OF SALAMANDERS AND DAYS GONE BY..........MARCH 2015

 


 “The walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours …but it is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walking

The Cumberland Plateau
Photo courtesy of Jeanell Weintraub

March is here, the weather is milder and the rain is pouring. The plateau is soaking it up, overflowing, the creeks which have lain dormant are now actively running. Flowing over and under rocks and debris, the air is alive with the smell of rich decay. You can smell the forest on the wind. Busting down the trail, wind in my lungs the smells are amazing. This is my land. I am a son of the plateau. My father would bring me up to the mountain as a kid. We’d mostly go up to Morgan’s Steep or to The Cross and go for hikes, where he’d identify trees for me. He would rattle off their names like you would the names of your favorite nieces and nephews. He knew them well. We’d walk around, usually wearing identical hats of the camouflage/hunting variety. My favorite was a sporty one that was two-sided. Camouflage on one side Blaze Orange on the other, for hunting of course. I’ve never been much of a hunter, mostly just walking for me. Outside in the sun, wind, and rain. It was here on the Plateau where I learned to walk, truly walk. Walking not to reach any particular destination, but to ramble, explore to see what’s out there in the unknown. Walking in and of itself is ultimately divinely gratifying. The Domain, located at The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee has left a strong indelible print on my life that continues to guide me to this very day.

            Today is a great day, with all the rain everything looks like it’s been scrubbed clean. 

The Perimeter Trail Sewanee TN

The forest is bright, the browns and greens are popping and the sky is blue. The temperature is mild, shirtsleeves of course. My favorite place right now is out by the Forestry Cabin, where I then proceed to tramp and tumble down the Perimeter Trail. The trail circumnavigates “The Domain” of the University of the South in Sewanee Tennessee. It’s perched in a small corner of The Plateau conveniently located within six miles of my home in Cowan. This trial in its current form has been around since the mid 1980’s, I remember them completing sometime around 1992 or thereabouts. The Trail goes for around 20 miles or so, but it is cross-cut, intersected, and supplemented with so many other side-trails, old logging roads, and foot paths. You could lose yourself for years just tramping up and down this geography. It may be laid out on the map one way, but once your boots are on the ground, your experience may be different. Maps and compass are the tools of the trade for exploration. However, they are no substitute for wander-lust and strong legs. Otherwise, all your equipment will simply gather dust. Tennyson in his great poem Ulysses writes:

“Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
it may be that the gulfs will wash us down

It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles”

  A. Tennyson – Ulysses

 The Cumberland Plateau, named after William “The Butcher” Augustus, Duke of Cumberland 

who defeated the Scottish Clans at the Battle of Culloden Moor. It was the humble Dukes treatment of the wounded that earned him the nickname “The Butcher”. April 16^th 1746, the Battle of Culloden Moor resulted in a devastating defeat for the Scottish Clans fighting under the Jacobite banner and secured the House of Hannover to the English throne for years to come. The Scottish defeat sent many fleeing across the sea to the new colonies where they found refuge and new life in the land named after a hated foe.  Geologically the Plateau is a mighty wonder. Millennia ago, the Middle Tennessee area consisted of a vast inland sea ringed with marshes and wetlands. Over the years sediments were deposited and layer upon layer of sandstone, coal, and limestone were laid down. During this time, movement of the Earth’s plates caused this “Appalachian Basin” to rise higher and higher. Over eons, this created a plateau that stretchers from modern day Southern New York all the way to North Alabama. This became what we now call the Cumberland Plateau. This geography is home to an immense diversity of plant, animal, and recently human species.
      My life’s experience with the Cumberland Plateau is entwined like a mighty grape vine with the Sewanee Perimeter Trail.    The Perimeter Trail first appeared on the planning books in 1984 and after many spurts and stops was officially completed in 1992. A healthy donation from Albert Roberts III of St Petersburg, Florida allowed for its completion and continued maintenance. The trail had been there before any of this official work commenced, but it was poorly mapped and lacked coherence. Signs now point the wanderer to various look outs and points of interest. The trail side maps are done in bronze for longevity. However, these are looking a little long in the tooth and show their age accordingly.
     The Perimeter Trail was established as a means to identify, unite, and map existing trails into a trail system that would be maintained for generations. Much of the trail system incorporates older trails, man-ways, game trails, and fire lanes. Notably, the Civilian Conservation Corps built several sections including the Arcadian, Corso, and the Shakerag Hollow trails, during the Great Depression of the 1930’s. The trail today is well marked, maintained, and attracts not only University students but folks from all over the county and beyond.  The trail snakes, winds, and circumambulates out and around The Domain of the University of the South for 18 t0 20 miles.    
     The trail provides me with continued activity and thought. I am a devotee of its circuitous paths and trails. Running the path is a tonic for my soul. Except for the time I ran into two unleashed dogs. Not so funny, my favorite line for this is, “Oh they wouldn’t bite you.” How am I supposed to know this? I was already plotting my escape, giving them some loud shouts, staring them down, and generally making a spectacle of myself. Luckily their owners appeared around the bend. I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t say what was on my mind, because it would not have been polite at all. I kept on trucking down the path.
     Usually I park my BRIGHT RED FORD BRONCO out by the gate which takes you out to the Olde Forestry Cabin. I run down the path. To my right is mixed hard woods of varying ages and species; to the left is a pine forest of some age. Their uniformity gives rise to suspicion of something deliberate. In the middle of the Pines is a clearing. In the clearing, someone/somebody has deemed it imperative to erect a weather station. The clearing is strange, encircled as it is with tall dark foreboding pine trees. It’s obviously of druid cult origins who used it for arcane rituals to communicate with beings from beyond space and time is unquestionable. However, the Elder Gods, The Crawling Chaos, and the Black Goat with a Thousand Young (too much H.P. Lovecraft as a child) have all been banished, replaced by the gods of science, research, and technology. The clearing is now simply a weather recording station, which it does so with calm scientific efficiency.  Just past the druid circle I go left and plunge at headlong full sprint down the Perimeter Trail. Foot catches root, then I’m tumbling and rolling as I continue down the trail, righting my trajectory, checking my zeal, and slowing the pace I marvel at the creation that unfolds.  The great plateau is worn and eroded, its rock exposed like bare skin. I marvel at the sandstone veined with minerals and ore, the lichens and moss clinging tightly. Stripped Wintergreen peaks out from the leaf litter, the smells on the wind. It’s all there. It’s all so incomprehensibly vibrant, a man could spend his life exploring and learning here and still only barely scratch the surface of understanding.

 I’ve been exploring the plateau and its environs for several decades with varying

The elusive Spotted Salamander

levels of intensity. It has always provided space for refuge, camaraderie, learning, and reflection. I am forever indebted and bound to this land, that my friends is a strange thing to say. But that is the way it is. Jogging down an old fire break, White Pines gracefully towering on either side the vaulting limbs intersect creating an atmosphere ethereal, holy as one of the great cathedrals of old. Alone I run the length of the road. It’s quiet with the exception of squirrels digging and jumping. I steadfastly follow the blue trail marks, and soon I’m back on the “main” road that runs through these hinterlands. There’s a University Van parked on the side of the road. Curious, I slow down and start looking around. There a vernal pool that’s formed due to the spring rains, it’s about an acre in size. These pools form during the spring, and slowly disappear over the dry summer months. The University has seen fit to ring it with tin sheeting. Interesting, hmmm.  A woman is tromping around in a pair of galoshes, she hasn’t seem me yet. I’m tempted to just continue my run and not bother her, but I’m curious so I give her my best, “Howdy there, what are you doing?” I query. Oh hey! She says. So I ask a few simple questions, and she goes on to tell me how she is out here studying the Spotted Salamander, and that this is it’s mating season in the early spring when these vernal pools form the get their mating rituals on, and lay eggs. Salamanders use vernal pools due to the lack of predatory fish which love to eat salamander eggs. The tin ring drives the salamanders through small openings and into waiting buckets. Then everyday, students come out to count and release them. The student goes on to tell me, this is her first time doing field work, and its really enjoyable, she’s from some place up North, and hasn’t spent much time outside I learn. She is finding this work very rewarding. She digs into a bucket and pulls out a Salamander thick roped, black slimy a full hand length long, it’s marvelous. I’ve never seen one of these, I say. It’s a Ambystoma maculatum and we’ve counted well over a 1000 specimens. She goes on to tell me these are mole salamanders, living the majority of their life deep in the leaf litter emerging at night to feed, and in the spring to mate. She shows me the poison glands on the back and under the neck. I tell her that I’ve been walking these trails for a long time and haven’t seen any Salamanders before today, I tell her how glad I am that she chatted with me. Bidding farewell, I try my best to file all this away in my mind for regurgitation into story form at a later date, but I’ve got a lot of ground left to cover and miles to go before I sleep.

A special thanks to the following:

The University of the South Archives – they were extremely gracious to me.

Wikipedia for photos of Salamanders (I didn’t have my camera that day)

Lance Brock – For running around in the woods with me.

Jeanell Weintraub - photograph

The University of the South Dupont Library – for books on Salamanders and 

providing information about the archives.