THE DIE-BACK

Text By:  Carmen Bowes

Photos By:  Samuel Taylor or as noted in text.  Stock and historic images from US Library of Congress, Wikimedia, WVEXP and Austin Reid. 

A part of me wants to say something cliché. “I’ve traveled far and wide and seen nothing.” Well, the remnants of something. A lot of empty places. I’d thought it was a West Virginia/rest-of-the-country problem. It isn’t. It is a rural/urban problem or a trendy/tired problem. It doesn’t seem to matter what state, what region, what big town is THE big town near you; past the burbs, the devastation is vast and real. A forgotten and forlorn America hiding in the recesses of the economy. Those people, the ones hiding, could give 2 shits about social issues. They are 1 of 50 people in a 100-square-mile space. My guess is, they can get along with those 49 people. The people hiding want to be hidden. They want to be left alone to farm or ranch or hunt or shoot assault rifles into the wide-open spaces or whatever thing it is that brings them joy in a poor, mundane world.

FIRST STOP

Downtown Richmond, Indiana

An odd girl is walking down the sidewalk in front of us. She is plump and, while adult-sized, is dressed like a child. She moves with insanity, sporadic and without purpose. We are wasting time wandering around a town called Richmond, Indiana while our pizza order bakes. The pizza shop had a former life as a bowling alley. The door still hosts a pin-shaped window. We walk. The girl stops outside of a chain-link fence, inside a cat rubs against wildly-unkempt shrubs. We cross the street like a couple of wimps.

Richmond is charming to me in the way that most sweet, old towns are. There are grand homes that are still lived in but could use some love. There are cobblestone streets and a couple restaurants still hanging on. There are old men mowing their lawns and bored young people looking for trouble. All the things my little town had.

We pick up the pizza and head to our campsite at a Kampground Of America (KOA) right off the interstate. This spot was chosen because it was convenient. In the future, fuck the amenities, serenity.  The pizza is good and salty. Instead of triangular, pie-shaped slices, it is cut in a grid pattern. The bits around the edge take on an abstract, half-curved, and half-angular form. Mosquitoes come on heavy and the sound of trucks from I-70 blow past us through the thin tree line.

Old Reid Hospital - Photo Courtesy of Austin Reid, www.austinereid.com

Sitting in the dark, Sam’s face shines bright from the blue light of his phone. He is reading me an article he found about an abandoned hospital in Richmond, lovingly called “Old Reid.” It caught our attention on the way in and out of town, standing there massive and peculiar. Its tale is one of expansion and annihilation.

Its conception was the result of a large donation of $130,000 by John F. Miller. Construction began in 1905. Many additions took place over the years, the last in the 1980s. The need for more space was insatiable. Looking at the structure now, you can see all its appendages. The original building cut of stone, looming, and the most recent addition, a dark glass sheet of windows divided by gray concrete. Modern. 

Old Reid grew beyond its own reach somewhere in the late 1990s and by the 2000s, it was clear that the hospital would have to move to a new facility. Cynthia Rauch was able to take a look around the space just before they chose to move and said this, “The building showed the history of medicine and not the future of healthcare.” From 2004 to 2008, the branches slowly moved out and finally Old Reid sat empty for the first time in nearly 100 years.

Old Reid Hospital.  Photo from Library of Congress

Shortly after its closing, an investor bought the property just in time for the financial bubble to burst in 2008. Multiple attempts over the years to develop the property were shut down. Tax issues and funding mostly. In 2015, back taxes had risen over $500,000 and the structure sat wasted.

Old Reid’s story makes us sad and curious about Richmond. The town sits right near Route 40, the National Road, and now I-70. It was historically a major stop for travelers. But now, it feels small and lonely. We search, and immediately we learn of a humungous natural gas explosion on April 6, 1968. One third of Richmond’s downtown burned. 41 people were killed and 150 were injured. The fire hit Richmond’s economy hard. In an attempt by the town to bring business, they built a promenade in 1972. This model was unsuccessful and in 1997 was returned to car traffic. The same year, Route 40 was re-routed to bypass the downtown and like most other small towns that are bypassed, the people stopped coming.

That night it is hot, and we sleep in the back of the Jeep with the hatch open. Trucks barrel past every so often, on the way to some place with people. Lots of people who needs lots of things.

We wake up the next day, bug-bitten and happy, now we are traveling. I cook us oatmeal and coffee on the camp stove as Sam packs up. Rolling out of the campground, we aim dead-west on I-70, still so much of the U.S. to cross before sleep.

THE MIDDLE

Sunflowers, Nebraska

Lincoln Highway, Nebraska

Davenport, Urbandale, Anita, Lexington; we drive through town after town. We take the Lincoln Highway through most of Nebraska, first automobile road across the U.S. It connected parts of the Mormon and Cherokee Trails, the Pony Express, and the infamous Donner pass. It was so early that when looking it up, I found an old highway guide for the road. It said of the highway, “The recommended equipment [for traveling this road] includes chains, shovel, axe, jacks, tire casings, and inner tubes.” This is the gear we take when we are off-roading now.

We follow old wagon ruts across the plains and come through countless little municipalities. All of them have a water tower, a grain silo or two, a solitary stoplight, a glib post office, and of course, a sign containing the town’s name and population. Some of them only in the double digits. After going the two or three blocks that town lasts, there is a matching sign that says, “Thanks for Visiting Scenic fill-in-the-blank.”

CORN. SOY. GRAIN. 3 hours feels like a short jump up the road to me now. CORN. SOY. Sunflowers. Wait. Sunflowers. “Stop the car!” We stop and I crouch down among them. Their sweet faces. So many of them, they roll off with the horizon. Little yellow heads stick up proud out of all the green. Lovelies.

Each intersection is a four-way and grid-like. The roads lay flat, two crossed boards in the grass.

Torrington, Sheridan, Greybull, Cody. All small towns in Wyoming. The signs at the edge of town now include elevation. Yellowstone—people, Jackson—money, Pinedale—tourists. We put the miles down. Pace—nonstop.

Flaming Gorge Lake, Wyoming

Finally, it slows. We turn our Jeep down a backroad towards a dune field way out on some BLM land. Killpecker Dunes. What a name. The road is wash-boarded, we bounce around in our seats. There are old rail-grades shooting out into the desert. Sam drives through a lot of soft sand. Panic nearly sets in until he digs into the throttle and pulls us out the other side.

Dunes. Beautiful and speckled with wild flowers. There is a watering hole deep in a bowl of sand. Critters gather around it. Pronghorns stand on the smooth peaks. We are alone with the animals except for a set of tracks from some piece of large equipment leading further into the dunes. This isn’t a park. It just sits out here, mostly unknown. Trains used to push through the valley near them, shaking each grain. Not now, now it is just the locals and a few travelers, curious and brave enough to journey out into the wild west. Just us and these dunes.

We head southeast toward Flaming Gorge, following more ruts from some old trail. Turning towards the park, our road is paved and fast. We drive into an incredible canyon, the layers of stone exposed on spires above us. The road winds and we see a deep dry wash forming beside us. Storm clouds roll around on the horizon. We talk about water, the catastrophic force. It can rage. I have watched the Weather Channel’s radical and incendiary accounts of the flash floods. I know they are serious, but I also know that most of the people caught in the rushing water did not heed the warnings.

I drive fast on the paved road. We reach the lake that fills Flaming Gorge. It is stunning. Our road turns to follow the shoreline and immediately the pavement ends, and the bentonite begins. To backtrack would be a very long way. Even with the rain coming, we press on. Nerves make my shoulders stiff as I steer us up a drainage away from the gorge. A wash parallels the road and dark clouds hang on my rearview mirror.

Coming into a big flat, Sam asks me to stop the Jeep. “Do you see those buildings out there?” I use my camera to zoom in and see old ranch sheds and barns, their roofs folding in on themselves. The wash is deep here, 15-foot walls on either side. It sits between us and the structures. Knowing the stories, Sam and I get back in the Jeep and we drive away from that place. We leave those buildings there, just like their owners and the park service and all the other folks that stayed on this side of the wash.

We make camp in Flaming Gorge on the edge of a cliff face. There are big, wild walls of orange rock, momma and baby moose, and then, there is the once forgotten Swett Ranch. We hear stories about the former owners, Oscar and Emma. They sound flawless. We sneak away from their increbible homestead and into Dinosaur National Monument where we learn about another pioneer. Miss Josie Bassett was her name and her perfect cottage in the desert is the stuff dreams are made of, abandoned as well.

Abandoned Ranch.  Flaming Gorge NRA

THE ANCIENTS

Cliff Palace - Mesa Verde National Park

Pictographs, Canyon Pintado

We drive southeast and stop in at a little visitor’s center just across the Colorado border. Some sweet older ladies are working and suggest that we run south through Canyon Pintado, or painted canyon. This canyon is famous for having an impressive number of petroglyphs and pictographs left here by the Fremont peoples.

Of course, we go. We follow our brochure guide and stop at one of the listed sites. Up a small trail and not more than 100 feet off the highway, there they are.  Shapes of corn and strange men look at us from the orange stone. We take pictures. I wonder how many people drive by these and never stop, never have any idea of what they are passing.

We climb back in the Jeep and go a few more miles to the next stop on the guide. This stop is called “Waving Hands,” and when we walk up to the wall we know why. There are two brilliant white hands planted firmly on the rock. I don’t know why someone left them here. Maybe it was a symbol of something else. Maybe something like our “Don’t Walk” signs. But standing here looking at them, I am overcome by a feeling of connectedness. Like that person, over 800 years ago, traced their own hands onto that rock knowing that someone, me or anyone else, would look at it and know they were saying hello.

Around the corner from the hands is a large man painted on the wall. Our brochure calls him “The Guardian.” All ideas of what significance this little guy might have feel like pure speculation.

We go to Moab and Arches and Dead Horse Point. Then we turn toward Mesa Verde National Park, the place with the cliff dwellings. We arrive late at night. The parking lot of the camping services station is empty, the gates into the park have no attendants, the street lights around the lot are not on, and the fluorescents from the laundry mat shine in bright blue beams across the asphalt. The place looks tired.

Doors, Mesa Verde

We drive to our campground and it is completely empty. We make the whole loop. There is no one, not a single person, not a campfire light shining through the trees. No signs of life. I am creeped out and ask Sam to walk me to the bathroom. There are signs on the building warning about bear and mountain lions. Thick grass surrounds each site and shrubby trees make me claustrophobic. I feel like there are mountain lions all around us. We don’t eat and I ratchet-strap our cooler to the picnic table, hopeful that will ward off the critters.

We wake up and drive to the visitor’s center to get tickets. I choose the Balcony House tour. It is the most challenging offered; ladders and cliff faces and tunnels. We learn all about the Ancestral Puebloans and their motivations for choosing these places. A 23-year drought meant trying to find water any and everywhere possible. Each of the cliff houses has a spring that trickles from the stone in the back of the alcove.

After our tour guide tells us a bit about the place, we descend off the top of the mesa down a steep set of stairs and wrap around to a 32-foot ladder. I climb up and over the stone wall. I look out across the valley. Sunshine bathes the trees below us. I go through a tunnel and into the main living area, the people in the tour wander around. I imagine getting to live here. Flowers and herbs would hang from the yellow-orange sandstone stacked walls. Woven rugs would warm up the living areas. Perfect.

We finish the tour and go looking for more. The top of the mesa is covered with old, excavated pueblos. We walk through them, they are people-shaped. I feel like I could move in right now; put up some billowy white curtains and call it home.

The Guardian

Sam picks us out a twilight photography tour of Cliff Palace. It is the darling of the park, the must-see. We meet at 6:45, the sun is floating around on the horizon. There are only 15 people allowed on this tour. We follow our guide through some deep slots and come around the corner to a huge space, ruins running the full length of the alcove. I look into the deep shadows and see structures as far back as the light allows. The guide tells us we can wander freely. “If you have any questions I am excited to help answer them, but this is your time, spend it how you wish.” With an odd trepidation we all tiptoe into the palace.

This place is unbelievably massive. I picture my entire small town back in West Virginia living here. It feels empty with only 15 people filling its expanse. Lonely. I walk up to a tower and peak inside its door. I turn my head to look up, light comes in windows from high above. The beams that used to support floors are still suspended by the stone. Sturdy and ancient.

Why the people left this place is a deep mystery but most of the evidence points to a slew of instigators. The Great Drought was the first. 23 years without rain. Think about that. Not a drop fell for over 2 decades. The second is that of impending violence. The Apache, Navajo, and Anasazi were all migrating in the late 1200s. The larger and less easily defined theory is that of an ideological shift that caused the flight. William D. Lipe, an archeologist from Washington State University says that it “was a time of substantial social, political and religious ferment and experimentation.”  

We leave Mesa Verde filled with a mild brand of dissatisfaction. It is an unbelievable place and spending some time there, we understand quickly that whatever the reason, it had to be immense to feel that the only option was to leave.

DEAD EAST

House, Colorado

Colorado is beautiful. I am certain anyone who has ever been will not argue. Even in August, snow-covered peaks stand high above the grassy valleys. Great Sand Dunes National Park is our next stop. We cross the San Juan Mountains, our Jeep moseys up the paved switchbacks, 40 miles per hour and heater cranked to keep the engine cool.

Coming down the other side we pass sleepy ranch entrance gates, one after the next. We fall into a massive valley, 50 miles across. I look out and in the hazy distance, I see a small dune field. The wind at our back, we drive for a long time; the dunes our guide star. We come to an intersection and a tiny town called Mosca. About 5 dainty houses and a firehall sit perched. We turn right, away from them. A white house sits like an empty bullet casing. It is missing its windows and its trim, the parts that make it sweet and enchanting. It hauntingly resides over the sand dunes.

We drive another 20 minutes. We see the dunes, they are bigger than I could ever imagine. A thunder storm rolls in and we eat dinner in the Jeep. We run into some friends from back home and sit around a fire for the first time on our trip. Community.

The next day there is a lot of driving. We pass through Raton, New Mexico, a little town old as sin.  We eat the best Mexican food of our lives and go to ANOTHER visitor’s center. I find pamphlets for the Santa Fe and Spanish Trails. We try to follow them. More wagon ruts appear along the road. Small towns forever. Maxwell, Springer, Mills. We drive into the Kiowa National Grasslands looking for a ghost town Sam read about, Mills Canyon. Once again, weather is looming, and we turn back.

Out-driving the weather, we stop and look out across the big, horizontal place; darks clouds way in the distance. Flatness a West Virginian can never quite get used to.

We drive through Roy, New Mexico. It is small and feels very old. Or like it is trying to feel very old. We go through Solano, Mosquero, Logan, and Porter before we finally drive across the Texas border. 70 miles to Amarillo, our stop for the night. We hit I-40 and cruise on a 4-lane for the first time in what feels like a month. The miles tick down. We start seeing Old Route 66 signage. It is dark when we roll into town. It looks just like a lot of other medium-sized towns in the country. A few more cowboy boots is the biggest difference I see.

At a restaurant in Amarillo, we learn of Hurricane Harvey. We were supposed to go right through its path. Nope. We change course and follow Old 66 through Oklahoma and then head east across Missouri. Small towns. We stop in the Mark Twain National Forest to camp. It is desolate. We find a place that we think is distributed camping and drink until we can sleep, music blaring.

Mills Canyon, New Mexico

FAMILIAR WITH THE APOCALYPSE

Confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio River (Ohio River left, Mississippi River right)

Over a Mcdonald’s breakfast the next morning we discuss our route for the day. Hotel in Lexington, Kentucky or camping somewhere in the eastern part of the state? Camping. Looking at the map we ponder where we should cross the Big Muddy; I google Mississippi River towns. Cairo, Illinois pops up on Atlas Obscura. Pronounced ­care-oh. The headline reads, “Abandoned Town of Cairo, Illinois. A once-booming Mississippi River port town has transformed into an eerie, mostly abandoned ghost town.” Cairo is at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers.

Map of Cairo, Illinois, CA 1885.  Library of Congress

Sam reads to me as I drive. “The town has mostly been abandoned because of its economic desperation, though its history of racial tension certainly didn’t help.” He looks for other sources and reads accounts of packs of wild dogs running the streets, police murders of young black men, and the downtown looking like a scene out of The Walking Dead. Our curiosity is insatiable, we have to see this place for ourselves.

We drive pot-hole ridden two-lane roads and just before town we stop at a little park where the big rivers meet, Fort Defiance State Park.  Sweeping, pretty trees mark the way and we start to see water peeking through on either side of us. The land comes to a point and there is a tall observation deck roosted on the grass above the water. We climb it and look out at the expanse. Everything in the park is a little run-down but otherwise it is a pleasant spot. We eat lunch. The barges going by make the water rise and fall near our feet.

Sam packs the camp kitchen back into the hatch while I grab the axe off the side of the Jeep and put it within reach. Packs of wild dogs are nothing to be messed with. The final push into Cairo reminds me of riding my bike down the rail-trail along the Monongahela in Morgantown. Fields. Trees. Floodplains. Evidence of high water.

Cairo, Illinois.  Jonathunder, GDFL/1.2, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GEMblockCairoIL.jpg

Coming into town, there are people walking down the sidewalks, a lot of empty storefronts, people relaxing on their porches and in their yards, and a couple of open restaurants. My first impression of Cairo is that it looks a lot like every small town in West Virginia, only bigger. It might have boomed and is now declining but there are still people living here. There are still businesses running. This is not apocalyptic, this is what rural America looks like.

A disconnect: how is it this place has such a bad rap? How is it that so many people came here and had the same reaction?  

Then we realize. Cairo isn’t scary or strange to us. The economic damage and the rundown buildings are our norm. Main streets with only 1 or 2 restaurants feel like enough. There is nothing Walking Dead about this place to us. We are from this town, maybe not this exact town but a town that feels and looks just like this one.  

Then we understand. The economic gap and the perception of poverty are much wider than we each thought. The people online, the people who call this place abandoned. They don’t know the towns we know. Here is the moral of the story: they don’t know the poverty we know. Poverty isn’t scary when you know what it looks like. The desperate people, we know them. They are our families, our friends. We have been desperate, and it lit a fire inside of us. Desperation is scary because desperate people will do whatever it takes and sometimes, whatever it takes is unspeakable. The hustle.

We leave Cairo and drive most of the way across Kentucky in a daze. White rail fences run along the road for miles. Green pastures stare at us from the other side and Harvey’s impending weather makes for never-ending overcast. Dreary.

LAST STOP

Billion Dollar Coalfield, Williamson, West Virginia

After a heavy day, we camp in Eastern Kentucky at a spot called Twin Knobs Campground. We sit at the picnic table and talk about home and traveling and how we could both just keep going. Sleep grips us and we wake up the next morning groggy, the romance of our trip already beginning to fade. We head east toward the wild and wonderful.

Mingo County, West Virginia. Home.

Hatfield Street, Matewan, West Virginia

We cross the border hungry and aim for a little hotdog shop in Williamson called Tunnel Drive-In. This place is over 30 years old. The food is alright but the vibe is good. Kitschy and American.

This is my first time in Mingo County but the things I’ve heard don’t paint a pretty picture. Drugs, filth, and lack of education. I’ve read entire books about how the man in these parts has gone to great lengths to keep the poor people poor. Murder and corruption.

Now, it is quiet and pretty in this place. There are small neighborhoods, a big ole railyard, and a newly-built, consolidated school for the county. It is a lot like my home county; trains rumbling through, old buildings, and perpetually sleepy. It feels like many of the places we saw stippled across the U.S.

We dig into our West Virginia Atlas and find some gravel roads to run. We go to Matewan, the scene for the 1920 shootout between the coal miners and the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency. Town is deserted.  The streets lack any signs of life. No vehicles, no people, no food-smells, nothing. We find a sign to tell us about the massacre. Bullet holes still speckle some of the buildings.  There is a museum but it is locked up tight. We amble down the street.

Matewan N&W Station, http://www.wvexp.com/index.php/Matewan,_West_Virginia

At the end of town we find the UMWA(United Mine Workers of America) union hall. One lonely truck sits in the gravel lot. A man comes out of the building, he waves and asks, “What’er yall doin in these parts?” We get this question a lot and today we are the only people in town to ask. Just us and this retired miner and Vietnam vet. Sam says, “We are from the central part of the state. Just exploring and have always wanted to get down here.” The man hears Sam’s accent and seems appeased.   “Not much ‘ere,” the man says. We hear that a lot too.

We chat with the man for a while and he heads out of town. I follow Sam along the railroad tracks back to the Jeep. I see that the buildings were designed for their storefronts to cater to the people getting off the train way-back-when. They don’t stop here anymore. Boards cover some of the windows, others boast a thick layer of dust. The ornate facades hang onto the stone and brick above us. We hear a whistle blow a-little-ways in the distance and the ground growls under our feet. The buildings vibrate. I feel a deep desire to buy these creaky old souls, save the structures before they can’t be brought back.

There are banks and businesses that look like they just closed yesterday. Modern and ordinary except that they are empty. People-shaped. Right next to them are spots that look long-forgotten; floors caving in and tin ceiling tiles hanging by a thread. It feels like people have been leaving this place as long as they’ve been coming. The die-back.

This blog is dedicated to the following:

The people, the educated, the blue-collar, the fed-up, the fierce, the discouraged, the majority, the bold, the underestimated, the laid-off, the salt-of-the-earth, the hungry, the wise, the down-home, the back-40 livin’, the final few, the south-bound, the west-bound, the north-bound, and the east-bound. The ones doing whatever it takes.

Rattle Snakes, Heat Exhaustion, and Slick Rock

Text By:  Carmen Bowes

Photos By:  Samuel Taylor

Arches National Park was not on our original to-do list but a shower was needed and we were too close to skip it. I found us a hotel in Moab and we rolled in filthy and ready for modern amenities. We had gone five days. Our last shower was the day before the eclipse. As I scrubbed my arms, I realized that what I thought was a desert-southwest tan forming was actually several layers of sunscreen and dirt clinging to my skin. Clean and refreshed, we snuggled in that night and slept hard. The next morning: Arches.

With our bellies full of continental breakfast, we drive toward Arches. The windows are down and it is heating up fast. The wild orange slick rock climbs tall from the canyon below. The check-in station gives us a map and we skip the visitors’ center. There is construction in the Windows section of the park. Sam has been to Arches before and he says Delicate Arch is cool but a long hike for one arch.

So, we narrow down our choices and aim for Devil’s Garden. The park map says this trail is 7.2 miles and describes it as “Difficult. Longest of the trails. Includes Double O Arch, Landscape Arch, and primitive trail.” This is all fine and dandy. Sam and I do difficult hikes all the time. Primitive trail has its own description, “Difficult route through fins; short section of smooth slick rock; slippery when wet. Side trip to Private Arch.”

We go for it. As we are hiking in a park ranger stops us and asks how much water we have. “100 ounces in my pack and 100 in his,” I say. The ranger seems pleased and we walk through two huge walls of rock to start our hike. Sam makes fun of my precise answer, “101.442 ounces of water, Mr. Park Ranger, Sir.” We laugh but we are seriously geared-out. We both have on light colors, light layers, shorts, trekking poles, hiking boots, sunscreen for days, and our floppy sun hats. We look ridiculous. Everyone else out here has a 16-ounce water bottle and sneakers.

The walk to the first arch is short, Tunnel Arch. The most striking thing about this guy is how well-hidden he is until you get to the perfect vantage. Then, boom! Arch! It is suspended high up on a blank face. The light is harsh and the arch casts dense shadows on itself.

We wander down the trail to Pine Tree Arch. A man is lounging in the shade on one side of it. The slick rock is cradling him and he looks content. I step through it and examine the phenomenon. I am fascinated and amazed that nature does this on its own.

Feeling good, we get to the start of primitive trail. It has a warning sign. We step off the gravel trail into the soft sand. My calves feel it in no time. I work hard as the grains move from under my boot. I see a slick rock fin growing out of the sand and take off across its back. The sides fall away from me and I am high up above the trail below. I explore to find another way down but there isn’t one.

Back-tracking, I catch up to Sam. We rest under a barely-shade tree. I suck down water and fan the map at my face aggressively. As we start cutting across fins, route-finding becomes challenging. Cairns guide us, footprints are misleading.

We come to the base of a fin with a pool of nasty water nestled in its bowl. We have to cross on one side of it, the slick rock is covered in sand. My boots are barely holding onto the rock and I stand there holding tension in my legs for a long time. We are nearly to the furthest-most point on our hike. If I fall into that water, I have four miles of hiking to do in wet boots. Blister-city. Finally, I throw my trekking poles over the other side and put on my best climber slab-technique. With my weight way over my feet I scurry across. Sam follows suit.

We wander around fins for a long time and finally we make our last push past the big one. It requires a huge committing jump across a ravine and tenuous, steep moves over the slick rock. We knock it out.

Working past the half-way point of our loop, we get to the side trip for Private Arch. This one’s a goody. There is a little shade tree perfectly perched to take in the arch while we grab a snack and chug water. I am hot and strip down to my sports bra. The breeze coming through the arch is exactly what my aching, warm body needs.

Refreshed, we get our packs on and hike back to primitive trail. Just as we are making the left to continue a woman stumbles out of the desert onto the trail. She is wearing pink, dress sandals and carrying an empty water bottle.

I see sweat beads on her forehead as she says, “Which way is the parking lot?”

Sam and I look at each other and Sam says to the woman, “You can get there from each direction but that way (points to the way from which we came) is more difficult.”

I add, “There is a lot of slick rock and the route-finding is challenging.”

She says, “I think I will be ok. How do I know which way to go?”

Sam says, “Just follow the cairns.”

“What are cairns?” she asks.

Sam says, “The little piles of rocks.”

The woman wanders that direction and says in a breathy voice, “Thank you.”

We worry about her the rest of the day. The only solace is that we saw a fair amount of people in that direction. She could at least have a chance at finding someone to help her.

Shaking off the desperate concern for other’s safety we hike toward Double O Arch. The trail is steep and I am starting to get hot. Really hot. I drink water as quickly as I can, thinking that will help me cool down. I feel ok, except that I am so hot, scorched. We get to Double O and I hide under another shade tree. The two arches are so lovely. I am hot but fueled by my shady rest and the hope that it is all down-hill from here.

After another mile and a half, we come to the side trail for Navajo and Partition Arches. Partition is so cool. It is two arches separated by a thin strip of slick rock. I am intrigued but getting so hot. On the way to Navajo I suck down my last drop of water. The empty air of my water bladder leaves my mouth wanting. Navajo is exactly what I need. The arch opens into a skinny slot between tow fins. SHADE. We linger there. Sam makes me drink some of his water. I lean against the cool stone.

With a short jump back to the parking lot, I get my business face on. Just as I am starting my trudge, I see a crowd of people gathered around the base of a tree. I ask what they are looking at and they point to a small coiled rattle snake. He isn’t hissing, he isn’t rattling, he is sleeping. He is so tiny, he is almost cute. We take pictures with our long lens and Sam zooms in on the image. He looks mean close-up. We are about to turn and leave when a boy comes back with a stick. He goes to poke the snake. I get mad. I say, “How would you like it if someone poked you with a stick!?” I am so hot and flustered and thirsty. I say, “That’s how people get killed from rattlesnake bites!” Sam adds, “That’s one of the really bad neuro-toxin guys. He is serious.” The father of the boy with the stick says, “It’s dead.” Sam and I both snort at this. “He’s sleeping.” Sam says. “They sleep in the heat of the day.”

Having spent my last bit of energy on anger, I walk out with purpose and disenchantment. We pass Landscape Arch and I could almost care less. My wonder is big though and it drives me. Sam makes me drink more of his water. I am so hot.

We walk the rest of the way out. I can see the parking lot when Sam suggests that we sit in the shade to cool off. I sprawl out on a cold piece of slick rock. I take off my boots and my socks and put my feet on the stone. Sam is incessantly asking me if I am ok. I slip my bare feet back into my boots and walk to the jeep. Opening the cooler, I grab all the electrolyte-containing beverages and more water. Climbing in the jeep, I lay the seat back. Sam drives us out of the park. The wind does nothing, I go in and out of sleep.

Sam takes me to the visitors’ center and we wander the exhibit. I stand under the air conditioning vent re-reading the geology I had already learned earlier in the day. “Arches National Park lies atop a salt bed…” air conditioning… “which is the main cause of the arches, spires…” cold air feels so good… “eroded monoliths…” I feel the heat leaving my body and energy comes back to me. I am starving.

Sam buys me a cheeseburger and some ice-cream at a joint just out of the park. We research our little rattler, it is the Midget Faded or Yellow Rattlesnake. It has one of the most potent venoms found in North America.

The moral of this story:

1. Ladies and gentlemen, don’t poke rattlesnakes, even if looks like they are dead.

2. If you are hanging in the desert for the day, take a lot of water and make sure you are fully prepared. Even if you do it all right, the heat can still get you.

3. Finally, Arches rule. They bring what you see through them into focus; it might be a tree, or a certain cloud in the sky, or a strangely-cast shadow, or a flower, or a rock formation. All that organic, smooth stone leads your eye straight to whatever entity it might be and you are thoughtful about it, appreciative of it, more than you would have been otherwise. If you should ever travel to arches, take a little time with each one you find and see as much as you can. I promise it is extraordinary.

Miss Josie Bassett

Text By:  Carmen Bowes

Photos By:  Samuel Taylor and courtesy of the J. Willard Marriott Digital Library at the University of Utah (https://collections.lib.utah.edu/)

Josie Bassett Morris was a badass little lady. She knew what she wanted and she went after it. The catch, all she really wanted was a private, cozy, breezy patch of ground on Cub Creek near the Utah-Colorado border. After visiting her homestead, that’s all I really want. It was perfect. Big tall cottonwood trees, a sweet little cabin, a natural spring, and a thriving orchard; all against the backdrop of a show-stopping Utah desert canyon. The coolest part of our visit: we had no idea we would find our way to Josie’s homestead when our day began.

As Sam and I drive into Dinosaur National Monument, it is sweltering. The vast parking lot of the visitors’ center bleads heat onto my legs. We are here to see big, mind-blowing dinosaur fossils. We ride a bus and walk up a ramp and step into a huge, two-story observation room positioned around a slab of desert stone. Standing at the edge of the observation deck, there are vertebrae and femurs whose sizes are impossible to comprehend. We take cheesy pictures with them, our bodies for scale.

Leaving, we find a pamphlet for a driving tour of the monument. It has nothing to do with dinosaurs but it looks fun. We take off out of the parking lot, the hot wind doing nothing for us.

The first several stops on the tour are petroglyphs. Crazy men with giant heads stare at us from the stone. Big lizard pictures scamper up the rock walls, vertical above the canyon floor. Corn stocks and patterns, lines and dots, are painted in white against the orange faces. A cacophony of images. Our heads drip with sweat, the heat pounding on us makes us tired, ragged.

There is a stop on the tour that takes us to the river bank. I feel the impulse to run and jump in, clothes, boots, and all. I don’t, instead I suffer.

At the last stop there is shade, we soak it in desperately. I grab some icy water out of the cooler and read from our pamphlet, “Josie Bassett Morris is a local legend. Independent in both action and thought, she lived on her own terms. It is here that she chose to settle in 1914… [She] provided for herself. She raised and butchered cattle, pigs, chickens, and geese… For [her], the benefits of the isolation she experienced living here were solitude and beauty.” Josie was born January 17, 1874. She died May 1, 1964.

We put on our packs and I hear water trickling as we walk into the glen of cottonwoods near Josie’s cabin. I read on in our booklet, “While a blessing, the springs from Box and Hog Canyons also gave Josie some headaches because of water use laws. The law stated that any spring that fed a larger stream, like Cub Creek, which another person had rights to, allowed that user to take all the water.” There are two springs on Josie’s property that used to run into Cub Creek. If Josie had followed the letter of the law, she would not have been able to use the water on her own land. Instead, she irrigated the water all over her property so extensively that it dries up before it reaches the creek. Based on the laws at that time, Josie got to keep her water and in turn, her serious irrigation turned her sweet little ranch into a green and lovely spot surrounded by sand and stone.

Intrigued, we save Josie’s cabin for last and wander toward where her orchard and gardens used to grow. The wind coming up the valley blows comfortably against our radiating bodies. I feel Josie here still. Each bit of her ground was thoughtful, purposeful. Her irrigation helps grass flourish where her gardens did the same. The fruit trees still stand in her orchard, crouched under the sun. We stop near a sweeping cottonwood. It is old and heavy, its branches sagging. From the size of its base, I know that Josie rested under this tree. I know that she was working hard in the garden and needed the shade and sat against this big, sturdy fellow.

Old fence posts rise out of the meadow along the rolling trail back to Josie’s cabin. The light is dappled. We walk through a division in the fence and up to her porch, or where her porch used to be. All the floors are dirt. They always were. You can see them below Josie in an old picture of her sitting down for a sandwich. In the picture, the walls around her are full of dishes and canned goods. Now, here in her place, they are bare. Just the wooden structure remains. A fireplace stills lives on a dividing wall and a well is built right into one of the rooms. Most of the windows are small except for two on the side with the view. They are massive and look out over the valley and Cub Creek. There are remnants of newspaper insulation hanging from small nails on the timbers.

I want to fill this place with all my things and learn every crevasse of this valley. I want to wear white flowy shirts and jeans and boots. I want to learn to ride a horse and skin a deer and grow all my vegetables just like Josie.

Sam and I leave this place wishing we could stay. Over the rest of our trip, we look at each ranch we pass like something we could buy and make our own. None of them are quite as good as Josie’s.

When we come home, I start researching our girl. I had an idea Miss Josie was a bit of a rounder but I didn’t know to what extent. Turns out she was into all sorts of trouble in her younger days. At some point she was brought to trial for cattle rustling(thieving), had a small tryst with Butch Cassidy, and may or may not have poisoned one of her FIVE husbands with strychnine. She divorced the rest. When questioned later regarding her husband’s poisoning she said, “I drove my first husband, Jim McKnight, out of the house at the point of a gun and told him never to come back. Let’s just say that some men are harder to get rid of than others.” What a spitfire.

In my hunt for information about Josie, I found nothing but stories of her outlaw heroism, her warmth when welcoming visitors, her strength, her ingenuity, her wit, her rodeo skills, her survival chops, and her incredible spirit. Every interview I read, every photo I saw, every account I heard; Josie’s spirit shined bright as that hot, Utah sun did on the day we stumbled into her corner of Cub Creek.

Josie’s homeplace stole my heart and the more I learned about the woman, the more she won it as well. This lady was resourceful, tough, and independent at a time when societal expectations led the other direction. While I don’t condone poisoning, I do think that Josie is the best part of Dinosaur National Monument. And that is saying something, because I LOVE dinosaurs! Who doesn’t?

To Be Oscars and Emmas

Text By:  Carmen Bowes

Photos By: Sam Taylor

Oscar and Emma Swett were real-deal, salt-of-the-earth, bread-and-buttered pioneers. Oscar bought a ranch they would make their home with some help from his Momma. Together, he and Emma made the ranch into a self-sustaining hub in the middle of the glorious Flaming Gorge. They supported the ranch with only the help of horses from its inception until 1962 when the family sold the property.

Sam and I happened upon this homestead when we were on the second day of our plan to not have a plan. We pulled into an overlook parking lot and out the back side of it was a rugged, dirt road. Next to the road was a small sign. All it said was, “Swett Ranch.” From the overlook we could see old buildings in a clearing about a mile out.

We are suckers for old, abandoned spots so we took our 4x4 down that narrow road. It was poorly signed but we dead-reckoned it and found our way. As we approached the ranch, we encountered sagging structures, plants growing tall from their insides. The road turns and we are staring straight at a modern port-o-potty. We pull into the neat, gravel parking lot off the dirt.

As we step out of the jeep an older man meets us the gate of a weathered fence. He says in a jolly voice with a big smile on his face, “Welcome to Swett Ranch!” He is wearing a park uniform. Sam and I are trying to keep up when the man tells us about Oscar and Emma and asks us if we would like a tour of the ranch. Of course we do!

He talks quickly and tells us that he and his wife volunteer at the ranch. They give tours when people come by and the rest of the time they work to clean up parts of the property that haven’t been restored or kept up.

The man walks us to where his wife if cleaning out an old wooden sleigh originally used for hauling logs in the snow. He introduces us and when one of us sticks our hand out for a shake she refrains and says all proud, “I can’t, I’ve been cleaning marmot crap out of this sleigh for 2 weeks!” We laugh. She is sweating through her uniform. She is perfect.

Another guest arrives and the man leaves us with the woman. She says, “Let me get my glasses on and I’ll show you around.”

She leads us though the buildings we are closest to. The woman tells us fun stories about the family. One of them went like this. Oscar broke down and bought an automobile at some point and promptly decided the parts were greater than the sum. He used pieces of the thing all over the ranch. The windshield is the window in the black smith shop, the engine is a critical component in a wood splitter.

We walk through aspen trees on the way to another shop on the property. The trees are bright and are lit ethereally by the sun. Tucked on the far edge of the glen, the body of the automobile sits firmly stuck between several growing timbers.

The woman tells us another story about Oscar’s girls playing pranks on each other. A bucket of mud and a plan.

She finally takes us to the little house. It is painted all the colors that used to be poisonous. Uranium orange, radium green, chromium yellow. Quilts are draped over old couches and droopy-springed mattresses hang onto their wooden frames. A few of Emma’s recipes cards lay out on a table. There is an old radio and ancient cans of various products line the shelves.

The bathroom is strange and separate. It was added a long time after the home was initially built and is situated at one end of the wrap-around porch. Its only entrance leads you in from the outside. The woman tells us that Oscar found it unsanitary to have the restroom inside of the home.

The last structure we visit on the ranch is the horse barn. Saddles still hang from the rafters. It is the least-restored space on the property. The roof still has its original cedar shingle roof and hay rests on a packed dirt floor. The woman tells us that Emma always helped put up hay. She says, “There was no man’s job or woman’s job, there was just something that needed done and someone who had the time to do it.”

We walk back through the gate to our jeep and to our pace, our push to see and do more. But the idea of living like Oscar and Emma is stuck in our minds. What a simple and beautiful thing to be so busy with all the parts of self-sustenance.

Traffic and Tension in Yellowstone

Our Story Below is a Tale of Two Tales - Carmen's story on the left, and Sam's On the Right - Hope folks enjoy!

Text By: Carmen Bowes

Photos By:  Carmen Bowes

I’ve seen it before, the burnt landscape. Only small clues of it on the tallest points in West Virginia. A singed tree, victim of a chance lightning strike. I wonder if the tree thinks, “Why me?” The lightning struck tree does not go down alone, it takes all its closest neighbors with it.

Driving into Yellowstone, burnt trees cover the earth. Sweet fuchsia fireweed blankets the forest floor beneath the thin spindles.

We drove a long way to be in this place. Our jeep putters up the hills and back down, the weight of our gear heavy upon it.

Today is not a normal day in Yellowstone. It is the day after THE GREAT AMERICAN ECLIPSE of 2017. This means people are everywhere. We hoped some of the crowds would have fled but no such luck, it’s worse than we expected.  It is morning, we check for a campsite and there is not a single one open in the entire park.

We are forced into only one day here and aim for Mammoth Hot Springs, it is the farthest north point (we are in the middle of the park) but it is the one thing I desperately want to do.

The traffic is thick but it is a beautiful day. The sky is blue and the sun is beating down hot, but good. I scan for unfamiliar animals and plants from our stopped car. We inch forward and we see there is road construction ahead. We wait there a long time, maybe 30 minutes. I can feel Sam’s patience seeping into the mountain air.

We finally get through and follow the traffic in front of us off the pavement and down to a dirt, one-lane road lined with orange cones. It is so bizarre to see these symbols of human occupancy in this wild place.

We break loose from the construction and pull into a wide spot to stretch our legs. I grab snacks out of the cooler and Sam starts climbing on boulders. We see the old road below us. It mimics the one where we stand. There is not much more of note here. A car pulls in behind us. They are looking for what we see, for why we are stopped. There is nothing, no grizzly, no moose, no crazy critters.  It is just Sam climbing a boulder. They get in their car and pull away annoyed, underwhelmed.

Back in the jeep, we head the rest of the way to Mammoth. It isn’t far. Getting close, I see the stark white tower rising out of the pine trees, the travertine reflecting the bright, August sun.

We grab our packs, spray on a heavy layer of sun screen, and trudge towards the glistening terraces. Our floppy hats cast shade on our hot shoulders. We take the boardwalk past pools of mineral-rich water and algae that casts insane shades of orange and teal onto the white calcium. The algae overtake pine branches. They look like orange pine-shaped clouds floating in the clear water.

We wander past big cascades, little yellow flowers peeking out of the white, harsh landscape. Trees, naked and weathered, stand tall out of the pools. Evidence of territory shifts. Once there was soil enough to grow this tree, now a pool swallows it.

The boardwalk leads us from the white cascades to the hot, black parking lot. We jump back in the car and head south. Road construction again on the way back. A mass of traffic at an intersection that had no stop sign our direction. Cars lining the road as we approach the geyser basins. Can’t do that. Too many people. People. People. People. We are people. We are just like them, all these people. We just want to see these wonders, these spectacular events of nature. But we are not like them. We know about nature, we know how far to stand away from animals, we know that this isn’t the only place to find these critters, we know there are so many other beautiful things to see, we know there is so much more to Yellowstone than the people, we know there are better things, better adventures just down the road.

So down the road we go, we head on out of Yellowstone. We stop at a pretty waterfall. We pass beautiful tree-lined pastures. We drive into a magical burnt forest, wildflowers taking it back from the fire. Madly colorful blooms growing on everything. Perfect. The sun shines through the tall, burnt poles.

Better adventures are just down the road, I promise.

Text By: Sam Taylor

Photos By: Sam Taylor

Yellowstone.  You hear the name, and if you grew up in the US, it conjures visions of “the great west”.  The first national park.  The place that inspired President Theodore Roosevelt to create the park system.  A place so incredible, so beautiful, that people didn’t believe the first stories from here, and thought they were tall tales, told by mountain men. 

I have a soft spot for Yellowstone.  I’ve been here literally a half-dozen time over the last decade, and have had the “Experience” – I’ve seen Old Faithful.  I’ve had a grizzly get too close.  I’ve seen wolves in the road while walking back to camp in the Madison Valley.  All of these put together made me almost nervously excited to bring Carmen here.  She’s heard the stories, she’s seen my photos, but this is her first trip, first trip to Wyoming, first trip to Yellowstone.  I really want her to have a good time, I want her to have just a little taste of the wonder that this part of America brings you. 

We wake up in the high desert.  A perfect place.  It’s cold, at least for August.  Low 40s when we roll out.  I feel good about today.  We start rolling early, knowing we have a couple of hours to the park boundary.   We cruise through Cody, and start climbing toward the park, and hit the entrance.  We crest the mountain and I can already feel it start to fade away. 

The Jeep throws a check-engine light – probably just from the elevation – but not something we want to take a chance on 2500 miles from home.  We stop at a service station in the park, and I can already feel my tension starting to rise.  We checked on a campsite, and none available anywhere in Yellowstone.  On a Tuesday.  A park bigger than Rhode Island and Delaware put together, and no campsites.  While we are hanging out getting the Jeep looked at, we make a plan for Mammoth Hot Springs – the one spot Carmen mentioned, months ago, as a spot she has dreamed of seeing since she was little. 

The Jeep gets a clean bill of health – probably just from the elevation – and we head north toward Mammoth.  The hot springs are all the way at the northern corner of the park, we can already tell that Yellowstone is going crazy – crazier than I have ever seen it in my half-dozen visits.  I’ve seen dumb people in the park before, but this is another level.

Cars on the shoulder.  Cars parked in the road.  Literally.  We creep along in a line of traffic, unable to see what the hold-up is, and come around to a herd of buffalo – and cars that people are parking, in the middle of the road, to get out and simultaneously get too close to the animals, while also snarling the rest of us.  We break through the traffic, and while Carmen is excited about the animals, I can already feel our day slipping away from us. 

We get a little further up the road, and more traffic.  Road construction.  Are you kidding me?  The busiest set of days in the history of the park, and half the park is facing single-lane road construction and 45 minute delays each way.

We stop at a wide spot, miraculously empty when we get there, and get out to clear my head and try to drop my blood pressure.  I go find a cool boulder to climb, and it feels nice to pull on something, to do work.  I get on top, and there are a bunch of people in our wide spot now – more gawkers hoping that we had stopped to see some sort of animal, and instead they just get me.  Me standing above the horizon line, center of the scenery.  They leave quickly, apparently confused that someone would stop, unless it was to walk out of bounds on a geyser, or try to ride a buffalo, or something else that no one with any experience with wild animals and wild terrain would do.  A never ending sea of people that don’t know better, and think “nature” is what they can see from the road.

We make it to Mammoth, and I do feel some relief, and a bit of joy.  This place is incredible – and I’ve been here several times – and it never gets less beautiful.  Carmen, in her way, is bubbly and excited – like the excited little girl she described when she first told me she wanted to come here.  I appreciate her energy – because I’ve been feeling like I’ve been letting her down all day. 

Mammoth Hot Springs is classic Yellowstone.  Geologic formations only found in a few places in the whole world.  Beautiful, delicate, and also unstoppable.  The water flows, and a battle older than mankind goes on as the weather breaks the rocks into soil, the trees creep up, then something changes and the water moves, and the stone reclaims the ground it lost eons ago.    

Feeling a bit refreshed, we turn back to the south, hoping to hit one, any, of the geyser basins.  I’ve been trying to take all the driving shifts so that she can look out the window, and I can tell I’m starting to fatigue.  It’s trafficky.  It’s hot.  The high mountain air (8,000+ feet in the park) has me worried about overheating the Jeep in traffic, so I keep turning the heater on.  Back through the construction.  Another 45 minutes.  Then we sit stopped in traffic. For an hour.  We get to the intersection…. And nothing.  We had the right of way.  No stop signs.  What the heck. 

We get down to the geyser basins, and cars are parked on the shoulder for a mile before we get there.  We get closer, and you can see the crowds on the boardwalk.  At this point, we are starting to chase daylight – hoping to get a view of the Tetons before sunset – and we have no idea where we are going to sleep tonight.  I’m definitely crestfallen and frustrated at this point.  I feel bad that this is Carmen’s first experience here.  I feel bad that we drove 4 days to see Yellowstone from the inside of a car. 

We make the call to boom for Tetons.  We see a lovely waterfall, and then Carmen has us stop at a section of forest blackened by wildfire – and carpeted in vibrant, brilliant, beautiful wildflowers.  The sun stars in my glasses, looking through the forest.  For the first time today, it feels like we are in our element.  Maybe this is a sign.  Maybe the answer is to blow up the plan, because the plan isn’t working. 

Because the best parts of today were the parts we didn’t plan.  And I’ll be damned if I’m going to do my vacation and see the west from the inside of a car. 

Worth It

Text By: Carmen Bowes

Photos By: Sam Taylor

Note:  Details on trip logistics are included at the end of the article. 

Canaan Valley is 13 miles long and ranges from 3-5 miles wide down its length. It is stunning. The plants grow thick across its span and the Blackwater River snakes and twists its way, cutting deep into the boggy landscape.

We sit waiting for our shuttle to return, canoes at the ready. We weren’t supposed to do this river. We intended to do the Smoke Hole Canyon, the weather was lined up perfectly. A tropical storm was meant to blanket our entire region in several inches of rain. But our mountains caught it and held it too far west to reach Smoke Hole. We woke up this morning and the South Branch Potomac had the same measly water in it that is did yesterday. “No water,” Charles said. And like a true boater he followed the water, and we followed him, to the Blackwater. He said, “There may be a couple of trees down but nothing too bad.”

The canoe we are taking on the river was bought 2 years ago from an older man near Sam’s parent’s house. The man wanted $250 for it. A steal. We’ve only had it out 2 times before today. The first was on a lake and the second a mellow float trip down the Cheat. This trip is more than we’ve done.

I look at the swift, narrow, seemingly bottomless, dark water and I feel my nerves welling. I hear Sam’s nerves in his voice, I’m sure he can hear mine. The wellbeing of this man and his very expensive camera gear rest on my paddle and the strokes I will feed to it.

We watch people launch in front of us, most everyone has a smooth take-off except Todd, he immediately hits a rock head on and nearly capsizes his solo-boat. I feel all kinds of tension as we slide our canoe out into the water. The current moves one end down and the boat is lined up perfectly with the shore. Charles instructs, “Sam, step into the center of the boat.” I am holding the canoe and I feel it shift under Sam’s new weight. I step over the boat into the center and kneel, the boat gently rocking with my body’s addition. I grab my paddle and I say, “Alright Sam, forward.”

I feel the current pull on the boat and then we are floating. Down the river. There are a lot of rocks. I steer us around most of them but we scrape over several. One couple says from their canoe, “That’s the divorce machine!” There are laughs and skeptics. We both smile, we have heard this one before.  

We slide over rocks and around trees. The valley is beautiful but I can barely pay attention to anything but the water. We glide for hours, 2, maybe 3.

Our slightly inebriated, self-proclaimed tour guide says we are getting close to “the overlook.” An hour later, we all pull off. Sam steps uneasy out of the boat and pulls myself further into shore. We secure our boat and climb through thick brush and ankle-deep water to a panoramic view of the valley. The white clouds stand strong against the blue sky and go on forever before meeting the ultra-green horizon. We snack on hummus, bean dip, potato chips, and chocolate covered cashews. They taste good in this place with this view. Filling and easy.

Fed and feeling lethargic, we head back to the water. Before we can launch, Josh, my brother and our river scout, yells, “We have to portage, there is a pipeline.” Everyone else goes further down and starts their carry. Sam and I lift the canoe and start heaving from where we are. We trudge through the thick vegetation; my shoes slide around on my feet. They are drenched and filled with silt.

We get to the other side of the pipeline and I slide down in the creek to hold the canoe for Sam. He climbs in and then I step over and we are off.

We paddle a short while, wandering the sinuous turns of the river. The water gets narrower and the alder bush starts to crowd us and we hear a shout from somewhere we cannot see but seems close, “It gets tight here.” We are floating and I try to steer us straight through the middle but the boat gets hung up on some branches that are lurking under the water and the canoe turns hard sideways and we are stuck. Sam is pushing and pulling branches, trying to free us and I am paddling as hard as I can and the same voice from the other side says, “You just need to hit it straight, you will get through.” And my frustration peaks and I snap, “I know what I need to do, I just can’t get it to do that.” I tell Sam to stop holding the branches for a moment. I take a deep breath and I say, “Ok, push really hard on the branches.” And while he is pushing, I backpaddle like my life depends on it and we are nearly free and I hear that voice say, “Just a little bit more! Keep going!” And then our boat straightens and we float through the branches.

I see Josh, the scout. He was the voice. I apologize for my tone with him. We both laugh and paddle down the river. There are trees that require technical skill and luck, we get around them. There is another portage. The water is deeper here. We struggle to get back in our boat but we do well.

The light gets low and golden. The water sparkles and the sun peaks through the trees at us. The breeze is perfect and a comfortable distance grows between us and the other boats and I start to feel the peace of this place. It is quiet except for the sound of the water. The river gains another tributary and becomes wider, more forgiving.  I steer us gently through the turns in the river and then we come together again.

The landscape starts to change as we get closer to the edge of the valley. Pine trees line the shore, blooming mountain laurel hides under the branches. The water gets swift as it drops out of the plateau. And then we are at the take-out. We all grab hold of the shore and start pulling boats out. We team lift them up the slick, rocky bank. Piling into vehicles to do the return shuttle, there is an orange and pink and purple sunset showing off as we drive out the dirt road back to food and dry clothes and picnic tables and warm beds.

A good, hard day. Worth it.

Notes:
As noted in the intro, this trip became possible because of unusually heavy rain in Canaan Valley, which brought the river level up to "runnable" from where we did it.  We put on at the Beall Bridge access to the river, on Cortland Road.  This trip was strenuous with portages and was technically challenging in terms of multiple trees, rocks, limbs, and other obstacles in the river, and took roughly 10 hours.  This trip should only be attempted by people with the appropriate level of skill and fitness, as much of the route would be inaccessible by foot or motor vehicle.  Those who use this information do so at their own risk, as noted in our Disclaimer.

Home Unconditional

Text By: Carmen Bowes

Photos By: Sam Taylor

Charles hands me the boat out of the back of the truck and we work together to get it inflated before Josh arrives. I am throwing big 14-inch bows on each part of his present. I look up and his car pulls in the gravel lot. I grab the list of people who contributed to the surprise and walk to him. I give him the list and grab his hand, we walk towards his presents and he says, “What is this?” with a funny smirk. I say, “This is your birthday present, we all worked together to get you your own boating gear!!” He says, “Dude, what??!!” He is smiling big and I can see that he is contemplating all the fun he will have.

The crowd cheers and we leave him to get comfy with his new vessel. We pump up boats and get gear organized and down to the river. We are doing the flat section of the Cheat near Parsons, WV. We are ready to launch.  

I stand in the chilly water and hold the canoe as Sam steps in and sits down. I feel it shift under the new weight. Sam is nervous but grinning so huge. I am too. The sky is blue and bright with puffy clouds floating overhead. The water ripples under the front of the boat as we negotiate our sea legs.

I feel the drunk starting, it is warm and good. My body is light, the boat feels nice under it: floating. Sam is in front of me, he keeps turning around with the biggest smile on his face. The people I love are all around me. I can hear their voices, they are happy. Home. Unconditional.

The river here wanders. It splits into channels that wrap around islands. The rocks on the river bottom come up and grab the bottom of the canoe. We have to get out and lift it for a few feet.

Clouds float in front of the hot sun and give our thirsty skins a break. We all smell like sunscreen and wind. I put the paddle in the boat and let my hands rest. I slip them into the cool river and watch the current make swirls in the water behind them.

The trees have fresh buds on them. The branches stretch way out over the water. Small rock outcrops rise out of the murky, calm river and then plunge back in, turning the bank back into trees.

We float up on an old suspension bridge. Its parts hang heavy on the old cables and the piers stand proud above the river below. We go under it and watch it silhouetted by the bright sun. It is built of angles and manmade. Grand and not of this place.

There is no better view of these old Appalachians than from a boat. This I am sure. The water winds around them and you go with it. The hills rising out of the river fall gently into each other.

Boats are scattered in front of and behind us. They are filled with brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, moms, dads, and friends: these are people who have become these things over time. There are puppy dogs and hippies and there is so much love and there is a birthday and there are all of the good things.

Go West - Paden City, Sistersville, St. Mary’s, and Parkersburg in a Day

Text By: Carmen Bowes

Photos By: Sam Taylor

The old rail grade follows us the length of Route 7. It peeks out of the hill side and fades across to the other side of the pavement. It slices through lawns of modern ranch-style homes and rests perfectly tailored to the homes old enough to have been there when trains were shivering through the valley. Some parts of the rail grade are overtaken by mudslides; the bank having given up at one point or another. These old grades stitch their way through the rural counties of our sweet state, reminders of our industrious past.

Today is a half-dreary day; clouds cover most of the sky, gray and flat. The blue peaks through sporadically, sometimes bringing the sun beams with it but mostly not. Then the clouds close in again and the light rests tiresome on the earth.

We are driving west. Route 7 winds through a small valley and weaves itself with Little Fishing Creek. We cross bridge after bridge with the old concrete barely hanging onto the rebar; amused by the 40-ton weight limit signs decorating them. Seeing markers for Route 2, we rise over hills that carry us to the Ohio River; wide, choppy, and murky brown.

Turning south with the water to our right, we see that modern industry is present across the river in Ohio. Paden City is the first town we come to, it is small. It is one of those little spots calling itself a city, aspirational.

Sistersville is just a jump south and is full of history. Riding into town I see pretty, old chimneys standing tall above the buildings. Down Riverside Drive we come to an old oil well and learn of Sistersville’s creation. An oil boom brought this town from having a population of roughly 300 to over 15,000 residents. Hotels were built, homes erected, taverns established, and the boom town story played out. There are blocks of beautiful homes, most needing a little love but grand nonetheless.

We walk up the gentle slope away from the river and finer houses to find the railroad tracks. They run straight through town, houses stand unnervingly close to the rails. I try to imagine a train barreling through and it is challenging; it seems too small a space. This feels real and gritty. It feels like Old West Virginia.

Leaving Sistersville, we continue south to St. Mary’s, another cool spot on the Ohio River. We wander down to the water and find a bridge leading us to Middle Island, one of twenty-two in the Ohio River Islands National Wildlife Refuge. We hike out to the point of the island to get a nice view of the Hi Carpenter Memorial Bridge. It is briery and poison-ivy covered. A coal barge passes by and we watch the waves roll closer to our feet. The wind is a comfortable kind of chilly.

Since we are still trying to get to Parkersburg, we turn to head out of St Mary’s. We notice as we are leaving that the railroad tracks share the street through the middle of town. The tracks act as the center line between the two lanes. This part of the world is not nervous about sharing space with trains.

It is about 4 p.m. when we get to Parkersburg and we are starving. Having heard about a little spot called Der Dog Haus we decide to give it a try. The vibe it good and the food is better. We had hotdogs and french fries and were not disappointed. If you should find yourself in Parkersburg and hungry, do yourself a favor and grab a bite.  

To finish our day, we go to Point Park. It is in downtown Parkersburg and may sound familiar to you if you have ever caught the river boat to the historic Blennerhassett Island. We walk along the waterfront waiting to see if this cloudy day is going to give us a pretty sunset.

We investigate the bridges, one is for vehicles, the other is a railroad bridge. Both span the entirety of the Ohio River. The piers of the railroad bridge are all constructed of hand-cut stone. The man power that must have taken is absurd.

We finally start to see some pink and orange showing in the clouds. The sun starts casting its rays out onto the river and the city. We don’t usually do concrete sunsets but this one is shimmering for us. As the light sinks into the flat (for us) horizon, the air gets cold and the wind whips.

It is good to see a city going strong in our mostly rural state. We climb in the car and ride back east full of ideas for other adventures on West Virginia’s western border; a whole new area to explore, all new restaurants to try, and a new unique history to study.

Historical Images Courtesy of West Virginia and Regional History Center at WVU