That Awkward Moment When You Accidentally Stumble Upon the Amish

From South Carolina, Ryan and I ventured westward again to the Cumberland Gap National Historic Site.

Now first things first, what’s a gap? It took me a while to understand that a gap is exactly what you would expect, a gap, but a gap in the mountains, or what we in Colorado would call a pass. This is significant because without the discovery of these gaps, westward expansion over the Appalachian Mountains would have been incredibly more difficult, and Manifest Destiny might have been given the middle finger by Mother Nature. But thankfully people like Daniel Boone discovered an “easy” way through the mountains by means of gaps like the Cumberland.

It was actually quite fascinating understanding the history of the area. Boone discovered the Cumberland Gap, and led the way west for so many pilgrims into the fertile valleys of Virginia and Kentucky. Lewis and Clark used the gap to head west to St. Louis before starting their epic exploration of the Louisiana Purchase, and so it’s clear that the area is worthy of a historical monument. For Ryan and me, why use the gap when you can just go straight uphill to the ridgeline?

It was a backpacking trip, just a one-nighter, but nonetheless we had to find the trail with a gain of about 2000 vertical feet so we could eat our calories that night with a clear conscience. It was also the most direct route to our lodging for the night, a little log cabin built a good hundred years ago by some guy named Martin.

It seemed like a fun idea when I made the reservation, and we’re still happy we had the opportunity to mix up our camping routine, but let me tell you, there is no place creepier to spend the night than an old cabin in the middle of the woods.

First of all, it’s not like the cabin had electricity, so the only light in the cabin was from the dirt crusted windows and our meager headlamps, which while not very big, still did little to light up the corners of our little abode. And then of course you can only imagine what sort of things are living in that cabin. We discovered a couple spiders, too big for comfort, but what was worse was their webs, which were large and strong enough to hold whole sticks aloft in the air – a bad omen for my arachnophobia. My industrious boyfriend was quick to gather a good amount of firewood and soon enough had a fire going in the cabin’s old stone fireplace, not unlike how early settlers would have done it. While we were grateful for the little bit of warmth it produced, I couldn’t help but think about what the smoke rising from our chimney could be signaling to whatever was living in the forest around us. Clearly all the Halloween prepping is getting to me. It took me awhile to get to sleep since every thump and scrape sounded like the lever of our cabin door being moved open. Eek!

I did finally get to sleep but then in the middle of the night, I awoke to a rather discouraging noise, a chewing sound coming from one of the far bunks. Completely tense (so as not to move and thus not be noticed by whatever it was, cus every kid knows that works), I listened intently to understand just what I was hearing.

 

Sure enough, it was exactly what I figured it was. Mr. Mouse had discovered our Ziplock bag of trash and was doing his best to nibble through it to the sweet smelling paper towels inside. This is not surprising at all in a super old cabin in the woods, and I had actually prepped for such an intruder. We had spilled some rice on one of the bunks in the corner, so I put our trash and fuel bottle and such over there as bait while moving our sealed food to another bunk on the other side of the room, hoping he’d be too distracted by the smells of the bait to notice it. Sure enough, it worked! All the rice was cleared from the other bunk, and we had a small hole in our trash bag and some shredded paper towel, but oatmeal and energy bars were left untouched. Huzzah! Now while I’m proud to have bested the little guy, I will say when he came scurrying over to our bunk bed to investigate my pack (which had delicious smelling pots in it), I was a little cowed. The last thing I wanted was to stay up fighting a mouse off my pack all night, but Ryan moved around on the top bunk above me and the little rodent thought better of his plan to get close to the humans.

What's so scary about this place?

The next morning of course we felt silly for ever being afraid of the cabin or the woods, but then again I think I prefer my tent significantly anyway. We made off for the Hensley settlement listed on our map, which was the only attempt by settlers to farm the Cumberland ridge.

We strode into the clearing of the settlement and started walking among old fence lines upon wet, soft grass taking pictures and commenting on the old structures and how we wouldn’t like to sleep in them either.

Suddenly, we came across a building with a sign “private residence, do not enter” and I said loudly to Ryan “Holy cow! People still live here?” The woman on the porch as we rounded the side of the building answered before Ryan could, “Good morning!”

Needless to say, I felt SUPER awkward and couldn’t believe we hadn’t been told there were still inhabitants in the settlement. The woman was wearing a long dress and bonnet and was holding some stitching, which instantly made me think, “Oh shoot, we’ve invaded an Amish settlement.”

From her house, we awkwardly walked around the lawns to the cemetery and the school house, which looked both like it could be in use, or like it was being posed as if it was being used. Completely befuddled, we walked by one other house where another woman dressed in colonial garb was starting to weave on the front porch. Time to go!

Turns out when we went to the visitor center to turn in the cabin key that no, they are not in fact Amish, they are volunteers. They do live up there, but they dress in period costume and engage in activities like weaving for educational purposes and they love to show tourists through the cabins that are in mock 1800s getup. Soooo we didn’t actually stumble upon an Amish community, instead we just snubbed some volunteers by completely avoiding them. Oops! Mostly I was just happy to hear there were other humans not far from our haunted cabin in the woods, Amish or not.