Tag Archives: hiking

Uncategorized

Bardstown on the Run

Leave a comment

x

Last week nine of us from our girls group convened in Bardstown for a two-day visit that I can recommend to you. So I will.


Our pal, Julie, has lived in Bardstown since college and she planned our days with precision and compassion, leaving time for us to acclimate, to eat, and then, you know, eat some more. We gathered at her home to coordinate, but mostly so we could visit her mom.

Nancy Purdy was secretary at Owensboro High School for years, and we knew her, not just as Julie’s mom, but also as our friend and protector as we negotiated the vagaries and angst of high school. She was happy to see us, and we were happy to see her, and she told funny stories and hugged us in that special way someone does when they have known you most of your life. We couldn’t linger, though, because – ice cream.

We caravaned downtown, parking in the city lot — I think that was the actual name, City Lot, a half block behind Hurst Discount Drugs. Hurst is important because of this. It has a lunch counter. In addition to their famous chicken salad (says so right on the menu) Hurst sells ice cream treats of all kinds. Old fashioned shakes and malts, the ones where they pour half of it in a glass and leave the metal cup it got mixed up in. Ice cream sodas and sundaes, generous sized kiddie cones. I didn’t see what everyone got, but we sat there in a row, the straws standing at attention in old-fashioned dispensers as we spun on the red stools like we were eight.


We checked out the cute shops all up and down the street and ended up at the Talbott Tavern. You can eat there, of course, or you can wander around upstairs and look at the historic rooms, see where Abraham Lincoln stayed, check out the bullet holes courtesy of Jesse James, and contemplate that for a minute or two.


We finished up at the Basilica of Saint Joseph Proto-Cathedral, the first Roman Catholic Church west of the Allegheny Mountains. It takes but a minute to explore but still fascinating. Pick up the brochure with a QR code that will take you to a virtual tour of the cathedral and its history.
Almost next door is the Rickhouse, a nice restaurant that serves, among other things, a huge pork chop, but it takes forty minutes to prepare, and I doubted my group possessed that kind of patience. But I plan to ditch them and return for it at a later date.


Thanks to the popularity of the Bourbon Trail, we had access to a newly built farm house, complete with a pool, hot tub, game room in a barn, and fire pit. We are old now, so mostly we looked at the pool, admired the fire pit from afar, and I never made it to game room. But the house accommodated all nine of us comfortably and I bet there are more houses there just like it.


Julie rousted us out of bed the next morning with fresh doughnuts from Hadorn’s, a family owned bakery and a Bardstown staple, and for reference, it sits just behind the City Lot and a stone’s throw from Hurst Discount Drugs.


We had reservations for a tour of Maker’s Mark, and I’m tempted to say if you have seen one distillery you have seen them all, but no. It was a great tour, and it ended with a tasting for four bourbons, and an exit through the gift shop.


Since I traveled with some who don’t drink, it is possible, by their generosity, I was over- served. But I wasn’t driving and I bought a lot of stuff.


Then we spent the afternoon in the tiny burg of Bloomfield, where Jerry and Linda Bruckheimer have restored what looks like the entire downtown, Linda having roots in Bloomfield. Nettie Jarvis Antiques is named for her grandmother. There is the clothing store, a tea room, Ernie’s Tavern, which is a bar on one side, a bowling alley and ice cream shop on the other.


And by bowling alley, I mean one from the 1950s, with ashtrays and paper scoring sheets. Bring your own shoes, or just stand there and throw your ball at the pins. That’s what we did. Dinner was pizza from Cafe Primo, all brick oven crispy. Leaving the next morning in an autumn fog, we looked like the final scene of a some wistful movie, six cars in a slow procession down the long drive to the main road. Sweet and nostalgic, and a longing to return.

Uncategorized

Prairie Love

Leave a comment

There are studies, I suppose, on the ways our physical environments shape us. I don’t mean the obvious environment psychologists talk about; the neighborhood, the house, the presence of books or harsh words. I mean the environment outside the window, the creek, the mountain, the wide open sky, a fence row that goes on forever, the next house a speck on the horizon.


Or no house on the horizon, and sometimes no horizon, either. Where I live, where I have always lived, I must go in hunt of the skyline, and it is a drive.

South Dakota is a land of horizons, of prairie, a place where standing on a second floor balcony the rain comes in from off, signaled by darkening sheets of rain too small to cover the whole horizon, just a part of it. The rain moves back to front, or left to right, and it will reach you some time, but leaving you plenty of time for speculation and a chat.


I want to drive across Nebraska. I am told this is because I have never driven across Nebraska. That the wheat and road are incessant, a trial to be endured, not enjoyed. But I don’t know. I think that sounds like a wonderful thing to see and do. Drive and drive, scenery unchanging, but new to me, and therefore, exciting. The prairie grass rolling like waves, and what it must be to see a rise in the landscape, to see the change coming but not able to judge the distance, not quite yet, and if at all.


I asked people I met out in South Dakota what it was like growing up with the Black Hills for a backdrop, to drive an hour and be in the Badlands. To have so much sky. They smiled and said it was nice, and didn’t quite get the question, as I wouldn’t quite get the question if put to me. One woman said her father, who was a rancher, never looked at the sky all that much. His grandchildren asked why his walked with his head down, always down.


“I raised cows,” he had said. “I have to watch where I step.”


But this must be the exception, surely.


I don’t realize how flat Daviess County is until friends from Eastern Kentucky point it out. They find they can only be away from their mountains for just a little bit before they miss them, the “sheltering hills” James Still wrote of. I can only be in those same mountains for a few days before they begin to close in on me, make me work a little harder to breathe. So, not sheltering to me, but oppressive.


Give me the same mountains farther south, in Tennessee. Then I am tenderhearted toward them. But that is because they roll differently there. Towns and bergs are nestled in broad green valleys, valleys we can look down into from overlooks or the high winding roads. A vista of sorts.


My mother’s people came here from England. I can almost prove it on paper, I think, but I can prove it for certain when I travel there. That green and pleasant land. The gentle landscape that is broad and human-scaled. The fields and meadows, the hillocks that ring a village, the ones with the benches at their crest, inviting us to sit and gaze out on the houses below, and watch the sky change from blue to gray to navy.


I have sat on such benches and feel, in a visceral way, that it isn’t the first time I’ve sat there, and not in this century. I do a lot of sighing then, content, and warm with affection, as I catch my breath.


I feel the same in Ireland, where every rock-bound field sits not too far above sea level. They have their mountains, I think of the Wicklow Mountains, but they are gentle and promise, as one travel books said, “sweeping views and plenty of space to sit and have a cuppa.” Stand at Cumberland Gap and wonder how this could have been the best spot to cross into the West. Then meander up and down Sally Gap Drive in the Wicklow hills for comparison. And there is no comparison, none at all.


Willa Cather, American writer, was born in the Shenandoah Valley, but grew up in Nebraska. She knew something about about mountains, and also vistas, and open sky. She says, this, about that:


“Anybody can love the mountains, but it takes a soul to love the prairie.”


What soul I have for landscape, sits beside Willa Cather’s.

Uncategorized

The Nature of Things

2 Comments

The mornings are nice to sit outside, drink coffee and contemplate the world, one’s life or even the laundry piling up in the basement.  I was doing all these things a couple of mornings ago, when a tiny rabbit sidled along the walk, hesitated, sniffed the air, then headed for the hostas by the back door, disappearing for good. 

I don’t take much notice of the rabbits in my yard, especially since I learned to forgive them their lapin ways, eating all my tomato plants as they do.  We just coexist now in an easy acceptance of each other and I feel all  Beatrix Potter when I see them, then quickly return to my own thoughts, my own business at hand. 

But that morning I sat up and felt a swell of tenderness, whispered, “oh, you made it.”  And  I was one with the universe for a moment.  

I hoped this little fellow was one of a fluffle my young friend, Sterling, and I unearthed by accident a few weeks ago.  She was handling the shovel, I was giving directions, as she dug a shallow hole in the flowerbed along my side porch.  We had just pulled up a lemon verbena that threatened to take over and one I was tired of.

The ground is unusually soft there, which is fortunate, because Sterling didn’t have to dig too hard to turn the earth.  On the second scoop of the shovel, she gave a little cry. 

There was a baby bunny wriggling and squinting and squirming not four inches below the surface.  We came closer and no, not just one.  Three, four baby rabbits, maybe more. 

To her credit, Sterling took it much better than I.  It horrified me a little.  But she asked quietly what we should do, and then, not waiting for a reply, began gently covering them back over.  We placed the pulled up verbena over the space and hoped for the best. 

It is a myth, I found out, that mother rabbits will not return to their babies if they sense human involvement.  Friends reassured me they would be fine.  My sister and brother-in-law have a rabbit maternity ward in their backyard, with rabbits routinely giving birth close to their house, and they watch the mothers feed their babies, toss them out of the little burrow to clean the nest, then toss them back in again.  

But still, I was afraid to check on my little boarders.  I just couldn’t do it. 

So, I was happy to see the hopping little thing hide in my hostas.  Later, I screwed up my courage and checked the hole, but not before researching how long baby rabbits stay in one.  It is a short period, two weeks, or so, and that time had easily passed.  They were all gone.  So gone from the place, if I hadn’t known they had been here, I would never have known they were there.  I planted my garden phlox as I had intended weeks ago, and marveled at it all.

I have friends who grew up along side creeks and woods and country lanes, or had grandparents they visited regularly in the country.  They talk about the Gaines woods, or Anglin Falls, or “the narrows.”  Sometimes they use words like “shoals.”  They speak lovingly of mud. 

And I don’t completely get it.  I like nature, but I like it manicured, neat.  Maybe it is the fecundity of our region, all that undergrowth and dampness, everything at certain times of year just on the verge of rot.  I will hike with you, but let’s do it in the autumn, or a crisp winter day, when the path is clear, when we can see where we are headed, when the trees aren’t dripping wet for no good reason.  

I had a colleague from Colorado who came to Kentucky in her early twenties on the Greyhound bus.  She left a place of wide expanses and rocky outcroppings, slept through the prairie, and awoke with a start in Kentucky, all the green, the lushness, the closeness of our landscape.  She had the heebie-jeebies for a week. 

She soon appreciated the differences.  Out west the landscape forces us to look out.  Here, the landscape requires we look down.  Under things.  Look with specificity, find grandiosity in small wonders.  Move carefully.  Know the ways of rabbits, snakes, birds. Study bugs and bark, the fallen trees rendering back to earth.  

I try to learn from my nature-bound friends.  It is a long, long lesson.

Uncategorized

A Day at Flat Lick Falls

2 Comments

Never the most flexible person, at least I had a great sense of balance, thanks to my low center of gravity.  I was sorely tested — tested and found wanting — last weekend when I found myself crammed in a car for a little jaunt up the road to hike to a waterfall tucked away somewhere out of Berea. 

Of course I was up for it, especially after my buddy assured us that the waterfall was really just a short walk from the road, really about “from here to about there.” he said, pointing out to the curb. It’s never just “from here to there,” is it?

After driving along winding roads for half an hour, and after a great lunch at Opal’s, off the square at McKee, we arrived at Flat Lick Falls, in Jackson County.  We parked in a small meadow with ten other cars. We followed the little path disappearing into the woods, and soon we encountered a rocky and root-infested obstacle course.

To give five you an idea, here is the description taken from the website, “American Byways”:

“Flat Lick Falls is quite scenic, nestled within a narrow valley and accessible by a wild trail that involves walking across streams and down steep embankments. At the base of the 30-foot Flat Lick Falls is a small swimming hole.”

Ah, yes, the wild trail.  He forgot to mention that.

flat lick fallsBut the trail was nothing compared to the boulders and rocks we scurried down to reach the stream and waterfall. We arrived to the sounds of rushing water, kids laughing and the image of young men and women taking flying leaps off the ledge of a 30 foot cliff and disappearing from sight. Each jumper made a splash, a big one or a little one, and a cheer went up from the swimmers in the pool below. 

The waterfall rushed and sent an imperceptible mist up to cool the hot day.  We weren’t jumping of course, but there was a rocky path leading down to the swimming hole, and we took off for that.

I went  about 10 feet until it narrowed to barely a foot-width, dropping off to a craggy and certain death.  I had stumbled already a few times just getting to the falls and I spooked myself looking at that tiny ledge, and was aware that I lack the agility to catch myself if I make a misstep and I didn’t fancy spending the rest the next two hours dangling from a basket dropped by a rescue helicopter while my friends photographed it and posted it on Facebook.

My pals picked their way down the rocky path and spent a delightful hour playing in the water, walking under the falls and exploring the creek bed.  I stayed topside and flat lick falls jumperschatted with some men who have been coming to the falls since they were kids.  Older now, they weren’t tempted to jump off the cliff, although they said they did that plenty as boys. 

One guy was solid and sure when his buddies asked him if he were going to jump.

“Of course not,” he said, folding his arms like Buddha.  This didn’t keep him from egging on the others, though, especially the one fellow who spent a half hour mustering the courage to go over the side.  He over-thought it, walking to the edge, shaking his arms, walking back.  He finally threw his t-shirt into the drink so now there was nothing to do but go after it.

Which he did.

When my pals returned they told me that, really, I would have been just fine had I joined them, that even if I had fallen off that little ledge, I would only have dropped about five feet, not all the way down.  They are reassuring that way.

I wanted to have joined them, but more than that I wanted to feel like I might have been able to join them, to feel steady on my feet, strong, agile enough for such an adventure.

Because, as adventures go, it was a small one. I was happy enough on my own, a stream to wade and birdsong, but for the first time I got a glimpse of not being able to do, and I didn’t like it.  Didn’t like it at all. Perhaps I’ll take up yoga, or tai chi.  Something.  I don’t want to be sitting on a safe rock or bench while my friends are about their adventures.