According to park documents, Ephraim Bales built this cabin in 1890, and he and his wife Minerva (“Nervy” – love that) raised their nine children here. Can you imagine? Eleven people in a two room house. As a 6’2″ person, I had to stoop to get through the doors, and I was never terribly confident I wasn’t going to hit my head on the ceiling while inside. Must have been a close knit family!
You know, the funny thing about maps, is sometimes it’s hard to tell how much elevation gain a place has… especially if you’re not looking at a topo map. I typically do my planning looking at satellite imagery, so I have a sense for how things sit, but it can be awfully deceiving sometimes. I found this out the hard way when I showed up to the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail in the dark, with the plan to ride my bike in for photos of the Alfred Reagan house and mill. I started up the initial steep incline and thought, well surely this will level off eventually… and it did, only to descend steeply to where the houses all are. The whole way there, I could only think that I was going to have to pedal back out of here. I have a new ebike, but it was frankly no match for these hills. Unlike the Alfred Reagan house, which I had planned out prior to visiting, the Bales house was purely serendipity. I had wrapped up shooting the Reagan house and decided to just stop and look at the Bales house because I was frankly out of breath. While I was looking around I noted Orion directly overhead and thought, well… I’m here… and I don’t really want to come back! Might as well!
What stood out to me with this particular house was the breezeway between the two rooms, and then I also really liked the little corn crib in the background. To set all this up I used multiple exposures to illuminate each area, and also left myself in the frame at the corn crib because I liked how it looked and I thought the scale was cool. This area is so close to Gatlinburg, the light pollution illuminated the foreground pretty significantly, giving it a moon glow look.
After shooting this scene I decided I had delayed enough, and finally bit the bullet and did the climb out, back to the car. I was definitely thankful for the ebike assist, for when I was riding AND walking the bike!
More next week!
–Dan Thompson