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13. Finding and Smelling the Pigeon
- The University of Tennessee Press
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Chapter 13 finding and smeLLing the pigeon You pull off the interstate onto a hidden road that leads to a clearing where they store salt to melt ice. It’s June 2009. There is not one, but two barred gates across the path through the woods down to the lake, Waterville or Walters, you’ve seen it called both. The power company’s signs tell you that walking the trail would constitute trespassing. You stroll past the gate a few yards, just to see how it feels. It’s not so bad to break a foolish law, but to get caught would be humiliating, and leaving your car here for a day in order to kayak this lake would expose you to the minions of the power company, in cahoots with the local law, you imagine. For years you’ve admired the river that feeds this lake. Every time you drive east of Knoxville on I-40, you creep in the slow lane and crane your neck to see the fast-moving water in the gorge below. This place, where you catch glimpses of the river, is at the border between Tennessee and North Carolina, below Walters Dam, the current of the river manufactured by releases from the lake, the gorge blasted and reengineered to accommodate the interstate. You knew that this was the Pigeon River, that it descended from Sams Knob on Black Mountain, at an altitude of 6100 feet. But what you didn’t know could fill an empty lake, and the dam of ignorance was about to crumble. Where you’ve camped on the Pigeon, miles below the dam, near Hartford , Tennessee, you ask a river guide named Nate how to get onto the lake. “Why would you want to?” he says, squinting, a guide for sixteen years on the famous Green in Utah, the Rio Grande, the Nolichucky (his favorite), and the Ocoee; he talks with reverence about gradients and with awe about the braiding of currents, as if he were speaking of a lover’s tresses. As he talks, it looks like he’s seeing the rivers, not you, standing there beside him in the dark in 158 Finding and Smelling the Pigeon front of the little store. You think he may have smoked some marijuana. You declare that you want to paddle up the dead lake to where the Pigeon resurrects itself, and you’re telling this guy Nate you want to fish there. “I wouldn’t eat anything out of there,” he says. The paper mill’s upriver in Canton. You remember what you read, about one river runner coming out at the mouth of the Pigeon, where you want to go, and saying he’d seen a giant ream of toilet paper, that he would never go back there again. The guide has no idea how to get on Waterville Lake, but he wants to know about it after your paddle; he wants a report. “Watch out for trot lines,” he says. Searching for a put-in, you pull off an exit called Harmon Den, and you see a nice little creek, mostly dry, mostly stagnant, that looks like it might make a fun paddle someday. This is no creek, you learn later; this is the Pigeon below the dam, the part that the power company has diverted away from the water that runs through the ten-mile-long tunnel from dam to powerhouse. No wonder you’re confused. You ask at the North Carolina Visitor Center if there’s a detailed map of the area. The woman who’s stocking maps and brochures hands you a state map, no better than what you’ve got. “What are you looking for?” she asks. “I want to get onto Waterville Lake,” you say. “What for?” “To fish.” You’ve brought a fly rod, a spinning reel and rod, and lures in a broken plastic tackle box, the contents of which you will spill three times during this excursion. Fishing, that’s your cover, your alibi; it’s almost normal, and you’ve read that people catch crappie, shellcracker, and blue gill from the lake. One guy said he’d eaten them for years and never got sick. Another said it was “the greatest lake in the world.” “It’s mostly privately owned,” says the Visitor Center lady, “but I’ve seen people fishing under the bridge at Fines Creek, and I think you might be able to get a boat down there. What...