Natchez Trace - Hiking the Blackland Prairie

Then it moved. It made no sound. It did not hurry. 

It crossed the glade, walking for an instant into the 

full glare of the sun; when it reached the other side, 

it stopped again and looked back at him across one 

shoulder while his quiet breathing inhaled and 

exhaled three times.

Then it was gone. It didn’t walk into the woods, the 

undergrowth. It faded, sank back into the wilderness 

as he had watched a fish, a huge old bass, sink and 

vanish into the dark depths of its pool without even 

any movement of its fins.

William Faulkner, "The Bear"

Here we are, moving down into the deep South.  We're camped near Tupelo, just a handful of miles from Oxford, Mississippi, the hometown of William Faulkner.  As we drove down the Natchez Trace Parkway to our campground yesterday, we thought about the deep messages Faulkner conveyed about the South in his novel, "Go Down Moses."  We pondered these deep notions as we planned our hike of the second section of the Natchez Trace National Scenic Trail today.

Kathy and Baxter were excited for this second hike along the Natchez Trace.  Kathy found a little Park Ranger teddy bear that she named, "Ranger Trace Natchez," -- or "Trace" for short.  Baxter seemed to approve of the name:

Here in Tupelo, we are about 180 miles south of the Northern Terminus of the Natchez Trace Parkway:

We visited the Natchez Trace Parkway Visitor Center and gathered all the wisdom the ranger could give us about the Parkway, the Trail and this section.  Then we hit the trail for a 9-mile hike through the Blackland Prairie Section, the second of four hiking sections along Natchez Trace.

This is true Southeastern forest, preserved for the hiker to enjoy much as the original travelers of the Natchez Trace might have enjoyed them -- those bison herds, the Chickasaw warriors, de Soto and his Spanish troops, the Kaintuckians hiking back to Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania after riding the Mississippi south with their crops and goods for market in New Orleans or Natchez.

This forest is moister and warmer than the mid-Atlantic Appalachian forests.  We saw ample numbers of fungi on rotting fallen trees:

Maple, oak, pine and dogwood were our companions as we tramped the trail of history:

North of here, just over the border in Tennessee, we sensed the ghost of poor Merriwether Lewis, the explorer, who, having completed his expedition with William Clark through the western frontier, found himself traveling the Natchez Trace toward Washington, D.C., and, for some unaccountable reason, died of gunshot wounds -- suicide, many say.  Or maybe highwaymen, or some unknown dispute with a fellow traveler.  We pondered this tragedy as we crossed the drainages through the forest.

We were surprised to see some late autumn honeysuckle still providing its fragrance to hikers along the trail --

-- and we spotted many ghosts of old growth trees, chopped down for lumber, whose skeletal roots and trunk bottoms have slowly rotted away to provide food for fungi, moss and lichen, habitat for chipmunks, squirrels and field rodents:

A few bushes still exploded with flowery beauty, but these are fewer and further between as we move deeper into October:

This Blackland Prairie section of the Natchez Trace NST preserves an environment that has been destroyed in many places by human development.

Two hundred years ago much of central North America was covered by vast expanses of grasses and   wildflowers. This prairie stretched from Texas to Canada, and Illinois to Montana. Travelers called it a sea of grass. The prairie grasses and wildflowers formed the base of a food web that supported a rich variety of majestic animals. In addition to birds, reptiles and others smaller creatures, grazers such as elk and pronghorns, and predators like grizzly bears and wolves roamed the prairie biome. The most common large animal living on the prairie was the bison. Some experts think that there were as many as 50 million bison on the Great Plains.  The North American prairie was also home to many Native American peoples.  To understand the prairie biome it is necessary to understand the roles of the plants, the grazers, the predators and fire.  The most important feature of a prairie is the grasses and wildflowers. The plants are the base of the food chain; they help build the soil and their roots hold the soil when the rain falls and the wind blows, and they capture the sun’s energy and feed the grazing animals.  Watercourses, in turn give life to the prairie plant life.

Our trail wound through farmland as well as native prairie and woodland.  Below, the trail edged along a field of soybeans waiting to be harvested:

While this section of the Natchez Trace National Scenic Trail did not boast dramatic beauty, it impressed us with its wealth of plant and animal life and its tranquil beauty.  We enjoyed its gentle, rolling hills and its blowing grasses, bushes and small trees.  Its peacefulness invited us to linger while we lay on the grass enjoying our lunch.  We wanted to stay longer, listening to songbirds, watching migratory waterfowl, discovering the signs of field and woods animals, and occasionally sharing this beauty with the few others we encountered along the trail.

Returning to our campsite, we thought long about the beauty of this landscape.  We can't wait to see what the next section of the Natchez Trace has to offer us.