

View from Newfound Gap, part of the Appalachian Trail at the border of Tennessee and North Carolina, a little over 5,000 feet. I wandered up the Appalachian Trail about 50 yards, just to say I was on it.

Fringed phacelia, a flower common to the park.

A suspiciously large number of pulled-over cars meant a bear sighting in the park. Of course we had to stop and look. This was the mama bear, her cub close by browsing up the hill. She’s been ear-tagged. A video of them both is below.

Cades Cove, a valley that once housed a self-sustaining community of mostly Methodist farmers and their families in the late 1800s. An 11-mile, one-way loop has stops at interesting old homesteads, churches, and farmland viewpoints.

A visitors center is near the cove’s main watermill, still at its original site and still grinding wheat flour and corn meal for purchase. Over the years, the park service has moved many rustic buildings into this area, creating a community with barns, blacksmith, sorghum press, cabins, smokehouses, and the like to explore.

Clingmans Dome Observation Tower, a 1959 installation that looks like it should activate rockets and take off. It’s at 6,643 feet and provides a 360-degree view of the Smokies to reward a steep half-mile walk to get to it.

The first hike we’ve managed since Big Bend NP in Texas…we just haven’t been at high enough elevation. This one goes to Rainbow Falls.

A mini falls along the way.

Never could find the name of this tree, but its petals had fallen so thickly that it was like walking through a light snow in some parts of the trail. This was the only tree I found with its flowers still on.