Mountain Resources and Resourcefulness
/
I took my children to visit The Lost Sea this week and was fascinated to learn how both Cherokees and early settlers had used this great cave. The Cherokees used one large room for council meetings. The marks from their fires the tour guide now calls damage, but it looked to me like evidence of a great use for that space. They also used the cave as a shelter from the coldest parts of winter and the hottest parts of summer – the constant 58 degrees must have felt wonderful in both those seasons. Later, settlers used the cave to store potatoes and other vegetables – I wonder how far away the homestead were, but a God-given root cellar just begs for storage, doesn’t it?
That information got me to thinking about the way we’ve historically used the resources on our own mountain. I’ve written a couple of times about bluffs and caves on the mountain and I wanted to remind you of those stories – one of them was in 2014 and I am shocked The Tennessee Mountain Stories is that old!
I hope you enjoy revisiting these bluff stories.
