The Road to Nowhere

After lunch Vance takes her bouquet of flowers and suggests that we--along with her sisters--proceed to Bone Valley Cemetery, which is a quarter-mile hike.

That's kind of a spooky name for a cemetery, I say.

Not really, Vance says. In the late 19th century, a herd of cattle got trapped out here in a snowstorm and froze to death, she explains. By spring, scavengers had picked apart the cows' flesh, leaving nothing but bones in the valley.

Most of the other visitors are going to Hall Cemetery, which is up a different trail. The path to Bone Valley Cemetery is muddy and steep, switching back up toward a secondary ridge. Vance and Rhinehart get ahead of me and Johnson, who is quickly running out of breath and is taking slow, labored steps. She pauses to rest and says the new road would spare her this agony.

"The Lord is bigger than Washington, D.C., and the environmentalists," she says. "I think the Lord meant us to have a road."

I don't point out that even if a road were built, some hiking would still be necessary. There are more than 30 cemeteries scattered across the North Shore. A single road could never reach all of them. By now I'm thinking that the North Shore road holds as much symbolic as practical value. Vance, her sisters and the others who were tossed off their land seem to crave historical vindication as much as they do easy access to their cemeteries. Two years ago, the Swain County Commission suggested that the federal obligation could be settled with a cash payment. Vance, of course, rejects that solution. "The agreement said a road," she says.

The trail goes from muddy to dusty, ending in a patch of dirt that I wouldn't recognize as a cemetery were it not for the jagged little stones poking up and the dozens of American flags fluttering in the wind. About 80 graves are bunched tightly across the sloping ground. Small dirt mounds, like rows in a field, extend from the base of each headstone. I'm told this is a typically Appalachian style of grave construction. The mounds seem to symbolize the presence of bodies beneath. Many of the headstones show the resting places of Confederate veterans.

Vance walks among the graves ceremoniously and quietly. Some of them have newer polished headstones, which the North Shore Cemetery Association has furnished. At the far corner, Vance stops before the resting place of Frank Tipton. He was Vance's mother's cousin, killed in 1924 when a horse kicked him. Nearby is another distant relative, Dolly Curtis. Vance lays a few flowers, and the lonely graveyard seems oddly pretty. The pinks and blues of the flowers harmonize with the browns and greens of the indigenous flora. Among those placing flowers are three small children. They're a ray of hope, Vance says. "I know a lot of people don't remember this place," she says. "But it's good to see young people here."

We walk back down to the picnic area and wait for the bus. To pass time, I take out a large map of the North Shore. Vance shows me all the places she used to frequent, points to the spot on Fontana Lake where her family's home is buried. I ask if there is anywhere on the North Shore where she's never returned.

She runs her finger across the mapped ridges. "I haven't been back there," she says, pointing to a spot about 10 miles east of Bone Valley. She says that's where her aunt and uncle used to live. As children, she and her siblings used to visit. But now "it's just too far to walk," she says. "And the park ain't gonna take you there." I mark the spot with an inky black X.

NOW I'M BACK IN SYLVA, N.C., checking the latest weather report. My gear is carefully loaded into my massive backpack. Once again, I'm looking forward to eating my freeze-dried lasagna on some lonely crag above Fontana Lake. Unfortunately, the meteorologist is predicting that Hurricane Jeanne is on her way to the neighborhood. I tell myself that risk and survival are the marrow of any journey into the wild. Hell, I have a poncho.

A few hours later, I'm asleep in my car when John Johnson pulls up alongside. We are several miles west of Bryson City, N.C., near the point where the Road to Nowhere grinds to a halt. Johnson, 31, steps from his car looking like a young Santa Claus. His wild brown hair is gathered into a ponytail, and his beard brushes the top of his chest. He wears camouflage pants and a cast on one wrist that says in black marker, "Courtesy of the NYPD." Recently he was up in New York City protesting a gathering of Republicans and found himself on the losing end of a confrontation with several police officers.

Johnson is a member of Earth First!, a diffuse organization of environmentalists with a history of civil disobedience. I met Johnson, who lives nearby in Tennessee, via a series of mutual acquaintances. I was told that he knows the North Shore backcountry as well as anyone. So I've asked him to join me on my trip. He says he can't make the whole trip, but he'll at least go with me on a day hike.

We start walking down the last bit of the Road to Nowhere, passing through a 1,000-foot tunnel that was never opened to traffic. Inside it is black as deep space, except for the pinhole opening at the end, where the cracked asphalt ends and the footpath begins. Johnson says that if one inch of this road is extended, he and his fellow activists will take up residence on the North Shore. "We'll contest every inch of land," he says. I ask if they would resort to ecoterrorism. Would he, for example, pour sand into the gas tank of a bulldozer? No, he says. "But we wouldn't have a problem with anyone who did."

He quickly offers a piece of advice to the National Park Service, should road construction go forward. "Y'all better add a few million to your security budget. You're not just going to come in here and build a road."

We stop to look at my map. I study the inky black X, marking the homesite of Helen Vance's aunt and uncle. We decide to search for it. We'll gauge our progress by counting how many creeks we cross. It appears that creek No. 5 will be closest to the homesite.

More than an hour into the woods, Johnson stoops down over a pile of dung. He grabs a stick and pokes apart the pile, which is filled with undigested seeds. "Bear sign," he says.

I tell Johnson about my earlier trip with Helen Vance and the people who were kicked off this land 60 years ago. He's heard vaguely of the story. I tell him they were poor folks who had no chance of standing up to TVA, certainly not in a time of war. "I feel bad for those people," he says. "But they'd have to hike anyway, even if they did build the road. I feel like those ferry rides and van rides are compensation enough."

Finally, after nearly four hours of hiking, we reach the fifth stream and stand in a gully looking up the mountain. We step off the trail and begin climbing. We kick around, looking for traces of where the house might have been. Nearby we find the remains of a rusty wire fence, stuck in the bark of an oak tree. We sit down, leaning our backs against a rotting log. Our best guess is that this is the very spot that Vance had shown me on the map.

The rain begins softly. Johnson says it's the leading edge of the hurricane. By now I've already realized that pushing forward would be madness. Hundreds of shallow creeks will soon become impassable walls of white water. With enough wind, these trees and branches will start raining down like artillery. The wild has never seemed wilder. Soon Johnson and I rise and begin the long walk back to the road.

Tyler Currie is a contributing writer for the Magazine.