The Reems Creek Valley, North Carolina: There are many people you meet in your life, who others will forget as soon as they are dead, but you always know were special people. No, they were not rich, famous, handsome/beautiful, or politically powerful, but God loved them just as much or more, because these people were simple, honest and good-hearted. One such person was Earnest Wheeler, one of the last cowboys to work the open ranges on the tops of the Craggy Mountains of North Carolina.
The inception of my job as director of the Asheville, NC Downtown Revitalization Program was literally like icy cold water being thrown in my face. My employers found me an old log cabin at the head of Wheeler Cove near Weaverville, NC to stay in, until the time that my wife arrived in town and we closed on a house in Asheville. The cabin had no insulation and was heated by a wood stove. It was the middle of January and the temperatures were going down below 10 every night.
There was at least a foot of snow constantly on the ground. Several more inches came down every few nights. I had never driven in snow more than a couple of inches deep and had never used a chain saw. By the end of the third day, I had used up all the wood left stacked at the cabin’s back door. Somehow, I had to figure out how to start the chain saw so I could get fire wood from the National Forest behind the cabin. For two more days after the wood ran out , I slept (sort of) under six patchwork quilts my Mama Ruby made and wondered what in the hell I was doing in this outparcel of the Arctic in the sunny South.
On Saturday morning, a gangly man in his late sixties watched me for awhile as I struggled to start the saw. He then slowly walked up to me and asked if I needed some help. Yes, please sir. He explained that I needed to turn on the switch and pull the choke, if I wanted to start the saw. As he walked away smiling, I asked him his name. It was Earnest … Earnest Wheeler.
Earnest then explained that in the old days, the mountains around Asheville once had lush grassy pastures above the tree lines. As an adolescent, he had gone out west to learn how to be a cowboy. He had come home in the late 1920s and started running cattle and sheep on the mountain tops. He slept under the stars. He would never leave the mountain tops from April to early November, when he brought the livestock down into the Reems Creek Valley. The valley was used solely for growing winter fodder. When the National Park Service built the Blue Ridge Parkway in the 1950s, the open range was closed. Very quickly, rhododendron shrubs and scrub oaks began taking over the grasslands. Except for a few surviving fence rows, that is about all you see now.
They say he had been married when a cowboy out west, but the woman broke his heart. Perhaps that is why he came home to spend seven months a year by himself above the tree line. You can tell he liked women and people in general, but was very bashful. Perhaps his heart was too tender to live in the world that evolved in the later 20th century down in the valley.
Six months later, a local artist invited us to his home for a Fourth of July barbecue. It was a homestead structure perched high up on Wolfpen Gap at the head of the Reems Creek Valley. Something enchanting happened as we listened to hammer dulcimer music as the sun was setting. A cool breeze came down from Courthouse Knob, and my life was changed forever. We started looking for a farm in the Asheville Area the very next week. Although we searched throughout the region, the only one we could afford was at the very foot of Wolfpen Cove, and across the street from Earnest Wheeler’s house & farm.
Our old farmstead had been butchered by a gravel quarry operation and then abandoned. It would take a year’s work before either the house or the farmland were livable. Acres of giant multiflora roses and boulders had to be cleared before we could even think about putting up fencing or plowing the land. Earnest was there watching all the time – waiting for me to ask a question. He never said anything unless I asked him first. A neighbor loaned me his tractor. The only trouble is that the only plowing I had ever done was with a mule on my grandfather’s land. I got a book on tractor care and just dived into plowing. Later that October afternoon, Earnest came up to my wife and politely asked, Do you think Richard would mind if I told him he was plowing backwards?
As we developed the Southeast’s first licensed goat cheese creamery, Earnest was with us all the way. He was like a proud Papa when the truck brought all of poet Carl Sandburg's goat dairy equipement over to our farm. It cost me $50! Our herd dogs adored Earnest. The goats ran up to him when he came sauntering down the driveway. He often would stop by for dinner, but bring a ham or a chunk of beef with him to cook. We were his adopted children in a way.
Then one weekend, we went off to sell cheese at a wine festival. Earnest did not stop by to greet us after we returned. Several days past, I noticed that he was never at home. Finally, I called his late sister’s daughter to find out where Earnest was. He was dead! He had died of a heart attack while we were gone. His relatives thought so little of him, that it didn’t even dawn on them that we cared for him and would want to attend his funeral on Tuesday. I think all he got was a brief graveside prayer and then they chunked his simple wood casket into the hole.
So if you are ever driving up Wheeler Cove in the Reems Creek Valley and want see the old Wheeler Family Cemetery, say hello to Earnest for me … Oh and tell him that I never minded him telling me anything. We loved the old man almost as much as God did.
If you have seen the movie, The Last of the Mohicans, you have seen my former North Carolina farm. The massacre scene was filmed where I formerly grazed goats and sheep!
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| Remembering the Cowboy from the Craggy Mountains of North Carolina |
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