When the weather starts turning cold, I get a little homesick for Haywood County. I start craving foggy mornings, mountainsides dressed in every shade of red and gold, woodsmoke curling out of chimneys, and those long walks in crisp mountain air.
Mamaw and Papaw took me on all sorts of hikes when I was growing up. They drug me all over those mountains, from Cataloochee to Smokemont to the Pink Beds. I didn’t appreciate it as much as I should have. Kids don’t always understand that the ordinary days they’re living will one day become the memories they’d give just about anything to have back.
These days, I’d give a whole lot to squeeze into the middle of that old bench seat in Papaw’s truck one more time, wedged between the two of them, and head up the mountain with nowhere particular to be and all the time in the world to get there.
Soco Falls was always one of my favorite spots.
That might seem a little backwards to folks who think waterfalls are best enjoyed in the summertime, when you can wade into the cool water and escape the heat. And don’t get me wrong, Soco Falls is beautiful in summer. But there’s something about seeing the falls in autumn that makes them even more special. Maybe it’s the way the white water stands out against the dark, damp woods. Maybe it’s the colored leaves scattered across the forest floor, or the quiet that settles over the mountains after the summer crowds head home. Whatever it is, I’ve always thought fall was the best time to visit.
Soco Falls sits just off Highway 19 between Maggie Valley and Cherokee, on the Cherokee side of Soco Gap, not far from the Blue Ridge Parkway. What makes it so special is that you’re not looking at just one waterfall. You’re looking at two.
Brush Creek and Soco Creek come together in a pair of cascades that tumble down the mountain side by side. The gap itself has always been a natural doorway through these ridges, the eastern edge of the Qualla Boundary, and for a long time a route people used to pass between the valleys. Standing there, with the mountains falling away in every direction, it’s easy to see why the place has always mattered.
Of course, if you’ve visited Soco Falls lately, you’ll notice that things have changed.
For years, getting to the falls meant pulling into a tiny gravel turnout on a sharp curve in Highway 19 and hoping you could get in and out without somebody taking off your bumper.
Last year, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians opened a larger parking area farther from the falls, complete with picnic tables, benches, and an informational kiosk. The old pull-off was fenced off, and the falls reopened that summer with improved viewing decks and a new trail leading down to a lower viewing platform.
Now, y’all know how I feel about change. I’m not exactly its biggest fan. I understand why the improvements were necessary, and that old curve was a dangerous place to stop. Making the area safer was the right thing to do.
But understanding why something changes doesn’t mean you have to like watching it happen.
There’s a part of me that still looks at that fence and feels like somebody has closed the door on a little piece of my childhood. I think about Mamaw looking down on me and Ebie from the old viewing platform. I think about the first time Brandon saw those falls, and how he went quiet for a minute, the way he does when something catches him off guard. I remember Daddy and me crouching in the shallows one afternoon, turning over rocks and watching for hellbenders like nothing else in the world mattered. The water was cold on our hands, and every so often one of us would look up and grin because we’d spotted a flash of mottled skin sliding under a ledge. It felt like we had the whole mountain to ourselves.
Those memories weren’t made in a new parking lot beside an informational kiosk. They were made at the little gravel pull-off, where I could hear the water before I ever caught sight of it. They were made on the old trail, surrounded by my family and the mountains all around me. They belong to a version of Soco Falls that some of us will always carry in our hearts, no matter how much the landscape changes.
Places like that aren’t just pretty scenery. They’re tied up in the people we love, the things we did together, and the pieces of ourselves we left behind along the way. You can build a new parking area and improve a trail, but you can’t recreate the afternoon your daddy took you hunting for hellbenders or the first time your husband stood beside you and saw something that took his breath away.
I do worry about what comes with making places like Soco Falls more accessible. More visitors can mean more litter, more pressure on the trails, and more people wandering off where they shouldn’t. Sometimes, when a place becomes easier to find, it becomes harder to find the very thing that made you fall in love with it in the first place: the quiet, the solitude, and that feeling of being a little removed from the rest of the world.
Still, I’ll keep going back. The water will keep falling the same way it always has, whether the trail is old or new. And every time I stand there in the fall, with the leaves underfoot and the sound of both creeks in my ears, I’ll remember the people who took me the first time. Mamaw and Papaw, the old bench seat, the cold water on my hands, all of it is still right there waiting for me every time I come back.
And no matter how much the world changes, nobody can fence that off.
