My local church book club read Christy by Catherine Marshall recently. It was a reread for me, something I read 50+ years ago. Early in the month, our fearless leader sent this message to our book chat:
"I started Christy last night and then went down a rabbit hole of learning about the actual Cutter Gap (historic location of the setting for the novel). I kind of want to go see it. Anybody up for a road trip? I bet it's really pretty in October."
And so we planned a fall getaway for the last week in October. We arrived in Del Rio, the location of our VRBO, around five in the afternoon. Hillary and Ronda took off in search of the Appalachian Trail. I wandered outside to snap some pics and to add more steps to my daily total. Trees were beginning to turn fall colors!
We had dinner, played games, and headed out midmorning to scout out Chapel Hollow, Tennessee. Our Google maps did not work on the backcountry roads, but aided by conversations with the locals, we managed to find the Ebeneezer Baptist Church and then followed the signs to the mission property.
As we wandered the back roads, we recalled Christy's arrival. No one was there to meet her in Del Rio because she got off the train one stop too early. She spent the night at a boarding house which is still standing and now a private residence. The Runnion store (where she met the mailman the next morning) is beside the house, but currently vacant. Christy and the postman began their seven mile walk to Ebenezer Mission on foot since a recent snowstorm made travel by horseback impossible.
I'm including a few snapshots from our field trip. We were concerned about the last leg of the journey, a narrow, one-lane, dirt road that might require a four wheel drive! Our intrepid leader piled all of us into one van (no four wheel drive) and off we went. At one point we abandoned the van and decided to walk the rest of the way. And then we met barking dogs! Back into the van we scurried. We were sad that the signage was in such a poor state, but enjoyed standing near each place and imagining it as it might have been when Catherine arrived in late December, 1909.
The best find of the trip was a six page handout about the area, available at our last stop. It included three pages of photos of original settlers, a short history of the mission and a list of characters and locations in the novel with their historical equivalents. This handout included great directions to the mission site which would have super helpful to have at the beginning. However, half the fun for us was in the search!
We stopped for a late lunch/early dinner in Asheville. One group headed home, while the rest of us made a quick stop at a used bookstore in Asheville (perfect dessert for a book club trip).
