Saying “Goodbye”
We are now saying “Goodbye” to our 29-year-old wilderness home in the rolling hills and wilderness of Bethpage, Tennessee.
We had many amazing, once-in-a-lifetime events, which I captured on video and photos.
So many memories there…
Below is a fun “Ride on Skillet Ridge” video I made one day when it was so cold out and there was absolutely nothing to do because of all the ice and snow on the ground.
In the wilderness… You have to be creative to have fun. This was just one spot of fun that I recorded.
Next up… the not-so-fun “big” events.
They were rather scary, but nonetheless, I kept a camera in hand and rolling the whole time…
“The Flash Flood of 2010” put Nashville under 20+ feet of water for over six months, and it was closed for two years to rebuild.
I was born and raised in the Swamps of the Deep South of Louisiana, so I knew all too well about storms and flooding, so I moved to the hills…
I never dreamed I would see this in the hills after leaving Louisiana…
Next was the “Super Tuesday Tornado” that hit in 2008.
A massive and historic F3 tornado that ran on ground for over 50 miles, it blew up the Natural Gas Pipeline Pumping station just over a mile away and the second funnel that dropped on Westmoreland, I caught that one on the back porch, completely unaware and clueless of what I was filming when I was in the wilderness alone. My little Pomeranian pups and I had just been pummeled by hail that sounded like the size of basketballs hitting the roof.
I grabbed my video camera while trying to discover what I had just gone through, not knowing I was filming tornadoes… I knew nothing of what was happening until the phones reconnected and the power was back on. Our house was sitting at the base of the cliff, so the home spot was sitting in an “Eddy Current” for the winds. Everything was still and not moving much where I was standing on the porch, looking up and out, overhead. Out there where we lived, after dark, there were never any cars or trucks driving through there after 8 p.m. Only a few families lived out that way, and when they went home, they stayed home. So, when I saw people driving, it was very odd for this location at that time of night.
Everything went completely dark and silent hours before this storm came over the roof.
In the wilderness, we did not have cable, analog television, or reliable phone signals, so I had no warning. Even the radio struggled to get a signal where we were located on this farm.
Our home site was just under a cliff, and that hill and cliff lofted the tornado funnel over the top of where I was standing. It was turning in the sky above my head and dropping on the hill in front of me, on camera.
I had no idea that the fire I was seeing was the natural gas pipeline pumping station… shooting flames 500 ft. in the air.
These are just a few things we saw, experienced, and captured on video and with camera stills in the wilderness.
Saying goodbye is bittersweet, but since I am older and a grandmother now, we are building a new life on flat ground at our new wilderness location in Bumpus Mills, TN, to capture new videos and photos of new adventures in the West Wilderness of Tennessee.
More to come as building the “New Wilderness Home” has begun…