To read a related article that led to the writing of this post, please click here.
~Laurell K. Hamilton~
The day after New Year's I awoke with a yearning to explore the barren coppice that occupied the non managed side of Bishoff Hill. I do not know where it is within me that this thirst to discover the unexplored resides, but no matter where I end up I seem to continue to be drawn to the somewhat charted depths of famous whitewater expanses. Beyond Bishoff Hill, known as "The Knob" by the locals of the valley, lay endless tracks of woodland within a steep slope drawing quickly towards a world class section of whitewater. Most logical individuals would simply look at a map and respond with, "dude, there is nothing out there. Let's go eat and talk about safety or something."................hence the reason I usually partake in these exploits alone. On this day however, I was lucky enough to have a trail mate, one whom took very little convincing to follow me on a pointless journey that would feed the everlasting hunger of The Epic Worthlessness That is Man.
The forest has always delivered peace of mind. There is no more tranquil or harmonious setting than a quiet walk through a serene, wooded environment. Cold winter days with a snow covered ground bequeath unbroken stillness, while cool springs exemplify life and movement.
I love the forest, and on this day I was able to share the experience with someone that I knew would truly value the setting as much as myself. Marcie Ann is a born and bread country girl, and her toughness in the natural elements and love for the outdoors has been a welcome enhancement to my Dirt Bag adventures. I have spent so many days walking alone in the woods over the past three years that I had almost forgotten the soothing companionship that company in the forest can deliver. Together, she and I would explore the mysteries that lay beyond The Knob.
"We are part of nature. We are born in nature; our bodies are formed of nature; we live by the rules of nature. As individuals, we are citizens of the natural world; as societies we are bound by the resources of our environment; as a species, our survival depends on an ecological balance with nature. Yet as individuals, societies, and a species we spend our lives trying to escape from nature. We separate ourselves from the natural environment with clothes, cars, houses and shopping malls. We build roads and cities to make for a comfortable lifestyle. Indeed we live our lives as though the natural world was something abhorrent – something that needs to be tamed and controlled."
The forest has always delivered peace of mind. There is no more tranquil or harmonious setting than a quiet walk through a serene, wooded environment. Cold winter days with a snow covered ground bequeath unbroken stillness, while cool springs exemplify life and movement.
I love the forest, and on this day I was able to share the experience with someone that I knew would truly value the setting as much as myself. Marcie Ann is a born and bread country girl, and her toughness in the natural elements and love for the outdoors has been a welcome enhancement to my Dirt Bag adventures. I have spent so many days walking alone in the woods over the past three years that I had almost forgotten the soothing companionship that company in the forest can deliver. Together, she and I would explore the mysteries that lay beyond The Knob.
"We are part of nature. We are born in nature; our bodies are formed of nature; we live by the rules of nature. As individuals, we are citizens of the natural world; as societies we are bound by the resources of our environment; as a species, our survival depends on an ecological balance with nature. Yet as individuals, societies, and a species we spend our lives trying to escape from nature. We separate ourselves from the natural environment with clothes, cars, houses and shopping malls. We build roads and cities to make for a comfortable lifestyle. Indeed we live our lives as though the natural world was something abhorrent – something that needs to be tamed and controlled."
~Anonymous~
After carefully reviewing the map I came to a couple of basic conclusions about our adventure. First, Gap Run was an easy entry point into the mouth of the gorge. And second, there was no need for a map. I have found this to be a reoccurring pattern within my Dirt Bag exploits, and I am somewhat heartbroken that it is the case. There are very few rivahs on the eastern seaboard left in which a man can become lost in the wild. There are very few forests left in which a map is necessary. And there are very few places left to fall off the grid. Chris McCandless understood how difficult this goal would be to conquer. He traveled to the ends of Alaska simply to lose touch and break away, and that adventure happened 20 years ago. And just like McCandless, many natives of Western Maryland have spent decades exploring these desolate mountains and gorges to do just that.............break away. Many generations have probed these forests and rivahs over the years, and all felt the indulgence of becoming lost in the wild. As boaters, we value the inviolability that the Upper Yough and other rivah gorges provide. Paddling into Class IV and V waterways administers a feeling of disconnect. They allow us to elude the modern day rush of life, and they warrant the calm, slow pace of Rivah Time. They allow us to simply break away.
I worry that we will be the last generation to experience this kind of disconnect from society. I fear that Marlow and Quint may never have the option to become lost in the wild, because they may lack the wilderness or the right to do so. I postulate that our generation may be the last to fully experience both sides of our society...............the old and the new. We live in a rapidly changing world, and I prefer the view from the outside looking in; but that perspective comes at a price, and my acumen of the modern world is attenuating quickly.
"Though men now possess the power to dominate and exploit every corner of the natural world, nothing in that fact implies that they have the right or the need to do so."
I worry that we will be the last generation to experience this kind of disconnect from society. I fear that Marlow and Quint may never have the option to become lost in the wild, because they may lack the wilderness or the right to do so. I postulate that our generation may be the last to fully experience both sides of our society...............the old and the new. We live in a rapidly changing world, and I prefer the view from the outside looking in; but that perspective comes at a price, and my acumen of the modern world is attenuating quickly.
"Though men now possess the power to dominate and exploit every corner of the natural world, nothing in that fact implies that they have the right or the need to do so."
~Edward Abbey~
Marcie and I embarked on our afternoon undertaking by simply walking out of her front door and turning left. We were quickly greeted by a dense forest with a meandering crick trickling over granite and sandstone boulders as it turned sharply right and entered the plains of the Gap Run valley. Hurricane Sandy devastated the entire Garrett County area in the Fall of 2012. Most of the damage caused by the storm was a result of thirty inches of wet snow befalling the area early enough in the season to catch a majority of trees with lingering foliage. The weight of the wet snow collected by the foliage, followed by the tailing winds of the storm, was a lethal combination resulting in trees falling like tumbling toothpicks. Much of this timber fell into the cricks and streams of the area, making many of them unrunnable to this day. The event was considered a weather anomaly that only takes place once every 150 years. Unfortunately weather anomalies that produce falling wood are usually a major hindrance to the cricking communities of whitewater. The only way to rectify the situation is by illegally chainsawing the wood out of the waterways (which requires an immense amount of effort) or by allowing Mother Nature to flush out her veins over time.
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| The beginning of Gap Run, with Hurricane Sandy damage visible downstream |
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| Marcie climbing through downed trees in the Gap Run drainage |
Marcie and I quickly established a route after peering further into the top of the crick and realizing Hurricane Sandy had left quite a mark on the stream. We decided to hike up and over the bottom of Bishoff Hill and re-enter the Gap Run drainage once it spilled into the pasture lands on the far side of the hill. Our first goal of the day was to reach the farms sugar camp, somewhere along the banks of the crick. We had estimated that the camp lay half a mile into Gap Run, which turned out to be a huge miscalculation. My conclusions after hiking the valley is that the stream enters the rivah a half mile from Bishoff Road, and the sugar camp was located somewhere in the section of crick we hiked around. At the end of the day, we failed to ever locate the Bishoff Farm Sugar Camp.
The camp had produced maple syrup for decades until 1992. Marcie's great uncle showed pictures of the operation from the ole school days, as well as explaining to me the process of making quality maple syrup. In the beginning a spile was utilized to extract the sap out of the tree into a large jar before it was transferred to an oven to be boiled. The key to the process was to not allow the sap to sit out before it was heated up to a slow boil. Over time, a drainage system was utilized to allow the sap to drain directly into the boil rooms, expediting the process while minimizing the effort. I hesitate to dive into the topic of the sugar camp to deeply, for fear of not communicating accurate information. It is a topic that I would like to explore further in a later edition of The Island Chronicles, once I have researched the information properly.
Once Marcie and I had climbed the short distance of the bottom of Bishoff Hill, the pasture lands opened up. We followed the tree line of the field for a small distance and admired the beauty of the farm.
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| The view from the edge of the pasture. That hill is bigger than it looks. |
The walk provided a beautiful landscape full of interesting discoveries. First, we stumbled upon the farms mechanical graveyard. 75 years of broken down farm trucks, tractors, combines, and every other conceivable example of the history of automobiles was present, quietly resting in the shade under a grove of trees.
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| Ole School |
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| Dead Bug |
We continued over the hill and then descended towards the Gap Run Valley, most likely bypassing the sugar camp. Once the pasture leveled off into patchy groves, we slowly began to encounter, one by one, the true keepers of the land and permanent residents of the farm...........the milk cows.
Three years of Dirt Bag adventures have allowed a history to develop between myself and farm animals. For some reason, just like the depths of whitewater expanses, farm animals continue to surface at different times in my life. In 2014 alone, I engaged in a fist fight with a flock of retarded chickens, walked a goat home from a gas station, and miserably failed to ride a bull that we encountered standing in the road in the middle of nowhere West By God. It's remarkably strange in my opinion, but then again, so is a majority of my life.
My vast experience with the barnyard animal kingdom has given me somewhat of a distended ego when it comes to encountering the wildlife of the farm. I feel that since my experiences on The Island I am now one with nature, and all animals sense an energy within my presence. (Haha! This is some quality safety meeting literature right here) Because of this, I have a Crocodile Dundee type of hora with animals, and can hypnotize and comfort them when they are within my presence.
I decided to unleash my natural powers on the Bishoff dairy cows and impress Marcie.............let's just say it did not work out as I had hoped. The cows responded by running away from me, unleashing giant piles of steamy fecal matter, and staring at me blankly as if I were crazy. Apparently Island magic wasn't present on this day...........or perhaps I have misjudged my abilities with the farm animals.
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| One pissed off cow under a tree limb, with Gap Run in the background |
Following my failed attempt to impress Marcie with my Dirt Bag barnyard powers, we quietly meandered through the lazily grazing dairy cows and continued on-wards, towards the valley floor and the meandering stream. The landscape quickly turned from hillside pasture land, to evergreen forest, and then to an open expanse full of dormant milkweed and annoying weeds. Marcie and I traversed close to the banks in order to avoid the thickets of dry milkweed, slowly working down the valley where the mountains tightened and the stream cut into the crust of the Upper Yough gorge.
At the end of the valley we reentered the wooded confines of an evergreen forest as the mountains closed in around us. Bush pushing through the Western Maryland Highlands is exhausting, and Marcie kept up every step of the way. She continues to impress me with her well managed balance of feminine appeal and down home country girl toughness. The forest opened the valley floor up to an environment of leaves and boulders, the perfect spot for a safety break.
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| Marcie Ann laxin' in the woods |
After a short rest and my own personal safety discussion, we continued into the depths of the falling stream. However, the gradient was very light as we turned the corner of the gorge towards the openness of the Upper Yough. A waterfall entered from the rivah right bank, and then the crick straightened out, allowing a view downstream. It was then that I realized we were less than 100 yards from the Upper Yough and Gap Run was ending without ever yielding a steep, bedrock gorge. I took a minute to evaluate the geology of the crick, before quickly realizing why a whitewater section of Gap Run did not exist. The answer is simple..............it empties into the rivah above the UY gorge. The Gap Run valley is flat pasture land because no gradient exists yet due to the fact that the Upper Yough has not begun to cut into the crust of the plateau. In order for the stream to have a steep decline, it would need to cut into the rivah downstream of the mouth of the gorge. The interesting mystery that does remain however, is that one mile above the confluence of Gap Run and the Upper Yough, on the opposite side of the rivah, a Class III-IV steep crick does exist by the name of Salt Block Run. This crick drains off the northern side of Piney Mountain. Why does this waterway yield a section of whitewater, seeing that it is above the gorge, while Gap Run does not?...................these are the pointless thoughts that ramble around in the mind of a boater. I am pretty sure that I understand the answer to my own question, but I am not a geologist and will refrain from explaining my theory here.
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| The confluence of Gap Run and the Upper Yough |
Marcie and I lounged on the safety rock at the confluence, tranquilly melting into the escape of rivah time, and enjoying the simple satisfaction of sitting on her banks and watching the water pass by. I cannot explain why a rivah is so mesmerizing..............it simply is.
"Wild rivers are earth's renegades, defying gravity, dancing to their own tunes, resisting the authority of humans, always chipping away, and eventually always winning."
~Richard Bangs & Christian Kallen, River Gods~
After an extended afternoon affair with the serenity of the rivah, Marcie and I reassessed our position, and contrived a new plan to find our way home. Neither of us were invested in the idea of traveling back up Gap Run and fighting the fallen victims of Hurricane Sandy, so we decided to traverse the stream and climb the steep ascent on the rivah right side of the waterway. This decision brought us to the borderlands of the Upper Yough Forest and the vast wilderness created by the gorge. Once we rose a few hundred feet, we stumbled upon a four wheeler path that may have once been a logging road. I quickly identified this as the point I would need to locate in order to access the deeper reaches of the gorge, hopefully by four wheeler. We continued to climb up the path, before topping out on the ridge line that separated the Upper Yough gorge from the Gap Run valley. Marcie toughened it out the entire way, as we continued to ascend straight up the ridge, creeping up the backside of Bishoff Hill. The mouth of the UY sits at approximately 2000 feet, while the top of Bishoff Hill sits at 2750 feet. We crossed over two ridge lines during the climb and then were forced to descend down into a small crick valley on both occasions. Due to this, we climbed a total of 1300 feet in a little over a mile and a half. During the climb we encountered a large tract of selectively cut logging, and a small abandoned trailer in a field. Marcie and I both followed our instincts and did not attempt to approach the Deliverance style dwelling, fearing that we may be shot, kidnapped, or forced to squeal like a pig. Once we reached the higher area of Bishoff Hill, we were able to observe the entire pathway that we had traversed throughout the afternoon. We were both exhausted upon reaching the upper levels of Bishoff Hill, but were rewarded with another perfect sunset over the Piney Mountain horizon.
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| Mother Nature rewarding us for our efforts |
Marcie and I did lose our bearings a few times once we topped out onto the flatter forest plains of Elder Hill, but we eventually worked our way further south through what felt like endless forest before beginning to slowly witness signs of grazing cattle and the outskirts of the farm. Eventually the forest began to thin out, abandoned logging roads became actively used four wheeler and tractor trails, and the backside of Bishoff Farm came into view. Marcie and I crossed over the top of Bishoff Hill before descending down the tractor artery and then back home. On the way, we passed by Marcie's Uncle, who was busy chopping wood. He seemed very surprised to see us emerging out of the forest from the direction we had come. We explained to him where we had been, and he responded that he had never traveled that deep into the forest. Our afternoon adventure was complete, and the hunger of The Epic Worthlessness That Is Man had been fed for one more day.
“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”
~John Muir~
As a fellow boater and writer within the whitewater community, I consider this to be an important story to record in the annuals of The Island Chronicles.................why? For many years my own focus about the sport that I cherish above all else was very one dimensional. Take out, Put in, Rivah, Whitewater, gnar, repeat. The paddling world has become obsessed with showcasing themselves within the social community that has developed in order to gain an acceptance that in the end doesn't truly exist. Our community is driven by cheap, self absorbed competition amongst one another. Many times I observe groups from the younger generation of paddling both on the rivah and in the social aspects of whitewater, and I am extremely disappointed about their reasoning for an involvement with the sport................to run big shit and then be seen by others doing it. This is a very shallow existence and an insult to our sport. I have stated it in the past, and I will state it here again................
".....you owe more than that to the sport we all love. What we do is beautiful in more ways than just one. Go out there and find your own way to harness and capture that beauty. Go find a way to inspire the world outside of your own close minded circle of following bootlickers."
~excerpt from "The Bigger the Whitewater, the more Shallow We Become"~
Rivahs throughout the communities and towns of the Eastern Seaboard withhold many secrets that can only be investigated when we let go of the fraudulent emulation that exists on the surface of the boating populace...............history, geology, exploration, art, personalities, the local community, story telling, science, literature, hydrology, topography, photography and much more. These are the avenues that the boating community should be pursuing in order to gain a deeper aspect of our sport, and a small and slowly growing population of boaters are doing exactly that. We can't all be Pat Keller, but the fact is, a majority of the paddling population believes they can. Go Pro and Facecrack certainly don't help the situation.........they simply feed the ego's of those who live within this delusion, and in the past year I have met MANY paddlers who are existing in these fantasies. I have run the Narrows, Great Falls, the Upper Gauley, the Meadow, Mill Crick, the Upper Yough (no one gives a shit that you run the Upper Yough) and many more rivahs and cricks that I am proud to knock off my list. But these are not the aspects of my paddling career that I hope will define me. These are simply rivahs that I have the skill, knowledge, and will to paddle. I believe that we were given these skills and the gift of this sport to explore deeper into what exists beyond the surface of the land, the rivahs, the communities, and the gnar of the rapids. Paddlers are intelligent and educated people. We have the ability to do more with our lifestyle than simply strap a Go Pro on our helmet, edit the footage to some Dubstep, and throw it up on Facecrack with the superficial message of "look at me, look at me!" attached to the post. Fact is, our sport deserves so much more.................from all of us.
I am lucky to have met Marcie for MANY reasons...........but from the standpoint of boating, I feel as though I have been given a rare opportunity to decrease the broad divide that is prevalent between paddlers and locals in many whitewater communities. Bishoff Farm existed long before there was a bustling paddling community darting around the land. The family of that farm have a story to tell; about the land, the rivah, the history of the gorge, and about their own family and how the community developed around them. As boaters, we should want to hear those stories, so we can become richer in our knowledge of the Upper Yough area, and so we can exist as more respectful, genuine, and profoundly passionate human beings................and that is the simple TRUTH.
"The value of history is, indeed, not scientific but moral: by liberalizing the mind, by deepening the sympathies, by fortifying the will, it enables us to control, not society, but ourselves -- a much more important thing; it prepares us to live more humanely in the present and to meet rather than to foretell the future."
~Carl Becker~
As a fellow boater and writer within the whitewater community, I consider this to be an important story to record in the annuals of The Island Chronicles.................why? For many years my own focus about the sport that I cherish above all else was very one dimensional. Take out, Put in, Rivah, Whitewater, gnar, repeat. The paddling world has become obsessed with showcasing themselves within the social community that has developed in order to gain an acceptance that in the end doesn't truly exist. Our community is driven by cheap, self absorbed competition amongst one another. Many times I observe groups from the younger generation of paddling both on the rivah and in the social aspects of whitewater, and I am extremely disappointed about their reasoning for an involvement with the sport................to run big shit and then be seen by others doing it. This is a very shallow existence and an insult to our sport. I have stated it in the past, and I will state it here again................
".....you owe more than that to the sport we all love. What we do is beautiful in more ways than just one. Go out there and find your own way to harness and capture that beauty. Go find a way to inspire the world outside of your own close minded circle of following bootlickers."
~excerpt from "The Bigger the Whitewater, the more Shallow We Become"~
Rivahs throughout the communities and towns of the Eastern Seaboard withhold many secrets that can only be investigated when we let go of the fraudulent emulation that exists on the surface of the boating populace...............history, geology, exploration, art, personalities, the local community, story telling, science, literature, hydrology, topography, photography and much more. These are the avenues that the boating community should be pursuing in order to gain a deeper aspect of our sport, and a small and slowly growing population of boaters are doing exactly that. We can't all be Pat Keller, but the fact is, a majority of the paddling population believes they can. Go Pro and Facecrack certainly don't help the situation.........they simply feed the ego's of those who live within this delusion, and in the past year I have met MANY paddlers who are existing in these fantasies. I have run the Narrows, Great Falls, the Upper Gauley, the Meadow, Mill Crick, the Upper Yough (no one gives a shit that you run the Upper Yough) and many more rivahs and cricks that I am proud to knock off my list. But these are not the aspects of my paddling career that I hope will define me. These are simply rivahs that I have the skill, knowledge, and will to paddle. I believe that we were given these skills and the gift of this sport to explore deeper into what exists beyond the surface of the land, the rivahs, the communities, and the gnar of the rapids. Paddlers are intelligent and educated people. We have the ability to do more with our lifestyle than simply strap a Go Pro on our helmet, edit the footage to some Dubstep, and throw it up on Facecrack with the superficial message of "look at me, look at me!" attached to the post. Fact is, our sport deserves so much more.................from all of us.
I am lucky to have met Marcie for MANY reasons...........but from the standpoint of boating, I feel as though I have been given a rare opportunity to decrease the broad divide that is prevalent between paddlers and locals in many whitewater communities. Bishoff Farm existed long before there was a bustling paddling community darting around the land. The family of that farm have a story to tell; about the land, the rivah, the history of the gorge, and about their own family and how the community developed around them. As boaters, we should want to hear those stories, so we can become richer in our knowledge of the Upper Yough area, and so we can exist as more respectful, genuine, and profoundly passionate human beings................and that is the simple TRUTH.
"The value of history is, indeed, not scientific but moral: by liberalizing the mind, by deepening the sympathies, by fortifying the will, it enables us to control, not society, but ourselves -- a much more important thing; it prepares us to live more humanely in the present and to meet rather than to foretell the future."
~Carl Becker~
See ya on the rivah..................enriching my mind through the history that surrounds us all. PEACE
For a complete guide to all the short stories of The IC, please click here on The Table of Contents.
For a complete guide to all the short stories of The IC, please click here on The Table of Contents.
