When I woke up Wednesday morning rain was still pattering onto my tent. I laid lazily waiting for it to pass before I packed up, made a hearty breakfast of instant oatmeal, and exited the safe harbor of the church onto the road leading up to tiny Hazel Patch, KY. My early hours of the day consisted of a roadwalk up US 25 to KY 909, on which I walked over the interstate I'd driven down so many times in my life. Paved road turned into gravel and soon the last lick of civilization I'd see for a while, a truck stop near the interstate exit, disappeared behind the bend as I climbed up the ridgeline. The trail was forest service road-like for a while, though washed out passable by a determined 4wd vehicle or atv, but eventually tapered down to single-track as the wild of Hawk Creek Valley became more apparent. I noted a spread of barrels through the middle of the trail as an effort to keep out motorized vehicles, blazes cropped up more frequently, the red earth came up in bald patches through the trail I climbed on.
Around noon maybe?
Soon enough I had really descended into the valley, a canopy of leaves swallowed the open sky, rock faces erupted out of the earth with every twist in the land i took.
I dont know, you just look up at something like that, rock stacked high as if fighting with the trees for the touch of the sun, pocked and carved out in waves and quizzically right angles by the mystic force of nature, and you just feel really small and lucky to be alone standing witness to it.
from a video i took of the tucked away waterfall
My back was aching, unaccustomed to the weight of a heavy pack, one I was realizing I probably overloaded with an absurd amount of food, but there already had I learned a lesson on my trek. Still I pressed on through Hawk Creek Valley. I came upon a stream over which a broken footbridge once stood. My foot made purchase on slippery rock and I busted my ass. But i noted the familiar roar of a waterfall nearby, seeming to come from the ravine from which the stream flowed. I followed the stream up and sure enough, the boulders and walls of the rock structure arched up and hid a waterfall in a crevice of the forest.
Just after this I got to the suspension bridge over Hawk Creek. In the flat clearing before it was a really nice campsite and I thought about how nice it would be to camp out here for a night with the poeple I loved. The creek was a vibrant blue and from its sandy banks i drew its water to boil myself a ramen lunch. I had my bowl, had my bowl, packed back up, spanned the 100 feet of the swaying suspension bridge, and bumbled forth up and away from the nadir of the valley.
A couple more miles or something like that of bumbling through the forest and the trail took me up to cross KY 1956, briefly took me back into the woods, and spat me out onto KY 80 for a short road walk, which felt disorienting--flat solidly colored road that hid nothing of the drama of the clouds of the day, after the forest canopy had choked out the sky for so long. I left the stark openness of the sky against flat road and went down to the valley of Poison Honey Fork, then climbed back up onto a ridgeline, then descended into the valley of Pine Creek, the crossing of which was my first cumbersome ford of the trip. The trail led you up out of this valley to pass the rural Pine Creek Community Church, under whose shelter I took a breather around 4 before hustling towards the suspension bridge over Sinking Creek. one last climb away from a creek valley for a day, and I was settling into a valley home to Big Dog and Little Dog branch to spend the night.
Just after this I got to the suspension bridge over Hawk Creek. In the flat clearing before it was a really nice campsite and I thought about how nice it would be to camp out here for a night with the poeple I loved. The creek was a vibrant blue and from its sandy banks i drew its water to boil myself a ramen lunch. I had my bowl, had my bowl, packed back up, spanned the 100 feet of the swaying suspension bridge, and bumbled forth up and away from the nadir of the valley.
the sky opened up - angel olsen
strange open field area. i read after i got home that this section is home to a reclaimed strip mine, which i guess explains this?
It was a little before 7 pm, I was exhausted, my shoulders were tender knobs of pain, my feet had been stewing in soaked boots (hubris--i was sick of taking my boots off and laboriously putting them back on after crossing, i thought i could jump it, but alas, no cigar, only unloving merciless moisture), i had just had the everloving fuck scared out of me.
I'm alone in a forest valley, haven't seen another soul in hours, and I hear the rapidly approaching thumping of some creature coming from the slope behind me. I;m like, oh my fucking god, i'm about to get bumrushed by a bear and they'll never be able to find all my pieces or any of them at all out here and my last words were gonna be some dumb shit i yelled out loud to myself.
But i hear a flutter of wings and look up and its a big dumb wild turkey taking flight.
After the night dimmed the valley and the temperature dropped I laid freezing in my tent again, gnawing on my thoughts as sleep slipped in and out of my grasp. While eating dinner I'd tallied up my miles for the day and was amazed I had made it so far. I felt powerful, proud that my body had taken me into this lonely gorge to sleep nestled by the steady Big Dog and Little Dog, and excited for what I would see tomorrow. I'd driven on gravel forest road to this section of Daniel Boone before, to find a double waterfall, and I was glad I had a full day ahead to be immersed in this wilderness. I found sleep eventually in the din of water flowing by, ceaselessly.
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