Moses Cone Servants Quarters Rose Arbor

 The early morning sun is catching the rose arbor.  Moses Cone himself did not plant any non-native species on his estate.  That’s because one of his missions on the estate was to awake visitors [and he had in mind his estate would one day be a 'public pleasuring ground' so by visitors he was thinking of us, of you and me today] to the wonders of the Southern Appalachian mountains and forest.  Mr. Cone died young.  After his death Mrs. Cone introduced a number of non-native species to the estate, including this rose arbor.  To see it, park in the parking lot of the Cone Manor at mp 294.  Walk to the Carriage Barn [the public restrooms are located in the Carriage Barn so look for public restroom signs if you don't know how to recognize the Carriage Barn].  The rose arbor is just a short distance downhill from the Carriage Barn.

In “A Twist in the Road” I presented the concept that Mr. Cone designed his carriage trails by creating exclamation marks at what he wanted us to see.  I didn’t discuss the nature of the trail to the Fire Tower, the topic of this article. 

Several of Mr. Cone’s trails appear designed to awaken us to grandeur.  The Rich Mountain Trail [future subject] and the Fire Tower trail are two of those.  Picture this:  you’re one of Mr. Cone’s guests.  The year is @ 1900, summer, long hours of daylight.  You’re a friend from Greensboro, a business associate from Charlotte, a political associate from Raleigh. You traveled by train to Lenoir.  An ox and cart hauled you from Lenoir up a mud/dirt/gravel road to Flat Top Manor.

You arrived travel weary late in the day, ate, and fell into a deep sleep induced by weariness and by the magic of cool, clear, high elevation mountain air.   Mr. Cone has planned an early morning surprise for you, something to take you mentally and physically away from the hussle-bussle everyday life of flatlands in the city.  Arising early, he hurries you into a carriage drawn by fast-trotting horses.  You’ll climb aboard here:

      

You don’t know the lay of the land but the carriage carries you away from the Manor House toward Flat Top Tower.

You pass several of the [outlying] Manor buildings  The servants quarters [current, not the original location] and gardens:

and the Carriage Barn:

Today you’ll head under the Parkway Road but in 1900 there was no Parkway so image this trail without the motor road.  You’re heading uphill and suddenly to your left is a magnificent scene – Grandfather, Sugar [minus the Citadel], Beech:

That grabs your drowsy attention but a moment later it’s gone and you’re in woods, a forest of tall trees and rhodos.  As the trail turns right, then left, then right again, you’re drifting mentally away. After all, it’s woods; something you already know.  Then bright daylight and open fields, pleasant and edged with forest.  A view off to your right – distant, distant, layers of mountains, what the pioneers repeatedly referred to as ‘oceans of mountains.’  Meaning, it reminded them of ocean waves.  Mr. Cone might interrupt your thoughts, pointing out that he’s chosen his gravesite to the left.  It’s a serene spot looking out to the endless east, the perpetual sunrise over mountain ridges.

 

 You’re looking ahead to the lovely but somewhat unremarkable pasture to your left and right:

 

Perhaps your attention is riveted on mountain ridges straight ahead  when the horses slow to maneuver one of those twists, one of Mr. Cone’s switchbacks.  When the horses pull around the curve, there it is again – Grandfather, Sugar, Beech, glorious high mountain ridges.

 

Back in forest, the carriage takes you on gentle curves to the left, the right, and then the slowing down.  And again you encounter Grandfather/Sugar/Beech [now obscured by rhodos and trees].  A moment later, the eastern vista – the twist in the road already described – meets your eyes.

A few curves later, and it’s Grandtather/Sugar/Beech.  A moment later and it’s the eastern vista.  First one, then the other, then the first, on and on.

Mr. Cone laid out this trail to assail your spirit with repeated encounters alternating between the glorious uplifted Grandfather high ridges and the distant layering of eastern mountain ridges.  See how this works out via the trail map:

If Mr. Cone took you out early enough, the Grandfather ridges are dark initially, lightening, and changing color with each appearance.  With the eastern vistas, each encounter lightens with sunrise.

Perhaps he’s timed the outing for the most magnificent sunrise of all.  You climb the courses of steps up the Fire Tower:

At the highest point Mr. Cone has arranged for you to watch the sun climb above the eastern ridges, throwing low long shadows on Grandfather/Beech/Sugar.  The view from the Fire Tower is exquisitely dramatic.  It also gives the lay of the land – from Deep Gap through Blowing Rock, the Grandfather window, Sugar, Beech, Seven Devils, Castle Rock, Howard’s Knob and Snake Mountain.  The whole shebang.

[I have a marveous panorama of this view but haven't figured out how to load a virtual tour to a blog.  Any help would be MOST welcome!!  It's too wide to show anything in this space.]

When you walk the trail today, you’ll need to envision many of these vistas in your imagination. Many are obscured today by rhodos and other vegetation. 

A different vista, picture taken during the winter, in which you can see past the vegetation to know what lies beyond:

Remember, walking is slow compared to fast-trotting horses, so also imagine how different it would be to experience the alternating vistas if they came at you quickly. 

September, 2008

Adapted from LR, an unpublished manuscript by Helen Phillips copyright 2008

 

My first thoughts when I wake up each morning are remembering and calling out what I am grateful for.  Shortly thereafter, I’ve made coffee and head out for my walk, very often on the Cone carriage trails, part of the Blue Ridge Parkway, National Park Service, at mp 294.

The nature of Moses Cone’s character gives me — and you — the Cone trails.  So, at my first footstep on the Cone trails, I say hello to Mr. Cone and I thank him for his gift.  I’m grateful for him – a visionary, a person who made his dreams come true, a person who thought about and planned for the well-being of others. 

A marvelous person who created outstanding results, Moses Cone is the perfect beginning for this section of my blog.

Mr. Cone is a gigantic subject and I’ll divide his story into quite a few sections.  I’m going to start at a twist in the road.

Which road? You park at the Manor house parking area and set off hiking toward the Cone grave, pass the open fields in front of the grave, and head into the woods leading up toward the Fire Tower.

Thick Appalachian hardwoods drape each side of the trail.  This time of year, the forest canopy is fully green above, concealing the sky.  Rhodos fill any space between the forest floor and the first tree branches.  You walk along one length of the trail to a curve that takes you up to another, and another, becoming lost in a hazy undefined dream of space hemmed in by the forest, pausing here and there when brilliant spots of wildflower color draw your eye.  In early morning, you hear birdsongs though it takes a trained eye and binoculars to see the birds well. You climb some more, more curves in the trail, slowing losing track somewhat of time and orientation.  Then, the trail makes a very sharp switchback to your right.  And then…

First, let me take you back in time. If you were one of Mr. Cone’s guests, his preferred method of taking you around the estate was in a carriage drawn by fast-trotting horses.  He covered his trails with an exceedingly fine crush of gravel, raked even.  The result was a smooth ride in the carriage, a contented lulling of trot and gentle rocking that might induce such a restful state that your thoughts drift from the here and now.  Don’t we do the same today – put restless babies in their car seats and drive down gravel roads to quiet them into sleep?

Drifting from the here and now of the Appalachian environment was NOT Mr. Cone’s intention.  He came to our mountains in the late 1800’s as others did then, and as many do now, to get away from the rushed hustle-bustle of the commercial life and from the fumes and congestion of cities.  He came to the mountains to restore his spirit.  Some might write ‘soul.’ The quiet and peace, the clean air, the slow pace, the cool summers, restored him.  He treasured the trees and native wildflowers, the glorious vistas.
Never content to create value solely for himself, Mr. Cone desired that others should experience these marvels, to become restored, as did he.  So he set about creating an estate with the same foresight and determination that enabled his success with Cone Mills [a future subject].  It was part of his plan that he and his wife Bertha and their families and friends would enjoy his estate but he had in mind that the estate would one day be a “public pleasuring ground.”  He looked to the future, to what we now call, and what it now is, a “park.”

He was thinking of us.  Of today.  Of you and me.

How do we know this?  From more than one source, but for now I want to get back to the twist in the road.

Once Mr. Cone acquired the land for the estate, he set about laying out the carriage trails.  He utilized some extant farm roads.  The existing roads, however, were not sufficient to fulfill his vision.  To create the others, he tramped through the steep woods, a retinue of his workers following behind carrying wooden stakes.  Where he wanted his trails to go, he directed the workers to plant the stakes.  [An aside I can’t resist:  in the movie Mr. Johnson, Nigeria 1923, a British engineer creates roads assisted by his African employee, Mr. Johnson, who follows behind him, carrying armfuls of wooden stakes, planting them where the engineer directs. This seems to have been the technology of the times. It’s a great movie, by the way.]

Mr. Cone’s vision for the trails was to lay them out so that his guests – we park visitors today — would become aware of, would experience, would draw into our hearts and so be restored, the wonder of the Southern Appalachian environment.  Mr. Cone plotted routes by what he wanted people to see.  To open our eyes and force us to see, he created twists in the trails.  He awoke his guests from quiet wandering thoughts induced by the trotting lull because the horses must slow down to maneuver the extremely sharp switchbacks.  Like our babies in car seats who tend to wake up when the car engine stops, the guests would awake and see a new reality: a lovely so-pale-pink-it’s-white rosebay rhodo blooming in June, an uplifted, uplifting mountain range, red rays of sunset behind Grandfather, a sunrise over the eastern escarpment.

At our twist in the road on the way to the Fire Tower, we notice low stone walls where there were none, underlining to emphasize a change. 

Suddenly, dramatically, we’ve left the green forest enveloping veil

to find ourselves at a huge open vista, big sky wide above, big sky wide ahead and big sky wide to the left and big sky wide to the right, looking out forever to the east, over and past Blowing Rock, out to the endless beginning of sunrise.  A point to stop, to pause, to go inside oneself, to be filled with the grandeur of creation.
 

The vista, a most lovely spot to catch a sunrise:

Whenever you are walking [or horseback riding] the Cone trails and come to a sharp switchback, pause, look around, and try to figure out what Mr. Cone wanted you to see.  It will enrich your life.

A hint:  today when you go looking for what Mr. Cone wanted us to see, you may be looking through leaves and young trees not there around 1900 when he was building the estate.  The forest, untethered by the NPS, is trying to create its climax state and so is growing up.  Look for the older trees and try to see beyond what’s new.  It’s a bit easier in winter.

Thanks to you, Mr. Cone, for your vision and for the carriage trails that so enrich our lives today; to Gene Redmon, formerly District Ranger, for many insights into Mr. Cone and his trails; and to Ian Firth, author, Moses H. Cone Memorial Park, A Cultural Landscape Report, for enabling me and the National Park Service to comprehend the greatest importance of Mr. Cone’s estate.

May, 2008

Adapted from LR, an unpublished manuscript by Helen Phillips, copyright 2008
 Mr. Cone’s design for this switchback:

This new section of my blog is about what is stupendous, remarkable, outstanding and marvelous in Boone.