Grizzly Athens

by Niklos Salontay

In the aftermath of the civil war, as American technology and society moved westward, someone decided that Appalachia was too damn stubborn to deal with. Rural America modernized; Appalachia stayed old. A stereotype of backwardness was born, reinforced and then accepted. Leave Athens, the only blue fortress in a sea of conservative mores, and it’s clear that after all these years there are still strongholds of the old Appalachia. Knowing this, it’s still hard to believe that there are men living in these forgotten hills. They’re fairly common though—just another facet of rural poverty in this old and impoverished land. Today a photographer, writer and editor trudge through woods of Athens to find one.

The map is beginning to show wear from the constant act of unfolding as we stop for a minute to catch our bearings. After hours of hiking over dried streams and past towering cliffs, to the southern point of the second ridge—we’re getting close. I press the compass to my gut, spin the dial and study the map. The second ‘x’ is less than a quarter inch away now, resting on the highest point of the wooded ridge where the topographic marks come to a head.
We received the map from Kevin Lustic, a recent OU grad who used to scour the hills of Athens for rocks to climb and boulder. It was on these trips that he and a friend discovered two separate men living alone in the wild, one near a cave and the other atop a hill. To reflect their dwellings, Lustic and his friend nicknamed them “Cave Man” and “Mountain Man,” but despite visiting their camps several times, the pair had never spoken with either of the men.
“It’s very eerie to find someone who is trying hard not to be found,” Lustic wrote.

Lustic observed that the Cave Man had moved on from his site months ago, but his directions were too enthusiastic not to look for him.
“If you decide to look for it, I made a little marking in a tree on the left side of the trail,” he wrote. “The mark is a simple three-inch-long horizontal line at eye-level on a smooth-barked tree. If you depart the trail to the left there, you’ll run right into the area. There is a big ravine, and if you follow it upstream you’ll arrive at a small waterfall/large cave.[The man] lived just north and west of the cave (not in it), less than one hundred yards away.”
After passing several marks like the one described, we decide to take a chance and stray off the beaten path.
Our efforts turn up little more than a box turtle. If there ever were a man living in this area, the forest has advanced to cover any trace. We take a moment to investigate a faint beating in the distance, but we lose the sound as we emerge far down the wrong end of our trail. We’ve failed at our first endeavor completely, which means we have no choice but to walk directly into Mountain Man’s camp. We need the pictures. We need the proof.

As we walk towards the second camp, I imagine our encounter with the Mountain Man, just as I’ve done hundreds of times in the weeks leading up to the trip. It usually plays out like this:
We finally reach the top of the hill an unkempt quarter-acre lot in the middle of nowhere. The field is bordered on all sides by trees, tall grass and darkness that form the borders of my imagination. On the far side of the field is a gray tent with blue accents, and I often wonder how that tent doesn’t mold after so much time in the clearing. There’s a rope line hanging between two trees, along which is an assortment of pots, pans and utensils drying in the sun.
In the center of the field there is a bearded man in a plaid shirt, boots fixed over faded overalls. He’s tending a fire quietly, until he suddenly turns his head in our direction and there’s nothing I can do about it. Our eyes meet.

Sometimes I imagine we enter the clearing before he spots us, and sometimes he confronts us before we get to the camp. There’s always something in his hand, and if there isn’t he’ll retrieve it from his tent soon enough. It’s one of four things: a shotgun, a rifle, a machete or a stick of dynamite.
There’s a brief exchange of words before I run. Whether or not my teammates, join me in flight is unimportant because the same thing always happens. Someone gets hurt—gets shot, gets stabbed, gets blown apart—and it’s usually me.
“The best thing to do is act casual—I think,” I scribble into my notepad as we leave the path and begin to climb.

I’ve been trying hard to avoid acting like we’re conducting an investigation—like we’re going to surprise this hermit by rolling into his camp and expose his existence to the world. He’s not hurting anyone, and I don’t want to give him the impression that he’ll have to. Instead, I’m inclined to act as if we’re spying on him, because the only scenario in my mind that we ever walk away from unscathed is the one where we can take the pictures without him turning his head.
We’re all wound up on the trek to the second ‘x’: a peripheral glimpse of a cyclist causes my heart to waste an otherwise vital adrenaline rush. It shows that I’m scared of what can happen out here. When you’re attempting to sneak up on a man who lives in these woods, being an Eagle Scout means nothing. In my mind, the Mountain Man has complete control.

I’m joined in this fear by so many people that I hesitate to call it irrational. In a society where Deliverance was selected for preservation in the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry for its “cultural, historical, or aesthetic significance,” nearly every single person who knew of our intent was worried about our safety. Matthew Greenwood, a filmmaker who was once introduced to an Appalachian mountain man, put it bluntly, “Not in a million years would I consider just wandering into their domain without the accompaniment of some kin or relative or friend,” he said.

It takes a great deal of finesse to climb these hills quietly, and our team is lagging as we pull ourselves up using branches and rocks. There’s an almost unrecognizable can of Milwaukee’s Best on the ground, at one time bright white, it’s now faded by the elements. The first real sign of the guy is a pipe in the brush—a thick, rusted one with a kink in the middle. The photographer enters the clearing and gasps, turning around to face us with wide eyes and a motioning palm.

“It’s good to know where the machete is,” I say.

The machete is as rusty as the pipe, and rests on a 3-foot-high wall of stones that separates the ashes of a fire pit from the brush. To the right there are 13 bottles of Wild Cat Malt Liquor propped upside down to dry out. As we wade through the camp, the photographer begins to snap photos as quickly as she can focus her lens. The clearing is smaller than in my dreams, but no less ambitious.

His shelter is a large green tarp slung over a rope, and storage crates hold canned food and supplies. Cups are gathered around the camp to gather water from the rain, and a clothesline supports a funky green canvas jacket, a single glove and other drying items. Rustles in the brush keep us alert as we examine the site with amazement.

Once we get our pictures, we return to the trail and head straight to the car that will take us home. One large watermelon slush, a shower and a fresh change of clothes are waiting back in town.

Several weeks later, two Backdrop photographers would enter the camp to take more pictures. They’d scale the hill as we had, and come through the trees to find not just the camp, but the creator himself. He’d sit there in the clearing, with clean-shaven cheeks and a blue t-shirt, smoking a hand rolled cigarette and looking entirely unalarmed.
He’d let them take pictures of the camp and of him, and tell them calmly in a voice devoid of country drawl that he didn’t understand why anyone would be interested in his life. A lot of people live like this, he’d say. Then he’d lie and tell them he was 30, even though his tired eyes and birth records sat him in his late 40s. He’d tell them he’d been living here on and off for years now, this stint lasting six weeks already. He’d tell them how he’d paint to pass the time, and handle odd jobs for cash, descending upon the Sunoco in the morning to purchase supplies.

One photographer would return to the camp twice more, but the man would never act so receptive again. The photographer should probably leave, he’d say, he feels sick and doesn’t want to be photographed today. He’s climbed this hill, built this camp and chosen this life for a reason—he wants to live alone, just these trees, this clearing and this camp. It’s the last stronghold from a paranoid culture—a place where not every stranger is dangerous and not every machete is a weapon.

Direct link: http://backdropmag.com/features/grizzly-athens/