Morning breaks and the voyage begins:
After coffee, of course:
Sunsets on my first mooring, heading up Big Creek
When I am on the lake I often think of the families who were here before the Tennessee Valley Authority took their land. Some of these people had roots here from the 1700s. Some even had Cherokee blood tying them to this soil for centuries. My family, in fact, settled here around 1775 when this area was part of North Carolina and not under federal authority. Families were ousted from their ancestral homes, though paid in accordance with accepted law, at a price set by agents of the same people who were forcing them off.
Here where I parked for the night I remembered a story I heard as a kid about an old gentleman named Stoke Lawson. In the first years of Norris Lake, TVA was more concerned with power generation than with having a nice full pool for the wake boarders who erode the banks and swamp unsuspecting fishing boats, not to mention assaulting eardrums and sensibilities with vulgar rap at high volume. (sorry about the pet peeves)
Anyway, Stoke was walking on the Campbell County side of the lake with his hound dog. As I said, the lake was not maintained for recreation then (early 1940s), so the water levels dropped far below current levels. It was a cold winter day and the lake was frozen all the way across. The curious hound dog trotted off across the frozen lake and Stoke followed behind. Somewhere about midway the ice cracked, not all the way through, but with a sound that echoed like thunder to Stoke as he realized his predicament. He stepped gently across to Anderson County, thankful for firm ground beneath his feet. He soon accepted his predicament and decided, wisely I would speculate, to not retrace his steps toward home. Instead he elected to walk down the Norris Freeway and across Norris Dam, through Lake City and finally to Campbell County and home -- about 40 miles.
Morning starts the new adventure:
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