Rocks

Brent Burgin of the Native American Studies Center at USC Lancaster guided me around some rocky places.

So I've reached Lancaster, and Lawson, in his delicious prose, describes the surrounding terrain: "The Land here is pleasantly seated, with pretty little Hills and Valleys, the rising Sun at once shewing his glorious reflecting Rays on a great many of these little Mountains."

Which sounds, frankly, exactly like my own feelings as I traverse this lovely Piedmont terrain. I've fallen behind in descriptions and observation, so I'm staying home this week to catch up, hopefully blogging every day this week. Look out!

Lawson noted not just the hilliness but the stone beneath the surface that is responsible for the hills.

"These Parts likewise affords good free Stone, fit for Building, and of several Sorts." Which I see everywhere now -- I passed recently Hanging Rock Battleground, site of a Revolutionary War battle (the good guys won, on August 6, 1780; unlike the Battle of Camden, a few miles south, ten days later, when the Patriots absorbed a butt-whipping). More interesting than the battle to me -- and to Lawsonians, given that Lawson passed through three-quarters of a century before the war -- is the enormous rocks that give the field its name. 

In fact, Lawson describes a specific spot nearby where he stopped and had lunch: "At Noon we halted, getting our Dinner upon a Marble-Stone, that rose it self half a Foot about the Surface of the Earth, and might contain the Compass of a Quarter of an Acre of Land, being very even." This specific spot? As usual, guided by the unerring Val Green, I found it where he sent me. It lies along -- of course -- Flat Rock Road. I sat on that rock and had lunch, like Lawson did. Meanwhile, across from the road is, naturally, a quarry, and down the road a bit I had passed a monuments business, so it's clear we've entered stone territory.

This looks like asphalt rotting back into the earth but what it is is granite poking out.

Yep. All the stone you can quarry.

Here's the story, according to sources more modern than Lawson (I trust Exploring the Geology of the Carolinas for my info and suggest you do too). We've encountered rock and hills because we're crossing the fall line between the flat coastal plain and the hilly piedmont. "Granite forms when a body of magma rich in silica cools slowly deep underground," Exploring tells me. And some 300 million years ago, Gondwana, containing parts of what are now Africa and South America, banged into Laurentia, which contained what is now North America. Together they formed the supercontinent Pangea (think of Cream and Traffic whanging together to form Blind Faith). Anyhow, what with all the pressure and heat of two such enormous bodies you end up smashing and heating the earth's crust, which, "rich in silica," cooled to form granite -- in this case what's called Pageland granite, after the nearby town of Pageland. Because the granite is so tough, it weathers much more slowly than the surrounding earth and you get big pieces of it sticking out -- like here on Flat Rock Road or like on Pilot Mountain or Hanging Rock State Park (both in North Carolina). And I loved eating my lunch on the same flat rock on which Lawson would have sat (it likely extended beneath the road and formed the rock that has since been quarried). 

But what I loved even more was Forty Acre Rock Heritage Preserve, an outcropping of the same granite a few miles away. There the rock -- it's actually only 14 acres, but who's counting -- spreads out and shows its face, collecting water in low places and creating pool ecosystems that support plants like elf orpine, a tiny plant "strictly limited to vernal pools on hard, crystalline rock." It has red berrylike structures, but you don't need me to tell you that; Lawson himself mentions "growing upon it in some Places a small red Berry, like a Salmon-Spawn, there boiling out of the main Rock curious Springs of as delicious Water, as ever I drank in any Parts I ever travell'd in."  Not sure I'd drink of these pools, but the orpine is all over Forty Acre Rock, and I found those vernal pools some of the loveliest microclimates I've ever seen. Take away the graffiti and this is very much like what Lawson would have seen. 

That's elf orpine (diamorpha smallii), which you find all over granite outcrops like these. Lawson did and so did I.

It took a fisheye lens to squeeze in the entire vernal pool atop 40-Acre Rock. The slight acidity of the rain helps make the pools deeper all the time. Thus they last longer, which means more acid on the rock, which means deeper still.

Yes, the rock face is sadly covered in many places with graffiti, and Brent Burgin, the archivist at the Native American Studies Center of USC-Lancaster, who guided me around what he called one of his favorite places, wished aloud he could chase down some of the cretins who defaced the rock with their initials, just to see if they really did last 4-ever with whichever girlfriend those initials were.  He didn't call them cretins, by the way -- that was me.

Anyhow, Brent judged me worthy and took me off the beaten track to what he called the rock house, a place he promised I would never find on the Forty Acre Rock territory if left to my own devices. He provided this description, from the Mills Atlas of South Carolina from 1825:

"We must not omit however the extraordinary rocks in the Lancaster District, which are thus described by an intelligent traveler.

“We proceeded on horseback along the low lands up the creek, proposing first to visit a place called the rock house. After having advanced two miles, we descried at the head of a deep valley, in which we rode, a beautiful cascade of water tumbling from the side of the hill, on which this rock-house stands. This spot is highly romantic. The rocks rise in rude piles above the valley, to the height of about two hundred and fifty feet; crowned occasionally with red cedar and saving. About half way up the hill, is the rock-house, resembling the roof of a house. And at the lower end of it is an aperture, from which a small stream of clear water issues forth; falling over the rocks below into the valley.  We clambered up the side of the hill to the source of the cascade, and found the rock-house to be composed of two large flat rocks; leaning against each other at the top; forming a complete shelter from the sun and rains. The area of this shelter may be about ninety feet in circumference, remarkably dark and cool;  at the bottom, the stream forming the cascade, brawls along over the rocks, and approaches the steep part of the hill, and is precipitated down its side. Upon the whole the cascade of Juan Fernandez, celebrated by circumnavigators, may be more beautiful; as that of Niagra is more grand and sublime; but still this rock and cascade would rank high in ornamental gardening with all those who either for pleasure or pride covet the possession of these natural beauties. "

I will not debase this lovely description with unequal words of my own: "brawls along over the rocks" -- who could write that? Lawson, perhaps, but he never saw it, and I would not have either, had I not had a generous guide. The state of South Carolina would love to create a trail leading to the rock house, but with the constant assaults on Forty Acre Rock by vandals, one can understand their reluctance to proceed. I agree, and thus I tell you about it -- and I will provide images -- but I will not tell you how to get there. If you're good, we'll see later on.

These enormous rocks are just the base of the area known as the rock house.

An old millstone shows that this waterfall once was dammed and did work.

The best part about this segment of the trek leading through boulders -- besides the people, of course; more on Brent and his ilk later -- was that most wondrous of hiking souvenirs, a piece of stone. Every hiker picks up a pretty piece of quartz or some such as a lucky stone, and the right stone hasn't yet presented itself. The rules expressly forbid taking a piece out of a park of any sort, and most natural stones are where they are because Nature wants them there, and Nature I trust and try not to defy.

But in front of Georgia Stone on Flat Rock Road were large pieces of that granite set on edge to keep people from driving onto the property (or into the quarry, I think), and around them were countless shards of rock. (A broken piece of old pottery, I learn, is a sherd, or potsherd, not a shard; I'm pretty sure I'm right on the rock, though.) Without fear that I was defrauding the company, I gathered up a few. A couple went to my wife and sons. A small one (I am scarcely looking for much extra weight) will walk the rest of the way along the Lawson Trek.