The View from Castle Danger: The Walls of Jericho

My first stop in the Southern Appalachians was on the TN-AL border, at a place called the Walls of Jericho. Getting there entailed traveling through small town south Tennessee, skirting trembling fields of cotton as fog rose from the low hills, looking tropically verdant. Through counties worn down by entropy I drove. Past trailers that seemed to be having a never ending yard sale. Old glory waved on more of the properties than not. In stark contrast, a few new homes seemed to have been delivered from suburban catalogs. They squatted in fields of cattle or tucked up against the hills. Some stone, others in the with tall columns and epic garage bays. Ironies sprouted much as they did through Kentucky. One town's motto read "Where Progress Meets Tradition." Another similarly read: "Where Tradition and Tomorrow Meet." Questions of what defines "tradition" and "progress" beg to be answered. Some food for thought: I passed a town called Lynchburg. Borrowing from a common phrase, I wonder if rural towns throughout America can simply build a better tomorrow. The new road project outside Fayetville seems to smash through the hills, rising at least one hundred feet above the existing road. Excavators perched up on the rim like birds of prey. If progress means unchecked growth and more construction, I doubt the answer to economic woes lies within it. A feeling of abandonment clings to these towns. I passed one sign, nowhere near a church, that read "feeling down? Try Looking up."

Anyhow this first picture is only a quarter mile on toward the walls of Jericho. It is the entrance to one of many caves that pock the hillsides in this part of the world. I was a little uneasy approaching its mouth to snap a closer look.

Hiking further down the hill toward the creek I met a boisterous church group, who must have been backpacking somewhere near the walls. I met a variety of folks on the trail. Typical families, a mom with her daughters and an anxious great dane, a couple of hippyish guys, a couple with a pit bull and tribal band tattoos. All of them were extremely polite and friendly and most seemed inclined to conversate. This must be the only hiking opportunity in some distance judging by the amount of people I saw on my way out. This part of extreme northeast AL has a terribly miniscule amount of public land despite the large hils that rise abruptly from the valleys. This place, along with the wildlife Management Area adjacent makes up 50,000 acres of public land. In all that space, I bet most of the traffic happens here.

This is Clark cemetery, one of many littered about Alabama. The large gravestone dated in the later 1800's. Note the smaller stones around it. Some looked only like propped up rocks. The campsite was in spitting distance from the cemetery.

The biggest beech tree I have ever seen. Somehow in all its days, no one had ventured to scrape their initials into its bark. A fitting cemetery tree. This tree was a little off the trail where the creek bottom begins to rise again.