Merry Christmas to Us One and All and a New Year Filled With Hope and Learning

January First Sunday Hike to be at Moorefields: Connecting to Few Site

Our January 2010 First Sunday Hike will be at a favorite old spot,"Moorefields", a private historic site west of Hillsborough, NC.  We hike at Moorefields once a year, it seems, every year.  It is lovely and accessible, and its location astride the Central Coast Road makes it very germane to our studies.  In this particular case, we're hiking there again because we believe there to have been a direct connection between this site and the site we last visited, the likely tavern site above Fanny's Ford on the Eno.  Evidence for this may exist along the oldest roadbed in the vicinity of Moorefields, a roadbed north of the plantation house, in the vicinity of "Grayfields", an earlier, 18th century plantation.  If memory serves, the rock walls lining the road that passed Grayfields bear a striking resemblance to the rock walls found along the older roads near St. Mary's Chapel and near the tavern on the bluff (see the photo of the dog for an example).  The picture to the left is one of Gene Dodd's photos from our last hike at Moorefields showing a beaver dam in Seven Mile Creek just upstream from the old ford.

We haven't done enough genealogical and historical document study to ascertain any relationships between the various owners of these two sites, and we're not sure that similar stonework has any meaning in term of dating the sites, but it is worth a look.  By the time of the hike, maybe we'll know more about the relationships of the Gray-Harte  family, the Few family; and other neighboring families.  One connection, though, must be the antipodal nature of Thomas Harte and William Few; Harte owned Grayfields on the main fords west of Hillsborough when Few owned the lands dominating the main fords east of Hillsborough.  This physical separation may only accidently reflect the polar opposit nature of the Anglican at Seven Mile Creek and the Quaker at Buckquarter Creek.  There is a strong possibility that the road ran directly between these two fording points prior to the inception of Hillsborough.  Maybe the stones will speak.

Moorefields is not easy to find.  Click on the map to the left to get a larger image in another tab or window.  If you get a map off of the internet with directions to 2226 Moorefields Road, it will get you in the neighborhood of one of our signs.  Suffice that we'll meet before 2PM at the Moorefield Historic site off of Dimmock Mill Road, west of Hillsborough.  We will have event signs from Dimmock Mill Rd to the parking area.  And, of course, if you call for help on the day of the hike, we can talk you in to the site.  Coming from the east, off of Interstate 40 take Exit 266 and off of Interstate 85 take exit 166.  Coming from the west on Interstate 40/85, take exit 161, turn left at the bottom of the ramp and turn right at the first opportunity, on to Ben Johnson Road.

This hike involves very little climbing or decent, but what trails there are not surfaced and much of it will be out in open woodland.  Dress for the weather, wear sturdy shoes, and plan on a leisurely stroll in da woods.

Hike on the Road to Few's Tavern (?)

The weather cooperated for this hike.  The trails were wet and low spots muddy but they were no impediment to an enthusiastic group of eighteen or so who braved a cold morning to enjoy a delight filled afternoon.  During both the hike in to and the hike out of the site there was talk about how we can better use the wonderful resources of Eno River State Park.  For reasons to be discussed below, the state park has never done a proper inventory of its cultural assets, its human content.  The only credible rationale for not doing so is that there is so much to be mapped.  

In the Bob Smith photo to the left the group gets introduced to the site.  Note the stone feature between the guy with the pack and the others.  We spent a good half hour or so discovering more and more about this site.  Everywhere you turn you find stonework of one kind or another; barrier walls, foundations, retaining walls, chimney piles, and riprapped slopes.  To the right is a picture taken by Jessica Conner of a barrel-o-rock sans barrel.

Kent Corley(professional photographer) captured the best image yet of one of the two chimney falls associated with the main structure at this site.  His picture, shown below, gives a clear sense of the transcendental and essentially romantic nature of this place.  We hope to return one day soon with some of the previous generation of researchers who for so long sought these structures.  

Owing to the vagueness of GPS signals, we have yet to get more than a general picture of this site.  It needs and deserves full treatment, which is to say every visible cultural asset should be mapped and photographed for posterity.  Without delay, Eno River Park should begin devising interpretations of this site and consider what sort of protection the artifacts deserve.  When approached about this, park rangers made an interesting point to the effect that signage attracts hikers who, as often as not don't heed signs.  So to put up a sign saying "Do not climb on the rock walls or displace stonework" would be likely to result in crumbled rock walls and rocks scattered to the winds.

We'll return to this site, and one way or another we'll devise some means to protect it.  We are open to suggestions how best to accomplish this, but we are certain that the first step will entail devising detailed maps of the cultural content of the land today.

Human Nature: Help us end the split between "man" and "nature"

Last week, while leading a herd of home-schoolers through the woods in Durham County we made the point many of you have heard before, that we are in the business of looking for the "unnatural."  Suddenly that sounded utterly stupid and now we're interested in overcoming the idiotic perception or sloppy linguistic shorthand that posits humans and nature in different categories.  In his book To Engineer is Human, Duke Engineer Henry Pertroski has written to the effect that there is absolutely nothing more human than making marks on the ground, leaving traces of our passing in our environment.  Human traces, to be sure, are generally more persistent than other resident traces, but they are no less natural.  A couple of hundred years after their abandonment, we can identify the location of old beaver dams by the silt wedge built up behind the old dams.  The same thing holds true for human dams, and which of these is the more natural enterprise?  Mark Twain said that 'The principle diffference between man and the cat is that a cat that sits on a hot stove lid won't sit on any stove lid ever again.' We are history minded beasts and we try not to repeat painful pasts but we learn with more refinement than the cat.  So we do ourselves a disservice when we strip the human content from our parks and deny the human past in our nature preserves.  Every cultural artifact is a visual aid through which we can convey our common past, the good, the bad, and the ugly.  By these means we may learn.

This is a crucial issue, and we solicit your input on both how to understand it and how to deal with it.  We're certain that among you we will find a bibliography or two on the history of man's separation from nature, physical and metaphysical.  And among you we are certain there will be some excellent ideas on how we can go about reuniting people with their environment.  Write us by email with your comments and suggestions.  If there is sufficient interest, perhaps we can establish an electronic symposium to examine the issue and contrive solutions.

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So, you want to suggest a First Sunday Hike.....

Please, if you want to suggest a First Sunday Hike, there are a few points to bear in mind that will make preparing the hike a lot easier.  For example:

1. We need to know the names and contact information for all property owners that will be affected,
2. The site needs sufficient parking for a dozen or more cars,
3. The hike needs artifact content, historic merit, something to trigger the hikers' imaginations; we need a description of the site,
4. There needs to be a passable route suitable for hikers of all ages,
5. The route should be less than two miles long, depending on artifact content.  That is, the more there is to see, the shorter should be the hike.
6. The trail head needs to be accessible without heroic driving.