Nancy Wilson at the Rock Dam in the Belle Meade hunting country / Amber Guy photoHow many times have we heard the old saw that ninety percent of life is just being there? Before hound exercise one evening, members of the Belle Meade Hunt (GA) were challenged by beastly weather. By not allowing themselves to be defeated, they were rewarded by a sight none had ever before seen at a locale in their hunting country that is famously familiar to many traveling foxhunters—the Rock Dam.
Epp Wilson relates their experience.
Yesterday evening was simply magical.
We had a fine group gather for the 6:00 p.m. hound exercise. Horses saddled and ready, we were about to let hounds out when the rain started. Light at first, it got pretty heavy. Then the lightning came with cracking thunder so close that it startled us and our horses at times.
Everyone took shelter under the barn shed rows and waited out the storm. After thirty minutes the sun broke through a light steady rain, and a double rainbow appeared due east of us for a long time. The bottom one settled into the widest rainbow I had ever seen, complete with a full spectrum of vivid colors. That was the first sign that this evening would be special.
We hacked over to the Rock Dam taking the usual jumps. My email fixing the time for hound exercise had invited kids and adults to dismount and walk out onto the rock at the base of the waterfall and over to the far end of the dam; walk through the big crack in the dam; and climb to the top of the dam for a better look at the mill pond basin. Last week the mill pond had been empty. This time of year the water usually leaks through the dam as fast as it comes from upstream!
Amber Guy photo
Ruby, Sam, Neilly, and Lee Dozier, Ashleigh Currier, Clay Bryant and my Sweetheart, Nancy, joined the hounds and me out on the rock. Clay did some exploring then waded back to the home side of the creek. The rest of us walked, slid and scooted our way to the far end of the dam, climbed through the crack and up the slick path to the top of the dam.
Last week there was only a trickle of water there. It was so low that we crossed the creek on foot on the upstream side of the dam. Yesterday the water was about a foot from the top and rising. The wet, dripping hounds swarmed happily around us which made the rocks wetter and slicker than usual. The hounds love time spent at the dam. They swim and play and bump into all of us. The kids loved it.
We had to be extra careful not to get knocked over. If one of us fell, there was nothing to hit but rocks. This time all of us wore helmets to be as safe as possible.
We got a good look at the mill pond upstream and the view downstream and went back down the way we came. Instead of climbing back across the slick rocks at the base of the dam, we walked the kids through the creek over the stepping stones at the crossing.
We got everyone quiet for an announcement.
“For all you chickens who would not tour the dam up close and personal with us, I want you to know what we saw,” I said. “Neilly, please tell them what was on the other side of the dam last week.”
“It was a lot of mud,” she said. “And what was there just now?”
“Water, lots of water,” she said.
“That’s right,” I said. “The rain we just had is running off and coming down the creek and filling the dam. In fact every drop of rain that runs off north of the railroad track in Thomson and west of Main Street runs down to the Rock Dam. Some of it goes through John McNeill’s beautiful lake on Cedar Rock Road, and some of it comes through Dudley Nursery’s ponds. Then it all comes here.
“If we wait long enough it will fill up and run over the top and we will have a waterfall. I wish we could see it.”
Suddenly people started shouting, “It’s a miracle!”
We turned to look. At that moment the water was just beginning to trickle over the top. One thin stream, then another and another, and first thing you know it was three feet across, then four, then five. As we watched and waited the smaller waterfall on the left began. Like the main waterfall, it started as a trickle and grew and grew. The middle waterfall was so large that it was thundering. If Nancy and the kids and I tried to go out there and stand where we had been playing a few minutes before, we would have been swept away. The whole thing had come to life.
Amber Guy photo
We were snapping pictures and admiring what was happening. It was like a painting coming to life. It reminded us of those time lapse pictures that show a flower opening or clouds moving rapidly by.
I have probably been at the Rock Dam forty times a year for fifty years. In all those years and all those trips, I have never seen it fill and overflow. No one else of the forty people on hound exercise had witnessed it either. It was magical.
We always experience nature when we ride horses through field and forest. Well, yesterday, we added to that—the thirty-minute thunderstorm, the double rainbow, and then the runoff filling the Rock Dam to overflowing and then some. The waterfall went from “zero to sixty”in about ten minutes. And it kept getting bigger and bigger after that. Everyone was amazed and humbled. It was a special way to experience the power of nature and the bounty that the Good Lord gives us. It is around us all the time, but yesterday it was manifested to us in a special way.
The only reason we did not stay longer is that it was getting dark, and we had kids and adults and hounds and horses to get back home. It was a wonderful ride in through a low mist or fog—with a backdrop of distant lightning—making it look like a scene from *Braveheart or Last of the Mohicans.*
Back at Boots Hall we celebrated Lee Dozier’s eighth birthday with all the Dozier kids. He blew out all the candles, first try. I bet his wish was to catch a big trout. Then Pete Gilmore taught him and Sam how to arm wrestle. These boys are quick learners. They are strong, too. He taught them so well that they both beat me at it.
What a day! And it came so close to not happening.
If we had given up and gone home because of the heavy rain and lightning, we would have missed it.
If we had not gone to the dam, we would have missed it.
If we had not toured the dam slowly and thoroughly, we would have missed the fact that it was nearly full and rising, and we would have missed it.
If we had not waited another few minutes when we saw it was within a foot of going over the top, we would have missed it.
It was the best hound exercise of the summer. It may have been the best one of my life. It was wonderful sharing that experience of a lifetime with so many of the Belle Meade Family, of all ages—especially the kids! It was like the best hunt of the season on your favorite horse shared with many of your best hunting friends.
The Good Lord wanted us to have that experience. And He helped us see that it might happen while we were there, if we only waited a little longer. Wow, are we glad we waited those few extra minutes. It was another dimension of God’s Most Wondrous Cathedral.
Posted August 21, 2012