It is Christmas Eve. In a small creek valley, a 4-mile walk from the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River, several log cabins sit in a field. In one, a man carefully stacks wood into an iron stove. The room is warm, though the air outside is bitter cold. It is evening, already dark—the waning moon will not rise for many hours—but the sky is awash with stars, the Milky Way clearly visible, with Venus, Saturn and Jupiter strung like beads along a forested ridge. Beyond the sound of the creek, there is only silence.
The man crosses the field to a lodge fashioned of logs. Inside, another iron stove—this one far larger—has burned for hours. A dog lies in the shadow behind it, dozing. There are other people here, too—an older couple from Tennessee. The man pours a cup of tea. He eats dinner by the light of an oil lamp, listening to the conversations of the couple, talking about trails through this rugged country.
After dinner, the man wanders to a small cemetery at the edge of the meadow beside a brook. Longhunters, he was told earlier, are buried there beneath simple unmarked slabs of sandstone, the primary rock in these mountains. The few marked graves are of pioneers, carved with birth dates from the late 1700s.
Late into the night, the man sits in a wicker rocking chair beside the fire in his cabin reading a manuscript. Drowsy, he retires to a bed near the stove. Throughout the night, he wakes and feeds the fire. Come morning, on Christmas Day, he dresses in wool clothes, packs his belongings, and crosses Station Camp Creek on a swinging footbridge, climbing out of the valley past slim waterfalls, through groves of rhododendron and fern.
• • •
Such a story could have taken place 200 years ago—the original portion of Charit Creek Lodge was built in 1817 as part of a hunting camp—but it happened last winter, and I was that man. For the duration of my stay in the cabin near where Charit Creek empties into Station Camp Creek, I had few modern conveniences. I read my manuscript by the light of a propane lantern. Crossing the field for meals, I wore a battery-powered headlamp. Though I had my cell phone, there was no reception and no internet—in fact, no electricity for miles in any direction. My car, parked on the ridge, was a mile away, left at the end of a gravel road. Everything I brought to the cabin—a large-format camera and its gear, several days of clothes, a towel, a few toiletries—I carried in a 70-liter backpack.
I went to Charit Creek Lodge to be away from the city, away from social media, out of earshot of the noise of everyday life. I was in the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area in Tennessee not far from the Kentucky border. A mile from the lodge are two enormous sandstone arches—the Twin Arches, North and South. A waterfall threads the hills farther down a trail.
The Big South Fork area, administered by the National Park Service, encompasses 125,000 acres of the Cumberland Plateau, stretching from McCreary County, Kentucky, into Tennessee. The day after the winter solstice, I drove out the Divide Road, parked my car on the ridge, and hiked down, the wind biting cold, ice edging much of the rock along the cliffs. The way to truly experience this place, I reasoned, was to stay here—not just overnight but for three nights. I wanted to see the place without having to worry about a five-hour drive home in the dark. To give up electricity, my phone and what had become—for better or worse—my connectedness in the internet age were small sacrifices.
In return for my walk, for keeping my fire going through the night, and for the exertion of climbing in and out of the valley each day to explore, I treated myself to breakfast and dinner at the lodge and a sack lunch for day hikes. I drank coffee before dawn, then sat down to sausage and eggs, biscuits and gravy, and warm blueberry muffins. In the evening, I ate pork tenderloin, chicken and dumplings, grilled potatoes, Brussels sprouts and apple cobbler. In the flicker of the oil lamps, I talked to others staying there about their adventures on the Appalachian Trail and the enduring work of the Civilian Conservation Corps in Appalachia.
The first morning I went to the lodge, passing the kitchen (the stove and refrigerator, I later learned, ran on propane), I heard a banjo and singing in the distance. Coming closer, I realized that the song was “White Christmas.” It was not white while I was in the valley; nevertheless, it was a holiday to celebrate.
• • •
The cabin in America is mythic. We think of Henry David Thoreau at Walden Pond, sheltering in the cabin he had built with an axe borrowed from Ralph Waldo Emerson. We think of the Western frontiersmen in an isolated mountain valley, a string of smoke wafting from a stone chimney. We imagine ricks of firewood, a fire kept going at all costs. The cabin is as romantic as it is rugged.
A cabin, so defined, is a small dwelling usually of simple construction, usually built of wood. We may think of cabins as being built of logs and many are. As it was for Thoreau, a cabin often is set outside of society, in the woods or the fields, beyond the bounds of the town. It is resolutely individual, even lonely.
For many years, I have been enamored of the idea of the cabin. When I lived out West, it was not uncommon to find cabins in the mountains, on national forest land, that were open to the public. One could camp in them. Sometimes, as with an old gold miner’s cabin I once visited in the Blue Mountains, they were stocked with canned food, spartan mattresses and kindling.
In Kentucky, perhaps the best-known cabins for temporary lodging are in the Red River Gorge in Wolfe County. I have visited cabins in the area: once with a friend from Oregon, an A-frame set on a hillside above Martin’s Fork, and another time in a farmhouse near Raven Rock. The farmhouse had plumbing and electricity. The A-frame had a pit toilet outdoors. All of them are marketed as “cabins,” and in the Red River Gorge or anywhere else, they vary in how rustic they are.
A decade ago, I stayed at the Gorge campgrounds and slept in my tent. Now, I go to photograph, and with the expensive gear I have—not to mention the frequent turns in the weather—tent camping is not feasible. And though I am hesitant to admit it, I no longer want to sleep on the ground. I wanted to photograph throughout the Cumberland Plateau—the Red River Gorge, Cumberland Falls, Pine Mountain and the Big South Fork. I began to research cabins online and made reservations throughout the mountains.
• • •
Late last autumn, I climbed a trail past Cumberland Falls. It was early morning, the weather was cool, and I was watching my steps over the wet sandstone. I headed downriver toward Eagle Falls, which I’d never seen. Even at that time of year on the Cumberland Plateau, the Kentucky forest is deep green in places; rhododendrons, mountain laurel and maidenhair ferns hold the last breath of summer. The hemlocks and cedars keep their leaves and needles. The sky that morning was cloudless.
In my backpack, I carried my large-format camera, some 20 sheets of film, pouches of lenses, a light meter and cable releases. I arrived at Cumberland Falls State Resort Park at the optimal hour for shooting photos. Later that day, I hiked into the Daniel Boone National Forest, south of the park, to Dog Slaughter Falls.
I rented a cottage on the hill above the falls. From the small porch, where in the mornings I made coffee on the Coleman stove I’d brought, I could see the main lodge. When I returned in the afternoons, I could watch the sunset. In the gathering dark, I watched Juncos in the cedars.
This is one of the blessings of Kentucky’s state resort parks: that one can stay overnight within the confines of the park. The cottages are modern—they each have a microwave oven and a small refrigerator. The bathroom allows hot showers, and there is even WiFi. The cottage has the amenities of an ordinary hotel room—the difference being the location, 15 miles from the nearest freeway. Without traffic noise, I hear only wind in trees.
The Red River Gorge is easily a day trip from Louisville, especially in the summer months. But in the winter, a place like Cumberland Falls—a bit farther from the city—is not easily visited for a day. Rather than leave long before dawn and drive three hours on the freeway to see the falls, only to turn around at the end of the day and drive home in the dark, I elected to rent a cottage and settle in. A two-night reservation at a cottage affords one full day of exploring. On the day I arrive, I get to explore a bit of the park, and on the day I leave, I can see even more.
From the Sheltowee Trace, which follows the Cumberland River downstream from the falls, you can see a massive rock shelter beneath the cliffs across the river. Native Americans lived in that shelter. To have slept that close to the falls must have been an incredible experience.
Today, we can only visit. My task is to come as close as I can to belonging in a place. Staying in the cottage at Cumberland Falls was good, but I wanted something more rustic, more primitive. I found what I wanted on Pine Mountain.
• • •
The first time I stayed in a cottage at Pine Mountain State Resort Park, I was on assignment for Kentucky Monthly. It was a January weekend; the weather was pleasant. I rented a cottage set on the side of the mountain above the Herndon J. Evans Lodge, and it served as a base camp to explore the Pine Mountain Trail, which was north, toward Cumberland and Whitesburg. After hiking out of Letcher Gap and ambling over the mountain, it was a comfort to come back to the cottage, build a fire in the stone fireplace, and draw a hot bath.
The second time I stayed at Pine Mountain, I took a room in the lodge that was not unlike a hotel room. It was comfortable, but I wanted to experience one of the cabins built by the Civilian Conservation Corps, likely in 1938, when most of the park was developed under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Depression-era program.
The original CCC cabins—there are three of them at Pine Mountain—are set up a steep road not far from the original lodge, which the CCC also built. They were constructed at a time when outdoor recreation was truly becoming an industry. Ansel Adams had, by then, already made the national parks famous with his photographs. L.L. Bean had been in business producing outdoor gear for a quarter century. Pine Mountain was Kentucky’s first state park, and what the young men of the CCC built is emblematic of the value then placed on the outdoor experience.
The cabins were built of logs felled on the mountain, and the foundations were cobbled of locally quarried stone. Each cabin is, for the most part, a single room (a bathroom has been added), and in the center of the room is a bulky stone fireplace. The entire cabin was built with care and precision.
From the cabin, the view reached to the Log Mountains, and from my porch—I’d go out there often, gathering the firewood the park provides for visitors—I watched the sunset over the ridge of Pine Mountain. I built a fire. What made the experience more romantic than it already seemed was the fact that I had arrived just ahead of a snowstorm.
I managed to get into the cabin before noon. By mid-afternoon, snow began to fall steadily. Within hours, the road was covered. I had been told that the road would not be plowed until, at best, the next day. But I had food, warm clothes, a book, and my computer. Though there was electricity, there was no internet and no WiFi. This is what I came for: snow and silence.
The next morning, I woke to at least four inches of snow. The clouds were blown off by midday, and the sky was a piercing blue. It was 12 degrees when I woke, and the temperature did not change significantly throughout the day. I spent the day in the cabin, tending the fire, doing yoga, reading and drinking coffee. When the temperature rose a bit, I went outdoors with my large-format camera and photographed the snow-covered trees. I later heard the snowplow scraping up the road and found myself wishing the road would never be cleared. When I checked out, I told the woman at the front desk that I’d live in that cabin if I could.
• • •
There are cabins throughout Kentucky. Cumberland Falls State Resort Park boasts six CCC cabins, and Mammoth Cave National Park has several historical cottages built by the CCC—some without heat and air conditioning and available only seasonally. Numerous private companies offer cabins throughout the state.
It is, to me, thrilling to know that I can experience the mountains and forests of Kentucky the way the CCC builders likely intended me to: from rooms built of the mountains themselves, their stone and their trees.