Thurs., May 21st., 2020
Dear Katie and Ron,
I certainly hope that this letter finds you happy and healthy. The county next door to where we are camped had the largest number of new virus cases yesterday. That's scary.
This morning I awakened with the birds. That was just before daybreak. Pamela went into Hopkinsville about 6:30. I opened the window and laid quietly listening to the concert as the forest awakened and light began to filter through the canopy of trees. It is wonderfully cool but the humidity, typical of these eastern hills, is high. You can almost feel the air, but it is pleasant and such tranquility quickly had me at that marvelous place between sleep and awake.
The surface of the lake is like glass and I hear the occasional fishing boat go by. We are on the Kentucky Lake side of Land Between the Lakes. The two lakes, Kentucky on the west and Barkley on the east, were made from the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers. There is generally a lot of barge traffic even though they are both relatively shallow and silting in quickly. They are beautiful lakes but, unlike our crystal clear lakes in the Rockies, they are mud bottomed and so can actually appear brown in places. You know I've always said that nature will take back the land. It is definitely doing that here. Locals tell me that both lakes are shrinking. You can boat the Cumberland River past Nashville, TN and the Tennessee River down to Alabama and use the Tom Bigbee Waterway to go all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Even with the barges it is the epitomy of peace. The barges don't bother me but those loud engines must deafen the poor crew members.
We are camped on a promontory that is about a hundred feet above the lake and everything around us. The woods are thick and there's just enough room to park Mr. Spock. Even with the forest canopy above us there is enough light to run our solar panel. We can get water about five miles away but Pamela gets our drinking water in Hopkinsville which is about forty miles away. We could probably buy water at a store ten miles up the road, but she had to go into town anyway. We still don't drink from the holding tank even though we just cleaned it with clorox the other day. No matter how clean you keep it, a holding tank starts tasting bad sooner or later, and Mr. Spock is now twenty-four years old. Roadtreks are really rare around here, so we always get the looks.
This is a wonderfully beautiful place. The forest is so different from back home in Montana but I grew up in Pennsylvania in mountains like this. They bring back great memories. Instead a soft layer of needles covering the forest floor like we have in the Rockies, there are leaves. They make noise as you walk through them but the deer still bound away without a sound. The deer are quite skittish here. We figure that it's because hunting is allowed. The trees are almost all disceduous. Around us we have mostly hickory, oak, sweetgum, with some elm and hackberry. When you see an evergreen you really notice. Actually about the only everygreens here are white pine which the CCC planted during the Great Depression. It is not uncommon to be driving down one of these one-lane dirt trails and suddenly see a line of four or five white pine. You know who's been there. The understory is quite lush from the humidity and heavy leaf compost. The spring bloom doesn't quite match a Sonoran Desert super-bloom but it does have its own magnificance. It reminds me that life is everywhere. Just like we see in the desert, beautiful plants and flowers growing from what appears to be solid rock are all along the flooding streams.
We go out and drive through the forest whenever possible. The "roads" are dirt trails which were graveled at some point in the past. We spend most of our time in four-wheel drive fording flooded creeks and climbing rocky hillsides. That's where we find some of the most spectacular follage. We had to stop to see if it was safe to try to cross a creek when we spotted some Cardinal flowers growing out of the rocky creek wall just above the flood water. They were magnificent in their color, simplicity and delicacy. Well, they look delicate, but they must be quite hearty to survive where they obviously thrive.
There are lots of deer, turkey, bison and elk here. Yes, bison. Bison were still here when the white man invaded. In fact, the state flag of Indiana has a bison on it. I wonder if they are the forest bison like we encountered in the Yukon last summer. This is a large area for the east but their range is still quite constricted. People here have no idea of space. What feels to them to be spacious is really quite contained to those of us from the west. Our county in Montana; Flathead; is bigger than the twelve counties around us here in western Kentucky. To make it even more congested, one town here has more people than our entire Flathead, Montana county. In fact, Nashville, TN., just down the road, has almost as many people as the entire State of Montana. Montana is made for social distancing.
A ranger told us that they actually sell bison here because the herds are doing so well but there's no place for them to expand. We have heard stories about bear and mountain lions moving back in. We haven't seen any signs of either, but you know how they can be practically standing next to you and you don't know it.
We miss being back in Montana. Normally we would have been opening campgrounds three weeks ago. The national park may not open at all this year. If we had not come east to see our family we would most likely be hunkering down to ride out this pandemic with you in the high desert. Since we're always back in Montana by May we have no experience of summer in the desert; even the high desert. We hope you are doing well. The only thing I worry about is your getting water. Are the water kiosks open?
Well, I need to be going. Max is telling me that it is almost 8:00 and time to go out, so I'd better get with the program. Keep safe and healthy. Drop us a note when you can. We hope to see you soon, but things are strictly day by day with the pandemic. Pamela sends her love.
With love,
Russ
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