A Muse Among Us
There may be others, but Hillsborough is the only town I know of that has its own poet laureate. That critter is Mike Troy. Mike is also a Trading Path Board member. A couple of days ago Mike delivered a poem all about venturing forth on trails, questing so to speak, and he dedicated to the Trading Path Association. Here it is.
THE FEAT OF MEMORY
For the TPA
Fingers write books, but toes write trails
Through the forests and the vales.
Woman keeps the hearth at home
Yet always must the warrior roam.
Daughters bide – it is always so;
Always our sons arise and go.
Years pass; our sons return bowed and bent.
Home folks wonder just where they went.
Memory dissolves into misty tatters,
Yet the human Trail is a thing that matters
Michael Troy
4-11-09
...............Mike the way he is............
**********
May First Sunday Hike
Tentative it is: we intend to hike on a site owned by Burroughs Land Investors, LLC. Being responsible developers building in a historic area, they engaged the TPA to inventory the historic landscape artifacts on land they want to develop near Hillsborough. There wasn't much there but what remains there is interesting. On the land are remnants of the Fish Dam Road, an ancient old trail first noted by a European in a journal dated 1733. There are some horse trails on the land, and a springbox or two, a ford and a old bridge abutments. In the last days of the Civil War/War between the States/War for Southern Independence Wade Hampton's troops probably camped on this land as one bluff on it provides a clear vista to eastward, out over St. Mary's Road, one of the routes Sherman might have used had he decided to finish the war with a bang. Hampton's HQ was to the south, less than a mile away. As soon as we've confirmed adequate parking off of a very busy road, we'll push out a First Sunday Hike reminder with a map and all. Meanwhile, mark your calendar May 3rd is the date, 2 PM the time, near Hillsborough. We believe you will find the hike amusing.
Those of you interested in old roads will find the Fish Dam Road remnants exemplary. The are immediately next to the current highway and there is enough fill and excavation to demonstrate both how the old roads persist and how they succumb. One of the horse trails was sliced through by earlier construction and provides a great example of what to look for when scanning modern roads while looking for old ones. In the photo to the right, we laid a limb across a horse trail in an attempt to show its size. Pretty good idea but for the crook in the limb that sort of skewed things.
See for yourself on the first Sunday in May.
**********
April First Sunday Hike
Bill Johnson hosted our April First Sunday Hike at his farm in Randolph County. He is seen to the left, holding up a handout about his land. His wife's family were Coxs and Cox's Mill was an important place during the
Revolutionary War. The greenery in the photo shown to the right is part of a field of bulbs, descendants of the door-garden at the Cox house that once stood on this knoll overlooking a ford crossing the Deep River from the vicinity of Cox's Mill. The house saw numerous Revolutionary Luminaries. This was Tory country, so many of the luminaries were the other guys, like David Fanning. He made his headquarters in these parts, near Buffalo Ford, just downstream.
It was about a perfect day for a mess of happy campers to trip over the river and through the woods. We strolled across Bill's pastures, through his woods and down to the site of a couple of Cox mills and at least three old bridge sites.
Teepa Snow climbed d
own into the Millstone Creek bottom to rock-hop around the rubble left from the dams that stood her in days gone by. As usual, we were struck by the work that went into erecting the structures, the ghosts of which we visited. Massive stacked stone walls and bridge abutments compelled awe and humility. The thought that at one time two or three grist mills and a saw mill operated on Mill Creek and Millstone Creek, within a mile of one another makes one wonder about commerce in the 18th and 19th century.
The mills on Millstone Creek operated into the 20th century and then went still. The bridges evolved from covered wood to steel and then were replaced by a modern culvert system. All of it just sat there waiting for us to come by and be awed.
A good time, you can be sure, was had by all.
If you have difficulty reading the our mailings... If your TPA newsletter is somehow illegible or readable only with great difficulty, please, let us know by phone or email. There is a tendency for most of us to presume that internet traffic problems originate in our machine. The TPA makes every attempt to preview and proof what we mail but we are dependent on at least two software and service providers to make each of these mailings and we can induce errors in a dozen different ways. The only way we know there are problems is when a friend lets us know. Please, be that friend.
*******************************************************************
Suggest A Hike
If you have an idea about a place to hike or an interesting spot you'd like us to visit, let us know. We are more or less on hiatus in July and August, and we may resume First Sunday Hikes in September. Meanwhile if you have a place we can hike without bugs and other varmints bothering us, please let us know about it.
