Tracing The Roots of Tennessee

Since my teen years, I have had frequent dreams about impossible highways, built solely to loop through forests or landscapes devoid of man. Since I got onto the national park bandwagon, I have found them in California and Montana, roads that exist for pleasure, spanning distances not needed from Labor Day to Memorial Day.

Then my girlfriend Nancy introduced me to one in my own backyard. I knew of the Natchez Trace, the road that flat-boat veterans walked from Natchez to Nashville before steamships fought back the rivers. But driving 60 miles of its 444-mile, three-state span, Nancy and I more than filled a Saturday afternoon.

We originally planned to drive down to Huntsville. With a five-day vacation brewing and the need to sleep late on Saturday, we decided to travel some of the Trace instead. Nancy drove several portions before, and I had contemplated it on occasion. But I had a traveling companion. That provides all the difference.

Starting innocuously off Highway 100 west of Nashville, the road rose quickly to hilltops and ridgelines. Separate roads serviced the farms and residences visit hundreds of feet beyond the trees. The road ran away from Nashville, across a renowned bridge, past a few sporadic cyclists and into the wilderness. The original Trace was a buffalo run that was used by Indians and then popularized by returning boatmen. The deeply rutted road is only visible in places, and even in January, the 60-degree temperatures riled up deer ticks along the walkable remnants.

We listened to Leadbelly, and he couldn’t have sounded more appropriate.When he harmonized with himself on Moaning, it seemed to bridge a gulf from the 21st century to the harsh times of the Trace's prime years.

Early on, we passed the preserved homestead of a family who ran a ferry across the Duck River for a century. Down on the Duck, it was easy to see how the greenish blue waters required a ferry before Tennessee built a bridge. We walked down to Jackson Falls, a trickle in winter that descended to the Duck. The overlooks opened onto a farming world that couldn’t have been more foreign to the city life we had escaped.

The Trace offered a natural stopping point at its largest point of interest in Tennessee.The Meriwether Lewis gravesite gives the man his just desserts. As the Lewis behind American history’s favorite pair of 19^th century pioneers, Lewis’ grave received its stone monument before the Civil War. He died out on the Trace. Once considered a suicide, his death could have been murder. No one knows.

They buried Lewis where he fell, yards from the homestead where he stayed. His name appears across the continent. Modern Americans cannot fathom what the Corps of Discovery endured. I have seen where the Corps stopped west of Bozeman, where they spent a winter along the Oregon Coast and where they left the only physical mark of their trip along the Yellowstone River. His memorial makes clear that Stephen Ambrose plucked his title for the Lewis & Clark tale from Thomas Jefferson’s words.

The gravestones have been lost to those who were interred next to him. But there were few surnames. Just a sunken stone structure remained from the original homestead. But Lewis stood tall in the wilderness that claimed him.

We drove through Hohenwald, which sprang with more life than most rural Tennessee cities. Two farmers had controlled fires burning. Smoke lingered across the road. A handful of beers and restaurants peppered its downtown, even a Mexican place. Too many non-metro towns in Tennessee have settled for a Wal-Mart and a downtown of shuttered storefronts.

Hohenwald also fields a missed opportunity. A sanctuary for retired circus elephants lies in its backwoods, but its keepers prevent any outsiders from viewing their small herd. I understand the desire to keep these elephants from becoming an attraction, but something as simple as an observation tower would please the public, make a little money for the sanctuary and keep people away from their prized pachyderms.

We drove back, stopping for photos at the bridge. As we return to TN Route 100, Alan Hovhaness’ Symphony No. 2: “Mysterious Mountain” erupted from the speakers. I cannot remember any detail of the drive while that symphony entranced us.

The Trace was so close to Nashville, but unlike any road I had driven in recent years. Nancy promised we could finish it some other time. The road’s appearance in different seasons seemingly promotes traveling it quarterly. No matter the season, it will still lead away from the trappings of civilization.