I used to rent a cabin there during the late eighties – early nineties. It’s featured in Shadow Tier as the place Kennedy and Maya go to hide from the cartel. In the southwest corner of North Carolina just north of the Georgia and South Carolina borders.
It’s an hour from the Chattooga River of Deliverance fame. In a good rain year, the runs are full of class 5 rapids. I fell out once in a class 5 and had a hydraulic pull me under a rock, with a life jacket on. I sat there waiting to pop up but was held in place by the swirling water until I got my feet between myself and the rock. I pushed off as hard as I could and cleared the hydraulic popping up upstream of the raft.
The trout fishing was amazing, as were the many beautiful and refreshing waterfalls. From ten-foot stair step falls with cool places to lay in the water to one-hundred-foot shear drops.
Parts of the movie Last of the Mohicans was filmed nearby, and I have run up alongside the waterfall that Daniel Day Lewis did. Although not nearly as cool as his character.
While not the Colorado mountains that I have access to now, the altitude was a break from the heat and humidity of Tampa and MacDill Air Force Base.
The cabin had started as a cook shack and then bunkhouse for loggers. It sat on the top of a ridge at a point facing west. Over the years the square central section was added to the kitchen and bedroom on the left side of the front door and two bedrooms and a bathroom on the right. There was a porch around the outside except for one twelve-foot section where the propane bottles stood.
I had two of the porch poles rigged for my hammock and would nap during afternoon rains falling asleep instantly to the sound of the water caressing the metal roof. Looking out back from the kitchen was a series of old but fruitful apple trees. The rest of the view was woods and wildlife.
To get to the cabin from the road you went through a gate and switch backed up the ridge and around a massive boulder that looked ready to go. You could touch it just beyond the mirror, the track was so narrow. When you got to the top you were on the east side of the cabin with a smile as wide as the state of Tennessee.
Lots of wildlife around the cabin. Beer, wild pig, deer, turkey’s, falcons, and hummingbirds. Never saw a soul when there, only when on the road or at one of many popular lakes nearby.
I’d be remiss if I did not mention it’s called Sapphire Valley for a reason. Semi-precious stones are everywhere you dig. If you have little one’s, there are roadside stands that sell bags of sand with stones in them that children can find. We bought some and brought them up to the cabin for our nieces and nephews and it was a big hit.
It’s memories like this that are easy to incorporate into my writing and for that I am blessed.