West Virgenoree

When the sun starts to set, the woods always get dark first. Especially near the creek. Sometimes I'm squatting on the little sand bank right at the edge of the water, when I get up I can feel the muscle shells crunching under my feet. I walk up stream and stop just before I get to the neighbors yard. It's only about a 100 yards, but I can see around the bend in the creek. It's getting darker, but I can make out someone else...up near the bend stooping down at the water's edge. It's a man...he looks up and sees me. So I stop, it's cold and for some reason I know that I have shorts on. This may or may not be significant.
There's no face, just blank but there are eyes...they are red. It looks like he's panning for gold, there's no gold in this creek. He's seen me, so I stand there waiting. I can make out long hair under an old hat and a long cape or coat. It reminds me of the Brothers Grimm story about Bearskin.
I'm scared, I think because of the man's face. Is he real? Then I see something small moving next to his feet...in the shadows I see a possum.
I turn around and walk back up the hill to my house.
In some ways this "dream" is real, there's a myth in some of the Appalachian states that there's an old gold panner that people see along the creeks at dusk dark. Maybe that's him, or maybe it's Teddy Tarrant, who lives up the street and has a pet possum.
I really believe, in fact I know for sure that in-breeding is still a fashionable form of procreation in the South, well in the Southern Mountain regions. And just because we are in Enoree doesn't mean we're excluded from this abnormality...it's still widely practiced.
(Minus the scaly backbone, cleft lips and tail superstitions)
Call us the pig people...or Sawtooth as seen in Wrong Turn.
There's so many connections to Deliverance, it's uncanny.
Down on the falls road, there's a lot of the pig people that live along the river. The state has tried to come in and revamp the Falls and put in a canoe drop and trail for hikers and such.
They even started up a rafting adventure on the Tyger...I tried that once. It's been over three years ago...and there are still some places on the river that you just find yourself paddling a little harder, a little faster. They may seem like harmless old country folks, but why do they act as though they've never seen another human being?
As we float by I swallow the bile that's gathered in my throat and look up at their shanty on the side of the hill...the two overweight men bathing in the river with homemade moonshine in their hand; laughing, calling at us to stop.
I know what you're thinking. We made it out safe and took the bus back to the car. All in all, I've learned a lot about spending time in the woods and in the mountains or on the river. There are some things that you need to know.

You wouldn't believe the things that have happened.

Just another day in the backcountry--weeeeeeeee!