POSSUM PHILOSOPHY: Trail magic

I was sitting on my fiancée, Terry’s front porch last Sunday. It was a typical July day, hot and humid but there was a nice breeze blowing. Terry’s home is out in the country near South Holston Lake. It is a quiet, peaceful neighborhood in a well-situated place, only a few minutes from either Abingdon or Bristol and nearly as quick to Johnson City. Yet it is rural enough that traffic is light on Sunday afternoons, hardly any road noise.
It is also heavily populated by birds, lots of birds. I think it is probably because it is both in a rural area and near the lake. I love to sit there and listen to their songs and calls. I also, on rare occasions, grab a short, peaceful afternoon nap. I was very near the napping-stage when the phone rang.
It was my sister Lynn calling. Now on an average summer Sunday, she would have been calling me to give a good NASCAR-Fan cussin’ to some driver or another who she felt had wronged one of her favorites. (She particularly dislikes Jeff Gordon and his Hendricks team-mates.) But the race was on Saturday night so I knew it was not that.
Like most folks when I get an unexpected call from family, I usually imagine the worst, figuring someone, family or friend has had some kind of misfortune befall them. I can’t help it, it is probably genetic, a trait inherited from my Irish or Scottish ancestors. Fortunately this was not the case.
She had called to tell me that I had just had company stop by for a visit. And though I hated to miss this one, I was at least glad that this person had come around. It was my old buddy, Graham “Mock” Call, one of the nicest, most humorous, most interesting and most intelligent people I have ever had the good fortune to meet. The reason I was truly glad he came around was that the last I had heard, he was suffering serious, life-threatening health problems, reportedly in very, very bad shape.
So just that fact that he was able to come for a visit was good news. The reason he was here was even better news indeed. Mock had come to Saltville to ride his bicycle on the new trails. He told my sister that he had ridden the Helen Barbrow Memorial Trail which runs through the Well Fields area of town. It is now open to the public for walking, bicycling and bird and wildlife watching. He also rode part of the Salt Trail, the trail that will eventually run from Saltville to Glade Spring. Mock’s biking showed him to be in much better health than I thought.
It is also very good news that these trails are nearly completed. According to Jeff Smith, Saltville’s Clerk-Treasurer, the Helen Barbrow Memorial Trail is now open and ready for use by the public. It lacks only a few signs which should be ready and in place shortly.
Smith also said the Salt Trail, the center of a great deal of controversy and the focus of a law suit filed by some residents whose property abuts the trail, will also soon be completed.
“There is approximately two miles of the trail, running from the old Olin plant-site, to the old U. S. Gypsum property which is already finished and in use,” Smith said. “The rest should be completed early this fall. And both trails are already seeing a lot of use.”
Smith said a good number of local folks that formerly walked along the roadsides or used the fitness trail behind the Saltville Medical Center to exercise for their health, now include walks on one or both trails.
Smith also said the trails have already begun to show some of the economic potential that local supporters had hoped for. He said he often has visitors from other communities and other states, inquiring where they can use one or the other of these trails.
I happened to come through Damascus, Va., a couple of Sundays ago. Damascus was very much like Saltville; it had been a small town with a couple of primary employers, neither of which still existed. The economic blow to the community had been terrible. Now, with the popularity of the Appalachian Trail and the Virginia Creeper Trail (which had also been a railroad at one time,) Damascus is once again thriving.
Whereas once, the town would have been nearly deserted on a weekend as folks went elsewhere to shop, dine or for recreation, it was now packed. I would have been hard-pressed to find a parking spot anywhere along Main Street or any side street within easy walking district of Main. A multitude of new businesses now occupy what only a few years back were empty store fronts starting to become rundown. I have been told, though I have not actually verified it, that there is not a single building in downtown Damascus that is un-occupied. If not true, I suspect it is very close to the truth.
So the prospects of Saltville making a similar economic revival look good. And even more important, I now have (although I never really needed one,) an excuse to go visit one of the most interesting story-tellers and true Appalachians I know, my old friend Mock.