Traveling down Highway 64

Posted 5/22/19

On a mission nostalgic, I made a Sunday-like drive up North Carolina’s mountainous Highway 64. 

 I was retracing the route I’d traveled with my parents long ago. We’d take off …

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Traveling down Highway 64

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On a mission nostalgic, I made a Sunday-like drive up North Carolina’s mountainous Highway 64. 
 I was retracing the route I’d traveled with my parents long ago. We’d take off early on a Sunday and get back well after dark.
 Loaded down with camera gear, water, coffee, luggage, and an old-fashioned map, I struck out on a Wednesday. I worked my way over to the Chattooga River on Highway 76 and from there I turned north on Highway 23 until I intercepted Highway 64. 
Down Highway 64, I ran into a string of towns: Highlands, Cashiers (“cashers”), Brevard, Hendersonville, Chimney Rock, and Lake Lure. Mom and Dad spent their honeymoon at Chimney Rock, a fact not lost on me when I checked into the Esmeralda Inn. “Esmeralda.” Is there a prettier word in the English language?
Emerald hills and white cascades accompanied me on this nostalgic, literary trek. And so did rocks. Massive boulders and sheer rock faces glistened here and there thanks to seeps, rivulets, and waterfalls. 
If you haven’t been to this region in a long time, you’re in for a shock. Places once tucked into woods stand exposed and surrounded by businesses. This world could use a plague. Yeah, I said it.
In the hills, green slopes confine your vision to what’s in front of the windshield. Round a bend and the earth drops away. Round a curve and a waterfall thunders away. Climb a switchback highway and you drift through clouds. 
Two places, in particular, intrigued me. I wanted to see again Carl Sandburg’s home and I wanted to stay at the Esmeralda Inn. 
At Sandburg’s home, Connemara, development has squeezed in close. You drive through suburbia to reach the parking lot. Wasn’t that way sixteen years ago, and it sure wasn’t like that when Sandburg’s wife tended her goats there. 
And Connemara? That’s a mouthful. William Faulkner called his home Rowan Oak. Big shot writers name their homes. Well, I have a name for mine, too. I call it home. 
I like to think that Mom and Dad honeymooned at the old Esmeralda Inn (it burned in 1997). In the early 1900s, the Esmeralda Inn provided a setting for silent films.
Mary Pickford, Gloria Swanson, and Clark Gable stayed at the old inn to escape the crowds. Lew Wallace finished the script for Ben Hur in Room 9. Years later, Hollywood re-discovered the region while filming Dirty Dancing here. 
Remember Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Gray’s dance scene? Well, you walk that very floor when you check into the Esmeralda Inn, a beautiful, luxurious, quiet escape from the harassment of daily life.
I stared at that floor recalling the “Mashed Potato” and other songs from Dirty Dancing. You can, too. 
Nearby, the Broad River purls and above it a cliff brings to mind Yosemite’s El Capitan. That’s embroidery, nonetheless it’s a sheer, dangerous face that looms over the Broad River and Lake Lure. 
Highway 64. It gave me a chance to relive old memories and see where the poet who wrote Abraham Lincoln, The Prairie Years worked. Best of all, it gives me a chance to say that beautiful word, “Esmeralda,” now that I’ve returned to the flatlands.

down south, tom poland, dirty dancing, highway 64

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