A few random updates on things that have come up while getting ready for the trip...

Smoke on the Water

First, we have another no-cost Club acquisition. This gift has been accepted by the RRCC because it meets all of our equipment criteria (large, metal, awkward to carry). And it's such a classic old-school smoker.

The instructions that came with it have the obligatory "favorite recipes" section with corny names from Old Smokey Marketing like "Have-To-Have Hamburgers" and "Show Stopping Steaks." The second half of the instructions is the spanish translation of the first half and the Hot Dog recipe reads: "Perros Caliente Hot Diggity!" (exclamation in original). That is good stuff! So even though it may look like we're eating gourmet brats and sausage Friday night in Livingston, that's not what we'll be calling them.




Satellite

You should really check out the aerial views of this river. There's a link on the right to the Acme Mapper (under "Aerials and Topos") because on ACME you can switch back and forth between the maps, satellite photos and the official USGS topos. But you can use Google Earth too. Either way, type in "Condra, Tennessee" and scroll about three farmers' fields to the southeast.

Normally, the best satellite pictures available on the internet are urban areas like San Francisco and Washington, D.C. For some reason, NASA or whoever must have decided our campsite is some international place of interest because the pictures are incredibly clear. Look at the areas upstream of Hwy. 127 and downstream of the take-out - they're such poor quality you can't zoom in at all. But on our section of the river you can see the pecker on a Pileated.

Some fun things to look for:

- The grass drug-runner airstrip directly across the river from our campsite.

- The Sequatchie was high and muddy when the images were taken. All of the riffles are washed out and you can see the water up to its banks.

- Note that even though the river is flooded, our campsite is high and dry (this may become important).

- The oxbow lake right by our field is full and has reconnected with the river. At normal water levels neither is true. In these pictures you can see the trees that have grown up in the oxbow as it was cut off from the main channel and filled in.

The Saw

The update on the saw is nothing but good news and sweet serendipity. Our saw is the feel-good story of 2008.

Think about this. Crosscut saws come in every imaginable size and style. The saw that Roy dug out of his garage is a "5-1/2 foot Western-style two-man crosscut" - EXACTLY the same as the one we were going to buy from Jim's Crosscut Saws in Oregon. Just check our old post from last month if you don't believe it. (Western-style means toothed all the way to the ends).

And it could have been a mere M-tooth saw or, worse, "Plain tooth". But it's a Champion.




Roy had a perfect opportunity to throw it away when he moved last year, and almost did, but he kept it without really knowing why. This is a Saw of Destiny.

More proof: when we asked around about getting it sharpened, everyone said there's only one person in Tennessee who can do it - Tom Housewright in Knoxville. As it happens, we were going to Knoxville the very next day to see a client. When we arrived, the man's shop was in a barn about three blocks from the client's business. And Housewright was coming to Nashville the following week so it has already been hand-delivered to us all shiny and sharp. Total cost: $50.

You also need to know that Roy is an avid golfer and almost backed out of the spring trip because the Masters is the same weekend. Mr. Housewright, our two-man crosscut saw sharpener, is the official scorer on the 7th hole of the Masters. This is true.

7th Hole - Augusta National Golf Club

Tom Housewright's shop is not in an ordinary barn. It's a huge, nineteenth-century dairy barn:

Special two-man crosscut saw sharpening machines.







But the best thing about the saw is that it was handed down to Roy from some lumberjack ancestor. So, like the Chuck Box - this saw is "hereditary."

By heaven! cried my father, springing out of his chair, as he swore, - I have not one appointment belonging to me, which I set so much store by, as I do by these jack-boots, -they were our great-grandfather's, brother Toby, -they were hereditary.

Goodbye to a River, p.2 (Chapter quote)

Nitty Gritty

Friday

Next Friday the 11th, we're picking up out-of-towners at the airport at 1:30 and then heading east. Our Friday destination is a deer farm outside of Livingston, Tennessee just north of Cookeville. We'll be staying in a barn. It's a nice barn, though, and it means we don't have to unpack our gear before Saturday.

We can caravan out, but some of you may arrive separately. If you do, you should still come out as early as possible while there is still daylight. Like I said - it's a nice barn.

We'll recreate the dinner from the turkey farm on the Green River: brats on the grill.



Friday Directions

Take I-40 East toward Knoxville

Take Exit 288 (Highway 111, "Livingston/Sparta") just past Cookeville

Go LEFT at top of exit ramp on Hwy. 111

At 19.0 miles continue STRAIGHT on Hwy 85 into Livingston (Hwy 111 bears left)

Go 1/2 mile farther into the Courthouse square

Continue STRAIGHT out of the Courthouse square onto Hwy 52 EAST (and Hwy 85 EAST) following signs to "Jamestown"

Go 1 mile and take RIGHT fork at the Overton Motel following Hwy 52 EAST

Go 8.0 miles and take RIGHT turn on Hwy 85 EAST at the "West Fork General Store" (a bona fide Ser.Sta.Gro. and our breakfast on Saturday)

Go 3.5 miles to the "Falling Springs Missionary Baptist Church" and cemetery.

Turn LEFT immediately after the cemetery onto gravel road

Take immediate RIGHT to follow gravel fork down hill (instead of fork going up hill behind the cemetery)

Cross the "bridge."*

The barn is white or grey and is the first major building at the top of the hill. Don't travel down to the two farm houses. Our host, if you get there first, is Rob Daniels. Our rent is one bottle of Basil Hayden (BM please procure). The two stoners are the caretakers Johnny and Vanessa.



(* If you can't get comfortable with the idea of crossing this bridge and you're in a 4x4 you can ford the Obey River underneath the bridge. If not, and you're in an Acura Vigor, you'll have to just close your eyes and go for it. Actually, closing your eyes is a really bad idea - just go for it.)






Saturday

Breakfast is at 7:30 am at the "West Fork General Store" (see above) then we head south into the Sequatchie valley.

The put-in is on Hwy 127 in Dunlap, Tennessee. There is a commercial canoe livery on the highway ("Canoe the Sequatchie") that charges $5 per person to launch there. Not crazy about that violation of the federal navigation servitude and Public Trust Doctrine for the liberty of fishing in the sea, or creeks, or arms thereof, as a public common of piscary but it's the bridge we need and the pen may be mightier than the sword but it's not mightier than the shotgun. To get there, it's best to backtrack to Livingston and cross I-40 on Hwy. 111 instead of trying to continue east over the mountain. Hwy. 111 will take you all the way into Dunlap. Then just find Hwy. 127 and take it a couple of miles to the river.

Any questions?

Field vs. Stream

This issue has come up before, but it's more relevant to the Sequatchie than any other river in Tennessee:

A river has few "views." It seeks the lowest line of its country, straight or crooked, and what you see when you travel along it are mostly river and sky and trees, water and clouds and sun and shore. Things a quarter-mile away exist for you only because you know they are there; your consciousness of them is visual only if you walk ashore to see them. For a man who likes rivers, most of the time that is all right; for a man who seeks sharp solitude, it's special.

But sometimes, too, the shores close in a bit as room walls will, and you crave more space. . . .

Goodbye to a River, p. 126.

That's the dilemma on this trip. The Sequatchie Valley is arguably the most beautiful in Tennessee, but it's hard to see the escarpment from the river bed. So we're going to camp like we did on the Elk River in Fall of '06 - up high in a field. It's a different kind of set up from our usual streamside beaches, but if you choose the right field on the Sequatchie, the scenery looks more like Yosemite than Middle Tennessee.

Here is the field we chose:



Click to zoom. You can imagine the view to the west.

Like the Elk, we will be in a farm pasture at the top of steep banks. But the access is somewhat better, so Mullowney won't have to build his ADA-compliant handicap ramp down to the river this time. Also like the Elk, we have the owner's permission to camp there. You may recall on that trip that we found the owner by asking at the local Ser. Sta. Gro. In this case it was even easier - the property is bordered by Condra Switch Rd. just above Condra Creek and just outside the town of Condra, Tennessee.



Thanks, Mr. Condra!


Also, the Sequatchie is not know for big gravel bars, so that's another good reason to head for the pastures. Most of the good bars we might have considered will be under water with the high river levels we have this Spring. (Another benefit of this plan: high fields are virtually flood-proof).


Gravel bars shouldn't be as scarce as they were on the now famous Fall of '07 trip on the Green...















In a future where the polar ice caps have melted and most of Earth is underwater, a mutated mariner fights starvation and outlaw "smokers," and reluctantly helps a woman and a young girl find dry land.


...but still, don't ever pass up a good place to pull over and get out of the canoe if you see one. From put-in to campsite is 9.0 miles, and we have an extra hour of daylight, so there is no reason to hurry. Even if we don't make it to camp til 4:00 the cooks will still have eight hours of prep time before supper.

~

Attention Chefs

We ate duck on the Duck...

Elk on the Elk...

Greens on the Green...

And buffalo on the Buffalo.



Just a little reminder while you're planning the menu for our trip down the Sequatchie.

Complete with nutritional information.

Ride the Grinning Opposum

One month out. And for those of you who have been trying to figure out where we're going, here are a few more vocabulary terms for you....

"Rift valley" means an elongated depression, trough, or graben in the earth's crust where the central flat block forming the trough slips downward relative to the crustal blocks on either side. The appearance is that of a fallen keystone in a broken arch.

There are only two true rift valleys in the world and one of them is the mesopotamian valley in East Africa where the hominid "Lucy" was discovered.

Here is the other one...

"Escarpment" means a long line of steep cliffs at the edge of a plateau formed by erosion or vertical movement of the earth's crust.

Like the edge of the Cumberland Plateau...










"Hang Gliding Capital of the East" means there are truly crazy people who launch off of the aforementioned escarpment and hurl themselves into the rift valley below.

"Sequatchie" means "Opposum, he grins or runs"

~

Windfall

"Windfall" comes from an old logging term. Cutting down standing trees was forbidden in medieval England since they belonged to the King, but if one blew down on its own the landowner got to keep it. So windfall now means unexpected or unearned profit.

"Roy" comes from "Roi" which means King.

We just got a BIG windfall from the King...

























Unexpected, but not unearned. When it came time to divide marital assets from his first marriage, Roy took a hard line and said: you can keep everything else but I get the tiki bar and this rusty old two-man crosscut saw.

Click on this glossary for more excellent lumberjack terms. We could probably run our whole club with them...



Here's the Bone Butcher putting some Axle Grease on a batch of Monkey Blankets.




That Hash Rassler on the left saying "Pass the 44s" is just a Flunkey Bean Burner.




Even a real Mulligan Mixer will be a Kitchen Mechanic and Chunk Out the Dutch Oven to earn his Guthammer.




Nobody's happier about our free Swedish Fiddle than the Ink Slinger of this Gyppo outfit.






Viva le Roi!

King of the Crosscut Saw.







~