The only sign that anyone has ventured this far before are two rusty 55-gallon drums riddled with bullet holes, the remains of a moonshiner's still.
Here, in a lowly puddle, the Catawba River is born.
Cool, clear water seeps up ever so silently from a spring beneath the ground into a bed of rotting leaves. It trickles away slowly, almost imperceptibly, a thin thread lost beneath the rhododendron.
Most of us know the Catawba far downstream, where we have dammed it up and created huge lakes, where we fish and play and live in luxury homes. For years, it has quietly sustained us. We have drawn our drinking water from it and dumped our waste into it, used it to irrigate lawns, cool nuclear reactors and fuel factories.
Every time we turn on a light, or brew iced tea, or flush toilets, that's the Catawba. It is one of America's hardest-working rivers. Yet only in a drought do many of us even consider what it does for us.
It may sound far-fetched, as beautiful and abundant as the river is, but if we continue making demands, the Catawba could one day run so low and so dirty, you could turn on your faucet and nothing would come out.
Water, the experts say, is one of this century's biggest environmental challenges.
The Catawba is not polluted the way New York's Hudson River once was. But the drought has made it clear that we can't keep going the way we're going, consuming so much water and electricity, and destroying the forests that help keep our river clean. There soon may be too many of us and not enough of the Catawba.
That is why South Carolina is fighting North Carolina over rights to the water. (I'll write about that next Sunday.)
And it's why up here in the mountains of McDowell County, where the Catawba is a river in name only, an elderly man has made it his duty to protect the source. He is Arthur Joe Hemphill, and he let me hike across his property to where the river -- and our journey along it -- begins.
Ancient treasure
If you're new to this area, you may wonder why the Catawba is called a river. On the state map, it's obviously a necklace of 11 lakes connected by a few free-flowing stretches.On a map from 1900, you can see the river that the Catawba once was. It flowed as a river for millions of years, attracting Indian settlers, and later Europeans, and then James B. Duke with his plan to control the waters and the land around it.
His company, Duke Power, engineered the Catawba into a series of lakes by damming up the water to produce hydroelectricity. The headwaters are one of the few sections that still flow like a river.
Hemphill wants to keep it that way.
The Source
We met over coffee one chilly morning in February at the Front Porch Grill in Black Mountain. His friends call him Joe, and he invited me to call him that, too. He is a retired police chief, "just an old country boy," he said.
When he speaks of the Catawba, and his passion to protect it, he speaks with wisdom born from years of watching development transform these mountains where his forebears settled in the 1700s.
"Pollution is everywhere," he told me, and surely you have to agree, especially around Charlotte and other cities along the river.
"Now, the pollution is starting up this way." There was sadness in his voice as he continued, "It's worse than terrible to a boy like me who loves the forest."
If we can't keep the headwaters pure, he believes, there's no use trying downstream.
I rode up the mountain with Joe, who is 76, and his wife, Mary, to see where the river begins. Three main springs feed the Catawba, and the one near their land is the farthest west and considered to be The Source.
We talked along the way about the ecology of forests and how folks in these parts used to take their lush, beautiful woods for granted. About three-fourths of McDowell County is wooded, much of it national forest. As pretty as the trees look, they also serve a purpose, as they do everywhere: slowing down rainwater and controlling erosion.
Developers are devouring the private land, converting rugged, steep forest into roads and houses, and in many places there's little soil left to soak up water during heavy rains.
It's easier to get away with that type of development in the Piedmont, where the land is flatter. Up in the mountains, it could cause flooding downriver for 100 miles, all the way to Charlotte.
A very important puddle
Joe and Mary believe the land around the source should not be tampered with. It is home to black bear, wild turkey, deer and other animals they feel as much responsibility for as they do for the river.They might have made $1 million selling their 328 acres to a developer. Instead, they sold an easement on their property to Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy for $465,000 and tax benefits. The agreement protects the land forever from development and allows Joe and Mary and their heirs to use it.
They didn't do it for their children. Joe and Mary don't have children. They did it for your children and mine.
"I want to go to my reward when I die," Joe said, "and know that it will be safe for future generations."
The water runs so pure at the source, Joe said he drank it for years and would still drink it if he had the strength to hike up. I left him and Mary at a picnic table beside the river and walked up with their friend Chip Craig as my guide. It took us less than an hour, along the old wagon trail, past brambles and over fallen limbs. When we reached the ridge, Chip pointed to a puddle 100 yards or so below.
The Catawba River.
This was it. The source of the mighty Catawba, source of electricity and water to more than 1.3 million people, beginning its meandering descent through mountains, piedmont and coastal plain to the Atlantic Ocean.
This was it. A puddle.
With so many rotting leaves and limbs in the water, I wasn't about to drink it. I scooped some up in a jar. I keep it on my desk. It looks nearly as clear as bottled water from the vending machine.
Next to it, I keep a sample from Mountain Island Lake that I took not far from the intake pipes for Charlotte's water supply. The bottom of that jar is coated with filth.
Wider, deeper, stronger
I drove back to Black Mountain a few weeks later to hike with Chip in the opposite direction, following the river from Joe and Mary's property down toward the town of Old Fort.
It was a pleasant walk, sheltered from the sun by rhododendron and hardwoods. Chip, a Realtor in Black Mountain, loves these woods as dearly as Joe and Mary do. He detoured off the trail and pointed out gashes in a tree trunk about 8 feet up: claw marks of a black bear.
As Joe's property gave way to Pisgah National Forest, we passed streams feeding the river from left and right, swelling the Catawba to about 6 feet across. Hundreds of these streams nourish the Catawba, forcing the river wider and deeper and stronger.
Here at the headwaters, the river usually flows ankle-deep, a lazy, shallow brook meandering over and around rocks. The old wagon trail tags along beside it, and in a few places the trail crosses the river.
We crossed with it, jumping from rock to rock or wading. After a mile or so, the rhododendron thinned to a clearing, and we saw blue sky again.
Jutting into the river there are remains of a stone dam built by an entrepreneur who tried to harness this part of the Catawba for electricity the way Duke Power did downstream. Col. Dan Adams abandoned his plans after a drought in 1925, when the Catawba ran so low, grass grew on exposed river bottoms.
The river forces its way between what's left of the dam, a passage a few feet wide. It swells again, then suddenly drops from sight.
We heard a roar.
We hurried down the trail, and as we rounded a corner, the air felt cool and thick with mist. We pushed through an opening in the bushes to see a waterfall, plunging 70 feet down a towering rock face into a natural amphitheater. The explosion was so loud, we had to shout to be heard.
These are the Upper Falls, the jewel of the Catawba River.
We sat on large rocks dressed in soft green moss, mesmerized by this force of nature. It was hard to imagine in this hidden corner of forest that the water rushing down these rocks would find its way into the urban center that is now Lake Norman.
Here, wilderness cradles the river.
From a roar to a trickle
That was in March.I hiked back up at the end of September with Ron Richardson and Nick Stafford of Old Fort. We approached from below this time, using ropes to scale some of the rocks.
This time, there was no roar. This time, it sounded like just another stream flowing down the mountain.
The falls had lost their power.
Water fell in only a few places, so thinly it seemed as if we could see each line of droplets. The moss I slipped on in March was faded and brittle, and we didn't need to shout to be heard.
Over the six months since I first visited, about 8 inches of rain fell. That's nearly 16 inches less than normal. The springs that supply the tributaries of the Catawba were drying up. We hiked over creek beds with nothing in them but rocks.
As low as Lake Norman has shrunk from the drought, it's still a lake with deep water. Here, the river has dwindled to a stream.
Down the mountain
From the Upper Falls, the Catawba picks up speed, tumbling through woods and over rocks to the nearby Lower Falls, a graceful, cascading waterfall that stretches over a series of drops.
The river passes the remains of another, larger dam, and by a stone building that served as Col. Adams' power plant in the early 1900s.
After a few more miles through the countryside, it joins with another branch not far from the McDonald's in Old Fort. From there, it flows north and east for 20 miles, dropping over smaller waterfalls, through woods, under Interstate 40, past houses, factories and fields until it empties into Lake James.
These headwaters once flowed undisturbed. But that is changing.
Rusty Rozzelle, who manages water quality in Charlotte, is watching what happens here because what happens upstream affects us downstream.
The next few years, conservationists predict, will determine the fate of much of the undeveloped land that's left -- and of the river that runs through it.
Monday: An electrician in Morganton challenges development around Lake James. That's where we head next. Part 1 of 8
Story Behind the Stories
Reporters Bruce Henderson and Elizabeth Leland grew up on opposite ends of the Catawba River. Bruce was raised in Morganton not far from the source, and fished in Lake James. Elizabeth sailed in the Cooper River near her home in Charleston, where some of the water coming from the mountains empties into the Atlantic Ocean. Photographer John Simmons grew up fishing on the Mississippi, which flowed about a mile from his home in St. Louis.
How You Can Help the Catawba
Over eight days, we'll give you choices about ways you can help the river.• Foothills Conservancy of North Carolina took out a loan this summer to buy land leading to the Upper and Lower Falls, and hopes to sell the land to the Forest Service so the public can go there. The conservancy needs contributions and is offering guided hikes. www.foothillsconservancy.org, 828-437-9930, 135 1/2 W. Union St., Morganton, NC 28680.
• Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy is dedicated to protecting this area. www.appalachian.org, 828-253-0095, 34 Wall St., Suite 502, Asheville, NC 28801.
`River Docs': A Catawba River Narrative
A new exhibit documents our connection to the river through photography, fabric installation and interactive media. It features work by photographers Byron Baldwin, Raymond Grubb and Nancy Pierce; installation artists Marek Ranis and Maja Godlewska; and digital artist Mike Wirth.
WHEN: Nov. 15 -- Feb. 22; Opening reception, Nov. 15, 7--9 p.m., with performances and historical presentations.
WHERE: The Light Factory, Spirit Square, 345 N. College St.
TICKETS: Free. DETAILS:
704-333-9755, www.lightfactory.org
The Series
Today: The source of the threatened Catawba River.
Monday: The struggle to save Lake James.
Tuesday: A developer's plan for his land around Lake Norman.
Wednesday: Protecting Mountain Island Lake, Charlotte's water supply.
Thursday: A lakefront landfill at Wylie.
Friday: At Landsford Canal, a surprising water garden.
Saturday: A revival for Great Falls, S.C.
Sunday: At Lake Wateree, how many demands can one river take? Part 1 of 8
