Sometimes life, and water, is about the journey. How many times have I said that? Well, I’m saying it again. Dicks’ Creek (Boyd, 110) seemed like an interesting idea for a waterfall destination. It didn’t really sound like a falls at all. Turned out, it was an ADVENTURE instead. It was an amazing revelation you have to see for yourself one day.
Hiking the half-mile wild, meandering, non-existent trail in to the water and then out again, I had lots of time to wonder why there wasn’t a picture of the falls in Boyd’s book. Was I being toyed with? Was there really nothing to see, despite the EXCELLENT rating in the description?
Didn’t really matter, because the FOUR MILES of dirt, back-country, mountain roads I drove in my Nissan sedan just to get to the parking spot had been fun enough already to make the trip worthwhile.
It was beautiful country. Fields and undisturbed farmland.
VERY interesting mailboxes and property markers.
Yes–that is a rusted out truck between two lamp posts on the side of a dirt road, with the homestead’s street number painted on the front so the mailman (and few other’s I’m assuming that venture this far in from the main road) can find the place. It was hysterical. I braked instantly to get a picture of this truck bursting through the wire fence and gate. GENIOUS way to make a landmark no one would forget. It made my day, even if the road I’d taken to get there was so pitted and rutted out, I was missing my own truck more with each turn I took.
I thought I’d never get to the “second creek fork” the author mentions in his scavenger-hunt-esque directions to “park here.”
Yep. All there was after four miles of not turning back because I’d get there eventually and the scenery was magnificent enough to keep sucking me in no matter how long four miles of dirt road takes in a sedan, the “park here” place was a creek bed with a tiny dug out spot to it’s left that was already being taken up by someone’s truck.
I pretty much had to park in the middle of the road. Well, off to the side so the truck could get out without smacking my paid-for sedan. But in the middle of a dirt road, nonetheless.
Then, I was faced with the reality that I was about to solo hike likely an hour or so (by the time I got in to the water, nosed around and took some pictures, and retraced the half-mile trail back). Oh, and someone else was nosing around, too. Probably a guy, from the looks of the truck. And did I mention that I’m taking my waterfall trips mostly alone. During the middle of the week. When my husband and his city job are over a hundred miles away.
What the hell. I’m a big girl. And I have water to see. Well, at least I thought I did. Before I got lost in the woods a couple of times. Good thing there was a creek bed to follow. As long as I kept Dick’s Creek (really a trickle, which didn’t boad well for the “excellent” falls the author didn’t take a picture of, even though he describes the water flow as one of “those rare locations where a waterfall is forced to compete with the scenery for the attention of the visitor”) in sight, I was golden.
So I kept following tickling water and the sound of something larger ahead of me, and I ignored the niggle of anxiety that someone else might be out hiking at the same time, because OF COURSE someone else was hiking the trails up there. And OF COURSE I’d be fine.
I meandered down the wild path and finally found where it was supposed to cross the Chattooga River Trail (well marked, because that trail’s maintained by the park service) and started to get excited. The directions said just ahead I’d find the Chatooga River (never heard of it) and a 50-foot waterslide.
Which was nice. Not excellent but nice.
What WAS excellent was the “magnificent panorama” (Boyd’s description and mine) of the Chatooga spilling at the basin of the falls over “an enormous riverwide ledge known to boaters as the Class IV “Dick’s Creek Ledge.”
Rapids. Trees. Water moving all around me as I slid down the embankment and walked out onto the rocks in the middle of the river.
The river turns here, forks really. It’s impossible to capture with my camera phone the movement of the water. The sound. The white curling ripples and rapids and rush of liquid on stone.
I think there are no pictures of the falls in the book, because the falls aren’t the point. And I think I’d known that, when I kept driving those four endless miles and then hiked deeper into the forest than I ever had alone, even though I knew I wasn’t alone and was a little unsettled at the thought of coming across the other hiker on my way.
This amazing place is like something out of “A River Runs Through It.” Primal. Unspoiled. Undisturbed. Standing literally in the middle of it, sliding and walking on the boulders that take you out into the river’s turn, I was giddy. I felt blissfully alone this time, and unafraid and wild and free and all the other things that nature can make you feel in an instant, if you get yourself far enough away from the world you know to feel it.
You HAVE to come to this place, too. You have to feel this. And I have to kayak these rapids. There are tour groups that take you in on the river and get you to this place, and I’ll have to start small with easier locations and less challenging water. But I’ll get there. With my family this time. I’ll be back (both hiking and boating) and feel this energy again.
My first all-out adventure water hunting. I’m SO hooked!
Tags: anna's world, creativity & inspiration, travels and memories, waterfall
It is beautiful. Worth the effort.
I would love to go there and check it out
I love Hiking and not knowing whats around the corner.Sounds like you had a good time.
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