Dead Roads and Ribs for Bears

Words by Tanner Arrington, photos by Jess Peri

This is not a road. It used to be a road, but now it’s a torn-up mess. “Scarified,” my forestry friend called it. Whatever it’s called, it doesn’t work for bicycles, and it barely works for feet. Each step finds a soft, linear pile of churned soil – an ankle’s nightmare. New shoots of grass sprout from the tiny ridgetops. We’re hiking our loaded bikes down a freshly plowed and planted field.

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To be fair, this part of the trip was a wild card from the start. This road was labeled closed on the US Forest Service map, but that can mean a lot of things. Many closed Forest Service roads are still roads, just gated and closed to vehicles. They might be grown over a bit in summer, but entirely passable doubletrack. Or maybe the tree canopy has enclosed above them, and the undergrowth has encroached on their edges, but the road beds are still firm.

Not this one. This is an artifact, a ghost of a road that once was. A road whose death is hastened by the very ones who gave it life. It haunts me now, with the autumn light fading over the ridgetop. I’m torn. In other circumstances, I might be celebrating the death of a road. One less intrusion into a small bit of wild. Surely fewer roads are better. But this road? Why can’t this one still be, at least for now?

This dead road also dead-ends before it gets to the river. In a stroke of naivety and adventure-dreaming, I had sketched a route that included hiking our bikes beyond the end of this road to the Chauga River to find camp along some seldom-visited shoals. I could see the skeleton of an old road bed in the high-resolution elevation data, a slight cut into the hillside, the signature of some unknown history much older than that of the recently deceased route over which we hiked.

The Blue Ridge is covered in the scars of roads past; routes traversed by complex Indigenous societies long before Europeans arrived, new-cut trails through what was once called “frontier” by visitors from the “old world” and later paths over which timber was brought out of the hills. There’s a good chance that some trail you’ve hiked in the area was once one or all of those things.

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In my head, we’d follow the cut of that long-dead road along the hillside and fall asleep to the sound of the river wearing down the bedrock. Then, we would cross the river the next morning at the old ford I’d seen labeled on old maps. The aerial images (taken in winter) showed a nice park-like open forest, and the contours seemed to indicate a reasonable slope to the river. The ford looked like a nice flat stretch of water between rapids. It would be a unique adventure, a fun bit of exploration off the beaten path. I was introducing my friends to their first bikepacking experience, and this trip would stand out.

This is not a campsite. This is a cluster of trees on a semi-flat knob that was haphazardly cleared of undergrowth to accommodate our hammocks. It’s a recognition of failure. Losses cut.

To get here, a mere 200 yards from the dead-end turnaround, we spent an hour and a half dragging our bikes through thickets of undergrowth. We found remains of the older, long-dead road, but it was impossible to traverse. We pulled our loaded bikes through the canopies of fallen hardwoods. We tried to find clearer paths through the forest up the slope, but no luck. Every turn led to impenetrable walls of bush, briar, and mazes of deadfall. The light was fading, and we were nowhere near the river.

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Sometimes, when we’d stop to catch our breath, we’d hear the river taunting us down the mountainside. Every turn we took was a step in the wrong direction. We split up. We left our bikes behind so we could scout ahead, lights pointed upward and flashing so we could find them again in the dark. We called for each other in the darkness until we converged on this knob. This would have to do. We’re out of light, and we’re out of options.

We made a few mistakes, but the primary mistake was saving this kind of adventure for the end of the day: the light fading, our legs and minds tired, our throats thirsty, and our bellies full of barbeque.

Two hours before, we were sitting comfortably alongside a creek with a mountain of ribs and pulled pork in front of us. We spent all of our cash on the barbeque, and they’re cash and check only. But we got a beer for each of us on an IOU, the total written on a business card so we could mail a check when we got home. Before that, we’d soaked our legs in the pool below a waterfall against a backdrop of half-billion-year-old old rocks folded like a buckled rug. Earlier this afternoon, we had lunch looking off the edge of the Blue Ridge Escarpment into three different states.

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And just before things started going sideways on that torn-up road, we were surprised by a long descent when we were expecting a climb. We were all smiles. The trip was going beautifully. We had laughed about what might lie ahead. How bad could it be?

It feels like a terrible error, one that threatens the whole trip. We ration the water we have left, most of which goes to one of us fighting off leg cramps. We curse ourselves for not finding a decent place to camp at the end of the dead road. We could have assessed the situation in the morning with fresh minds.

But now we are here, camping where no one should camp. I sit cross-legged on a mat between our tight circle of hammocks. My head hangs low in disappointment. My friends try to lighten up the mood, but I can only shake my head.

I catch a whiff of something. It’s smokey and greasy, and I’m a bit repulsed by the smell. My tired stomach churns. We have a to-go box full of ribs and pulled pork with us. This is the beariest of South Carolina bear country, and we have a styrofoam box full of barbeque. What were we thinking?

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I’ll tell you. We were thinking of a nice campsite next to the river, finishing off the barbeque, pulling on whiskey from our flasks. A sunset glistening off the water. Slinging flies at trout. Hopping rocks across swirling clear eddies. Paradise. Instead, we are here on this bushy knob, shins shredded to bits by the briars, looking like we’d wrestled a bobcat with our hands tied behind our backs.

We have one option. I take the to-go box and walk down the hill into the fading light as far as I can push through the thickets. I open the lid and pack the meat together. I rear my arm backward, and like a catapult, I fling the meat as far as I can into the forest. Then I stash the box where I can retrieve it in the morning.

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This is not sleep. I already abandoned the hammock for the ground, but it hasn’t helped. No matter which way I turn my head, it feels like it’s on a rock. I should be exhausted. Every breeze that rustles the autumn leaves brings my mind back to creatures in the darkness. How many times have I camped in the woods without worrying about critters? I should have more control over my emotions right now. Get some sleep, and your mind will clear with the sunrise. Breath deep. Be present.

This is not a dream. My eyes flash open to full aperture. My pupils dilate, trying to capture any possible light. I scramble to find my headlamp. My friend in the hammock above me is scrambling to find his light, too. Do you hear that? We shine our lights down the hill, but it’s like we’re pointing them at a wall covered with leafy wallpaper.

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For sure, there is some creature down that hill tasting smoked pork for the first time. It might be a raccoon, but I can’t get my mind off a picture of a bear sitting on its hind, inspecting a rib bone to be sure it got all the meat. I wonder about the decisions that got us here. I wonder how the strange new food might affect a bear’s stomach. I’m reminded that all of the fun we like to have on our bikes depends on us sharing – or is it invading? – a wild place. All of the roads, dead and alive. What is wild? Have we crossed a line tonight, from adventurous to irresponsible? How easily I ride over a route, ignorant of the history, inconsiderate of my context within my surroundings, only here to consume the experience. The faintest hint of light is on the horizon. I hope for the sun to rise soon.

This is not the end. I am up with the sun, and I scout our route back to the torn-up road. The forest takes shape. The leaves’ edges sharpen, and the tree canopies unblur. The daylight brings clarity to matter and mind. The way back is not so bad. We will find water at the creek that runs through a culvert under the dead road. We will find terra firma and roll quickly down that gravel on two wheels. We will yip and holler down the big descent. We will have a beer at the end.

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We will have experienced, and we will have learned. We have been humbled, and we will be thankful for that gift. We will go bikepacking again.

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