The moderate, three-mile walk around the North Carolina home of Carl and Lilllian Sandburg includes an abundance of healthy hemlock trees.
Leonard M. and Laurie Adkins
The Sandburg home is reflected in Front Lake.
It’s a good bet, especially if you are of a certain age, that part of your schooling was to memorize the poem that begins with these words:
Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler
While Carl Sandburg may have romanticized modern industrialism with “Chicago,” he was also a proponent of the quieter side of life, given that he also wrote:
It is necessary now and then for a man to go away by himself and experience loneliness; to sit on a rock in the forest and ask of himself, “Who am I, and where have I been, and where am I going?”
Leonard M. and Laurie Adkins
Sloping rock faces are a feature of the trail.
Sandburg moved from the Midwest to Flat Rock, North Carolina in 1935 and a visit to his home, Connemara, enables visitors to walk on the same pathways and sit on some of the same rocks he did as he composed his poetry and prose.
The moderate walk of a little more than three miles roundtrip, with an elevation gain of 625 feet, begins at Front Lake next to the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site’s main parking area. The lake was created in 1855 to provide recreational opportunities such as boating and swimming. Ice was also cut from it in winter to chill perishable food during summer’s warmer temperatures. Today, the lake’s surface mirrors Sandburg’s house situated on the hillside above.
A trail to the left of the lake rises through a forest of rhododendron and hemlock. Eastern hemlocks and Carolina hemlocks, both native, abound around the lake and in the forest above the house. The park service is using an insecticide to combat the hemlock wooly adelgid infestation that is killing hemlocks throughout the Blue Ridge and, thankfully, Connemara’s trees are responding well.
About a half mile into the walk, the park service has placed a bentwood chair situated on a large slab of rock to illustrate that Sandburg often sat here contemplating the verses he would write.
Leonard M. and Laurie Adkins
The Sandburg home is reflected in Front Lake.
Just a few feet away, his home sits overlooking fields and forest. Tours (nominal fee) are 30 minutes long, but if your time is limited, be sure to at least take in the orientation movie to better understand what you’re seeing on your walk. Access to the home is, of course, COVID-dependent.
Lillian Sandburg’s desire for a warmer climate and more room to raise her internationally acclaimed herd of goats brought her and her husband to North Carolina. The goats wandering in and around the barn represent Lillian’s herd and, since visitors are welcome to pet the young ones, this is often the historic site’s busiest and most gleeful spot.
Beyond the barn, the orchard and the trout pond (which Sandburg never used), the Glassy Mountain Trail—a pathway more than 100 years old—rises past benches to attain its namesake summit. Although vegetation has grown up to limit the views of the Great Smoky and Blue Ridge Mountains the Sandburgs enjoyed, nearby ridges still frame the horizon.
On the way back to the parking lot, be on the lookout for the abundance of wildflowers that may have been overlooked on the outbound trek. A book of pressed flowers created by Sandburg’s daughter, Margaret, included trailing arbutus, bluets, violets, fire pink and Indian pipe.
Breakfast?
OK, maybe it’s not really healthy, but would you pass up fresh baked cinnamon rolls with cream cheese icing from nearby Honey and Salt (honeyandsaltnc.com), less than a mile from Connemara?
When You Go
DIRECTIONS: Take 1-26 Exit 53 south of Hendersonville, NC, follow Upward Road westward for 1.3 miles, continue straight on North Highland Lake Road, go another 1.1 miles, turn left onto NC 225, continue an additional .8 mile, turn right onto Little River Road and come to the parking area in .2 mile.
MORE INFORMATION: A trail map is atnps.gov/carl.
Find out more about Leonard’s walking and hiking adventures at habitualhiker.com.
The story above first appeared in our May/June 2021 issue. To get more like it, subscribe today or log in with your active BRC+ Membership. Thank you for your support!