Cabin in Harlan County, Kentucky

Last week my wife and I vis­it­ed south­east Kentucky for a few days, spend­ing time in both Harlan and Letcher Counties, where the moun­tain hollers are tight and the sound of a creek is ever-present. It was a return after a five years absence and it didn’t dis­ap­point; we appre­ci­ate the area’s his­to­ry, rugged beau­ty, and hardy people. 

We hiked to the roar­ing Bad Branch Falls, where we sat and ate our PB&J sand­wich­es, like­ly the only peo­ple to see the falls that day. We drove the back­roads, includ­ing the major­i­ty of the Little Shepherd Trail — 38 miles of curvy sin­gle­track road along the spine of Pine Mountain. We walked the trails near where we stayed and mar­veled at the wild­flow­ers blan­ket­ing the for­est floor.

This pho­to was tak­en our first evening; it’s of the 100+ year old cab­in we stayed in, on the grounds of the Pine Mountain Settlement School in Harlan County. We were the only overnight vis­i­tors and enjoyed the soli­tude of their beau­ti­ful trails, tak­ing pur­pose­ly slow walks to enjoy our sur­round­ings. The sweet res­i­dent dog, Lady, intro­duced her­self and accom­pa­nied us on some walks, and then chose to sleep on the porch of our cab­in each night.

The Pine Mountain Settlement School is an impor­tant resource in the region. Their stat­ed mis­sion state­ment is “… to enrich peo­ple and enhance lives through Appalachian place-based edu­ca­tion for all ages.” They are mak­ing a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence in the local com­mu­ni­ties and offer a num­ber of class­es and pro­grams for the pub­lic per­tain­ing to envi­ron­men­tal edu­ca­tion, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, and organ­ic gar­den­ing, to learn more about their work, and I hope you’ll want to, you can go to https://www.pinemountainsettlementschool.com/what-we-do.