Date: 2009-05-21
From: Laurel Bloomery, TN

To: Dennis Cove, TN
Miles today: 5.5

Riding the Magic BusEarly on the morning after we arrived at Max's Farm, I awoke to the sound of a cord being dragged along the wall. Half asleep, being about 6 in the morning, I stumbled off the couch to figure out what it was, when I saw the radio start to scoot along the counter and figured out it had something to do with the antenna cord. Getting up to catch the local hooligans Max referred to the night before, I looked out the small window behind the wood stove to see a giant horse staring back at me, who turned back to the task of untangling his foot from the wire. I walked over to the front door and opened it to find a calf on the porch staring up at me. when I poked my head further out the door I saw 3 donkeys on the other side of the railing, giving me a startled look, as if they weren't expecting anyone to be home. So I reacted just as I'm sure anyone would have - I grabbed my camera and sandals and walked outside in my underwear to survey the situation. I found we were surrounded by a herd of cattle on all sides of the cabin, including many young calves. After taking a few pictures, I walked up the hill after the horse and held out my hand to see if she would come to me. She did, so I stood there and petted her for a while. Since it was such a beautiful morning and such an amazing sight, I felt I had to share it with someone. I went back to the cabin to wake up Liz and Einstein. Unfortunately, just as soon as they came out, something on the ridge spooked the cattle and the herd, donkeys and all, stampeded up the hill to the bald. Max later said it was likely a coyote. All the excitement being over, I crawled back onto the Pizza Tape Couch and went back to sleep. Around 10 in the morning, Max returned with a thermos of coffee and offered to let us stay another day. We took him up on it. He also brought us a half dozen peanut butter, honey and cinnamon sandwiches - which he said would cure whatever ailed us. He said he'd stop by later and take us into town if we wanted. We spent most of the day exploring the property, following the stream up the mountain to find its source. Along the way we came across a round concrete trough that was fed from a spring up the mountain. The water was perfectly still and clear, so we refilled our water bags and took turns dipping our heads into the trough. After dipping our heads we decided to hike back to the cabin and wait for Max to return. On the way we came across the herd again and coaxed the horse and donkeys into letting us pet them. The donkeys were more skittish, but we were able to pet two of them. Max told us he keeps them around to ward off the coyotes, which would explain why they never took their eyes off Einstein. After playing around some more, we went back to the cabin, made dinner, played a game called Cosmic Wimpout (that The Phlo and Graveyard had been carrying with them), and eventually went back to the Magic Bus to look at the stars, which were stupendous. Finally we retired for the night, wondering why Max never returned. Sometime around 2:30 in the morning, Max showed up, walked into the cabin and just started talking away as if we had all been sitting up waiting for him. We hadn't, and in fact had all been sound asleep. I never fully woke up, so I'm not completely sure what he had been talking about, but I do remember him asking us if we wanted biscuits and gravy for breakfast. I remember saying that would be great, and he soon left. We all woke up enough to chuckle a bit about what just happened, then promptly fell right back asleep. The next morning Max returned and, as promised, had a couple of plates of biscuits, a basket of fresh eggs and all the fixin's for sausage gravy - except for milk, for which he promptly ran back to the house to retrieve along with a thermos of coffee. He had also brought some more honey/cinnamon butter and molasses, which we ate on half of the biscuits while waiting for him to return. The biscuits hadn't turned out quite like he planned. They were flat, heavy and chewy - for which he apologized for. But we thought they were delicious and wished we had a few dozen to take back on the trail with us. At the very least they would have been good to throw at the bears to scare them away. Max said it was actually the second batch. He was too embarrassed to bring the first batch, but "they couldn't have been all bad," he said, "cause the dog and pigs fought over them." Max had also brought his friend Don along with him, who was nice to finally meet - because he was a nice guy, of course, but also because so many of Max's stories began with him drinking with either Don or his brother-in-law (or both) and frequently seemed to end up with Don bailing Max out of jail. Max also apologized for coming by the cabin so late the night before, and explained that he had been at the hospital until 2 in the morning with a friend that had rolled his tractor. Apparently, with so many farms around there on steep hills, its not an uncommon occurrence and too often a fatal one. He said his friend was going to make it, but lost a few fingers and crushed his leg in the ordeal. As a result, Max had a lot of work to catch up on and asked if we minded waiting another day to get back on the trail.In addition to rolling tractors, another danger of the farms in the mountains was cows tipping over. Max explained that if a cow falls uphill, with its feet facing downhill, they can get right back up. But if they fall the other way, with their feet uphill, they will just keep trying to stand back up on the uphill side and won't be able to. Occasionally max has found some cows like that and just rolls them over the other way so they can stand up. But if no one gets to them in the first 20-30 minutes, their internal organs quit working and they die rather quickly. He had lost several cows that way in the previous year. Some cows and horses, although not many, wander up to the top of the mountain and head over the other side. Often he gets a call asking if he lost an animal and gets it back, but he has also lost some cows that way as well.We spent another gorgeous day exploring the farm and riding the Magic Bus. An odd feature about the ridge we were on was all the bees on the one side of the mountain. They were only out during the day, and set the whole field buzzing to the point that it was all you could hear. They lived in small mud holes in the ground and didn't bother us as we waked through them, or seem to get upset as we stepped on their little mud homes. Einstein had a great time on the farm and we did our best to wear him out. This was easy because we could stand on the ridge, throw a stick a hundred feet down the hill, and wait for him to bring it all the way back up. The farm also had a few ponds and streams he got to swim in. So by that evening he was ready to collapse and so were we - which is what we did after watching one of the most beautiful sunsets ever from the Magic Bus and sticking around until the sky slowly turned into a sea of stars. On the last morning we spent at Max's farm we had a tough decision to make: stay another day and possibly through Memorial Day weekend as Max had suggested; go to Damascus and hike north into Virginia; go back to Erwin where Dizzy Bat and I had gotten off the trail, or; go back to Hampton where Graveyard and The Phlo had gotten off the trail. We put all the choices on slips of paper and put them into a hat we found in the cabin, which we named the Magic Hat, and pulled out Hampton. So, when Max showed up that morning and suggested we stay through Memorial Day weekend we told him that the Magic Hat had spoken. He told us (with his trademark grin) that he had finished calling all of our families, and the ransoms had been paid, so he would be happy to take us back to the trail. We mentioned we needed to stop by a grocery store to resupply, and asked if he knew a place we could get showers, at which point he offered to stop by his house to let us shower then take us all the way to Hampton (nearly an hour away) instead of just Mountain City. We went to Max's house and played with his dog and pot belly pigs, and each took turns in the shower. He also gave us a tour of his house and showed us all of his mounted animals, which had all been road kill at one point. He explained that he didn't enjoy killing animals just for the sake of killing, so the only animals he mounted were those he found dead on the road. Unfortunately his wife was at work. We had really wanted to meet her. Max drove us to the grocery in Mountain City, then on to Hampton, and even drove us up a winding forest road to the trail head. It was there that we bid farewell to one of the nicest, most generous, and most interesting people we had ever met. He invited us to come back and stay at his place during Trail Days next year, and we said a fond goodbye. The trail head in Hampton is at a place called Dennis Cove, and sits halfway in between the Kincora Hostel about a half mile to the east and the Laurel Fork Lodge about a half mile to the west. After setting up camp, we walked down to both of them to see what fellow hikers might be there. We found Scree Freak, Heather, Nano, Walking Home, Carolina, and a few others we had met along the way, laid up at Kincora. Many of them had gotten sick along the trail and were there recovering. We also met an Iranian American, with the trail name Farsee (or Farsea, depending on the day). We had a great conversation and I looked forward to meeting him again. At Laurel Fork Lodge no one was awake, and the bunk room was empty, so we just signed the register and headed back to our camp where we roasted some hot dogs and retired for the evening, happy to be back on the trail.