Weekend Wandering

One of the joys of retirement is the freedom to explore. So we wander often, discovering new places that are sometimes just up the road or around the bend.

This past weekend, despite a misty day on Saturday, we decided to go to Old Fort, NC. We’ve seen the road that turns off NC Highway 9 many times, but have always been on our way to or from somewhere else. When days are scheduled, it’s easy to pass up those side roads. But this day our plan was simply to wander around Old Fort.

So off we went, stopping long enough just above Chimney Rock Village for lunch at the Esmeralda Inn. The current owners of this historic spot have created a beautiful inn and serve meals from creative menus. This is a place, they say, where Mary Pickford, Gloria Swanson, Clark Gable and other Hollywood stars once came, first to make silent movies, later to get away from the glare of their fame. It remains a quiet haven for those who would escape life’s sometimes frantic pace.

The original Esmeralda, built in 1892, burned down, but was rebuilt and now has the protection of modern safety standards. It sits on a slope above Highway 9/64/74A as the road twists and turns alongside the Rocky Broad River in Hickory Nut Gorge. Guests can sit on the covered front porch and hear the river as it splashes over the boulders that give the river its name.

On such a wet day, we enjoyed our late lunch with the dining room pretty much to ourselves. Our friendly waiter brought us hot, savory vegetable beef soup and my favorite, a fried green tomato BLT. We dined at a window table in view of the budding trees and flowering daffodils. My guess is that, after a too-dry spell in this area, the plants were all thirstily drinking in the rain.

We found our way to Old Fort road with its ups and downs and curves through the mountains. There were stretches of road with no habitation, just the eerie tall woods in deep ravines, filled this day with thick, swirling fog. In other places there was that strange mix of homes one finds in a developing area like this. Old farmhouses and mobile homes flanked the entrances to gated high-end developments. Occasionally we saw a mountain mansion showing off its log exterior on a ridge above us. They wouldn’t have had much of a view in the rain, but their sunrises and sunsets must be glorious on better days.

Finally we came to Old Fort itself, billed as a town of just under 1000 people. One feels its struggles at the outskirts in the hardscrabble housing. Mills that once provided jobs are now shut down and in the economic downturn of the past couple of years, it’s hard to come by the money needed to paint or repair a sagging porch. In February of this year, the town council of Old Fort voted to do away with its salaries, as well as the mayor’s. They know sacrifice here.



Mountain Gateway Museum

 The road continues under Interstate 40 into town and what is apparent there is both local pride and efforts to find community success in the face of challenge. We stopped at the Mountain Gateway Museum and Heritage Center where we were greeted warmly by a lovely lady. Their featured exhibit now is about Plott hounds, bred in the North Carolina mountains, some trained to hunt bears. When I asked the docent, a native of the area, if she had ever seen a bear, she said no, but, of course she’s heard tales of the bear hunts.

Although small, the museum’s displays focus on the North Carolina pioneer lifestyle with interesting photographs and maps, as well as two restored log cabins on the grounds. There is a short video we didn’t watch because we were eager to see some of Old Fort’s sights that we had read about. So we asked the docent to point us to the cemetery where a “Look Homeward Angel” can be seen and she graciously told us how to get there.

Up the steep hill that is Cemetery Street we went and there it was, the angel statue surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. The story of this statue is that Thomas Wolfe’s father had it made, then lost it in a poker game. The Carrara marble statue that gave Wolfe’s book its name is in a cemetery in Hendersonville on the other side of Asheville. We’ve seen it often when wandering toward Brevard along that road.

Photos made, we headed back to the main street and the Old Fort Depot, now home to a small railroad museum and the local Tourist Bureau. On the day we were there, there was also an arts and crafts show there with handmade textiles, pottery, jewelry and brooms, as well as well-drawn sketches by a local artist. Some of them are members of the Southern Highland Crafts Guild and their work is both artful and unique.

Mike took photos of the giant arrowhead that sits at the intersection by the depot. Thirty feet tall and made of pink granite, it was unveiled in 1930 as a symbol of the peace made in this area between pioneers and Native Americans in the 19th century.

Old Fort is part of the McDowell Quilt Trail, a county-wide display of traditional quilt designs on wooden signs called barn quilts that are attached to buildings. Appropriately, the Railroad Crossing design is affixed to the Depot and a couple of saw designs are displayed on the Old Fort Woodworking building.

Depot Barn Quilt

What we didn’t experience on our Saturday in Old Fort was their famous Mountain Music night. Those events happen on Friday nights and have drawn music lovers for many years for a jam with banjos and guitars, fiddles or dulcimers, maybe an accordion or washtub. As some have described this Friday tradition, the musicians play “just for the joyful noise they make.”

Andrews Geyser

Our next stop was at the locally known Andrews Geyser, a bit out of town and back in the woods. It can be reached by roads that sometimes parallel the railroad track. The geyser is actually a manmade water spout that is turned on in the morning and off in the evening from the lodge above it. It is said to have been built originally by Mill Creek in 1885 for train passengers to see as their cars began the steep climb to Swannanoa Gap. Over the years, the geyser has been moved, restored and then rededicated in its current spot in 1976.

Winding our way back to the main road, we headed west to stop at a couple of our favorite shops in Black Mountain, the Common Housefly (kitchen goods) and the Merry Wine Market. We made a quick stop at Town Hardware, too, for a couple of items. These are places we’ve found in early wandering and now know the people and their wares. They remember us, too.

Along the familiar drive down NC 9 from Black Mountain to Lake Lure, we found wild turkeys, some of them looking as big as small ponies, startled from an early supper in the fields of Ledbetter Farms. All along the roadside, the occasional burst of bright yellow spikes of forsythia shone through the drizzle and fog.

And this day, like other roaming days of exploration and discovery, reassures me that Anatole France was surely right when he wrote: “Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.”

All photos by Mike Lumpkin