Across the Cumberland Gap

“Across the Cumberland Gap.”

The fall leaves brought forth their majesty, all around the hollows of this changing border town. The winds swept through the clean mountain air, plucking out, one by one, the mustardy-red leaves which annually signaled change. The air was crisp, the farmhouses stood tall.

Facing north were the hills. Facing north always brought change, strange sounding people who suddenly called this county theirs. Most of them were kind enough. Facing south was the Dan River and just beyond that the border to North Carolina where he always remembered daddy and granddaddy telling the story of the Guilford Court house and how the Americans fled north from the British into this part of Virginia and how they hid them in their farms. Daddy was born right during the Revolutionary War in Virginia in 1777.

It was the perfect time to be a boy. The land was bountiful; young Wiley was just learning to hunt and fish on his own and the spirit of adventure was carried through the land from voice to voice, telling of raucous adventures and adventurous men. Even at the chirpy age of 11, family life took precedence. Young Wiley had 7 brothers and 4 sisters and he was the third youngest of the whole lot. His halcyon days were about to come to a close with the ending of one adventure and the writing of another.

He must have never wanted to see that church again, dark and decorated in black, the ebbs and flows of sorrow and sobs echoing off the clapboard exterior, resounding like the tumble of water back in the creeks which he so admired. As if by God’s own timing, the leaves seemed to listen to the water as they loftily floated past the air on their way down to the cool, sustaining water which rumbled and tumbled with a gentle persistence. It must have been God’s own timing bringing his lofty father down into the grave. The wails continued, silently restrained. It was the high side of a man.

Momma and oldest brother decided on things, he had no say in this matter. They were going west across the Cumberland Gap! The remnants of his home would now only exist in stories morphed by time and memory, pieces of an ever-evolving puzzle that would become the adventurous life of young Wiley. As the stories of farm and forest were punctuated by those of the Guilford Court House, so would new stories be carved into a new landscape of irrepressible need. It was this “divide” that scared him, the only way to traverse this “divide” was through a slough called the Cumberland Gap, for it separated east and west, civilized and uncivilized.

Led by oldest brother, the rest of the brood of 12 watched over their Momma with care and adulation. The family set out in a covered wagon. Rolling along, the long, spindly pieces of wood splayed out in regular intervals, capped by a metal retainer that amazed and mesmerized the mind of young Wiley. It’s cylindrical rhythm, truncated by bumps and lurches, was a focused distraction to the monotony of this long trek. Of course, there were his siblings and the banter they had always enjoyed. Discussion ranged with the spectrum of their ages, he was glad for his older brothers and sisters. He was also fond of his Momma, whose family had also come from “east Virginny” like his fathers before him.

Approaching the grand hills, they must have recounted the opening of this territory under the guise and legend of Daniel Boone. They must have told stories of Lewis & Clark and of the Indian savagery that might await them. Daniel Boone headed northwest at the pass, however they were traversing south! From the western jumping off point of their beloved and storied Virginia, they were going to head south along the Tennessee River entering into the northwestern corner of Tennessee. They might not have fully realized it yet, but their journey would take them over 500 miles.

Young Wiley was up for the challenge. This adventure would be a prescient forging of his character and will. Pushing ever forward, he felt a tingle of amazement as he beheld the tree line which ensconced the pass up ahead. Great and foreboding, this “gap” was nothing more than a funnel where a crinkled and corrugated landscape culminated in a small, narrow, treacherous stretch barely a wagon-width wide. At least that’s how young Wiley had built it up in his mind. The denouement of his crossing was rife for some celebration.

The year was 1835. The strange mists and hazy mountains must have been spellbinding to a young man. To older brother at the lead of the expedition, these features must have been viewed more pragmatically. The blue-tinged sky, the mass of rich and puzzle-like waterways folded onto by lush, rolling hills was nature’s salve to a physically demanding trek. One’s tears and emotions needed to be silently restrained, it was the high side of a man.

Crossing the Cumberland Gap did relegate the mountains to a successful crossing; however, it did not relegate them entirely under foot. The mountains, ever faithfully, led them from the western corner of Virginia into the heart of east Tennessee. Known to be a transverse section of the state it was the home to many brave and fortified people, some of whom came from the north, some from the south and some, like young Wiley’s family, from the eastern shore of Virginia. It was central Tennessee, not the eastern swathe, that was their final destination some 500 miles later.

Humble and erudite, the people of Bedford County, Tennessee were primarily farmers. Young Wiley, his momma, oldest brother and the remaining 10 siblings, had successfully ventured from their great and beloved Virginia to this new county and state named for its great, life-giving river system. They were also farmers and took root around their new neighbors who were families, counties, and states.

The fall leaves in this new home must have brought a smile to young Wiley in the still of some incandescent moment as he reflected back to the patterns of the trees, waterways and soil of his birth state. There already was a familiarity surrounding his new home, a repeated if not transplanted pattern that welled up within him a rising strength of character and impending sense of duty to his family and fortunes.

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