The Blank Places on the Map

At some point, exploring the Red River Gorge became a game. I knew the places everyone went. That wasn't enough. I wanted to find the arches that were already documented, partly because finding them taught me how the landscape worked. Cliff lines started making sense. Drainages made sense. Certain rock formations, benches and tributaries began looking different to me.

Then I started asking another question. What about the places where nobody had marked anything? Those became more interesting. If a tributary looked difficult to reach, that wasn't necessarily a reason to avoid it. Sometimes it was a reason to go there. I deliberately chose places other people weren't likely to visit. I followed drainages without attractions marked on them. I worked along cliff lines. I went into terrain that required bushwhacking simply because the difficulty increased the odds that nobody had bothered looking very closely.

That was the game. Find what was known. Then look beyond it. The first time you find something substantial that isn't on the map, the map changes in your mind. A blank space stops meaning nothing is there. It starts meaning nobody has told me what's there yet.

And that is dangerous for someone with my personality. Every tributary becomes a possibility. Every cliff line becomes a question. Every contour on a topo map starts suggesting something.

The result was that I began documenting features all over the Gorge and Clifty Wilderness: arches, waterfalls, overlooks and other formations. Some were small. Some were significant. Some eventually became recognized features. Granddaddy's Arch came out of that process. Lili's Leap came out of it. Fletcher Ridge Falls came out of it. So did Parachute Falls, Tall Twin Falls, Frontier Double Falls and others.

Eventually I wasn't just visiting the Gorge anymore. I was investigating it. And the competition wasn't really with another person. It was with the map. I wanted to know what it didn't know.

Years later, toward the end of my Sheltowee Trace thru-hike, I realized something about that game. I was tired of playing it. In the account I wrote after finishing the trail, I said that I would no longer be “running to find the next arch to document or the next competition.” I wanted the next stage to be about taking Lili with me and showing her these places. That doesn't mean I regret the game.

The game is why I know the Gorge the way I do. It made me go to places I otherwise never would have seen. And every once in a while, I walked into one of those blank places and discovered that the map really was missing something. Those were the best days.