Jason and I pulled off the Blue Ridge Parkway, turned down a gravel road, and drove straight to Travis Proctor's log cabin. If I had woken up on his front porch, I would swear I'd gone back in time to the year 1750. Travis is a gardener, hunter, and hiker, and he has spent forty years learning to live off his land. I feel for him on his occasional grocery store trips — at $40 a week, I don't know how he affords to get back home.
His eleven acres are tucked between the Parkway and a National Forest; nobody will ever build close to him. It is as remote and peaceful a place as you will find anywhere. For those folks who yearn for serene surroundings, eat your heart out. And if you love history, Travis will gladly hike you through ten miles of pure wilderness down Lost Cove Creek — but once you start, there's no meeting a road, not even a dirt one.
The cabin started as a kit. Travis watched as each individual log was hoisted into place by a crane, but after that it was all Travis. Living down in the basement for two years, he plumbed it, wired it, and chinked between every log himself. In his video he walks us through a root cellar dug back into the earth — a natural refrigerator that runs ten degrees cooler than the air outside, where potatoes and apples stay good and edible right up until spring planting. Now you will probably say something like: Come on man, you are pulling my leg. But don't forget, he lives at 3,500 feet, where the temperature might reach 75 once or twice in August . It's exactly how the pioneers survived the winter, and it still works today.
In the video, Travis explains how his apple cider press works. Load the apples in the top, the gears turn and crush them into pulp that we put in a sack. If you squeeze that sack hard enough the juice seepes out — and in no time you get a gallon of apple cider.
One time I heard a man say, "I am not about to pay for something the good Lord gives us for free." Travis must have talked to that same man. For forty years, a spring on his property has kept his six-hundred-gallon reservoir full of water — for free — and Travis drinks it every day. He tests it regularly for bacteria, and it always comes back clear. The spring house keeps that water at a steady fifty-five degrees year-round; even in the dead of winter when the temperature is below-zero the spring never freezes. For seven years, he ran a solar rig that heated five-hundred gallons of water 130 degrees and warmed his whole house. But some of those fifty miles an hour mountain winds put that operation out of business.
That's right, things aren't always serene off the parkway — Mother Nature flexes her muscles now and again. Ice storms and other harsh weather elements can send bears and other hungry creatures looking to rob his root cellar. Travis lost over three hundred fish after the last hurricane came through the High Country. The storm washed the river otters' food away, and those otters — reintroduced across the Catawba Valley — followed Lost Cove Creek right up to his ponds and cleaned him out of fish. Now, otters look harmless and are fun to watch playing in the river, but Grandfather Mountain, which keeps them in its wildlife habitat, calls them one of the most dangerous animals there. Their powerful bite can snatch any slippery fish underwater in a heartbeat. Cute, and a killer, all at once.
For all his homesteading, you might think Travis has no time for a hobby. But he is quite the artist with wood. In the video he shows us a table of ash framed in walnut, a bowl turned from hackberry, and walnut slabs where he'd filled the natural holes with epoxy to let that beautiful grain shine through. Every time I step into his living room, I notice something I missed the visit before.
We have only scratched the surface, and are already scheduled round two — so keep an eye on the blog for Travis Part II. But chew on this question until then: how does a man drink untested spring water for forty years, lose three hundred fish to a pack of otters, and still call this the most rewarding life there is? The answer is all through Travis's ride-about.
Watch Travis Proctor's ride-about — the cabin, the root cellar, the spring, and the otters.
Climb into our backseat — subscribe and ride along with Alton & Jason every week.
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