Oh, Hohenwald.
Do you know about Hohenwald? It’s a little town in Tennessee, about an hour and a half from Nashville. The name means High Forest, and I can only imagine that it was originally settled by Germans, but that’s not what is really interesting about it. For one thing, it has the nation’s largest elephant sanctuary, a 2,700 acre site where elephants can roam free and unbothered now that they have retired from either the circus or the zoo. It’s not open to the public out of respect for the elephants, but you can see them via “ele-cam” in the organization’s store-front educational center on Main St. But that’s not why we went to Hohenwald last Saturday.
There is also a decades-old hippie commune that is now populated by the children and grandchildren of the original hippie founders. But that’s not why we went.
They even have a small, kitschy museum of natural history, also on Main St., but that’s not why we went (good thing, because it was closed).
We went because Hohenwald, besides being an oddly-named haven for elephants and hippies alike, is also the final resting place of famed explorer, Meriwether Lewis, whom we had been studying in depth all week.
Seriously, can I adequately convey to you my glee that a man we had been learning so much about was buried so close to us??? And under an air of mystery besides! He spent his final night in a small inn on the Natchez Trace, as he made his way from Louisiana Territory to Washington DC to give an account for his governmental mismanagement of the Territory to then-President James Madison. What happened to the man, who died of two gunshot wounds in the wee hours of the morning? Was it suicide…or murder? (Spoiler alert: it was totally suicide, although there’s no way to prove it today that doesn’t involve exhuming the body, a request for which has already been denied by the National Park Service, but I digress).
So yeah. After Luke’s basketball game on Saturday, I loaded the kids up and headed to the Natchez Trace National Park just outside of Hohenwald.
When we got there, we first headed to the informational building, built as a replica of Grinder’s Stand, the inn where Lewis last stayed:
Inside, we read about his life, and the kids enjoyed an interactive exhibit about some of the discoveries that were made on the expedition:
They also found out that the image on many of their nickels was a replica of the “Peace Medal,” which Lewis gave out to Indian chiefs he met along the journey:
This was a nice resolution to a mystery that began when Luke came in one day and announced, “Mom, I’ve found my oldest nickel. It was made in 1803! Wait…no…okay, actually it was made in 2014.” So close:). But now we know why that year was on one side of the nickel, along with the above image.
Afterward, we walked to Lewis’ gravesite and memorial.
His memorial consists of a broken tower, which symbolizes a life cut short. He died when he was 35, which is the age I will turn this year. It’s so strange to contemplate Lewis’ life: his tremendous early accomplishments, followed by his complete failure to readjust to normal life after returning from an amazingly successful and dangerous expedition. He wasn’t alone in his struggle: many of his fellow adventurers on the Corps of Discovery had problems upon reentry, and several ultimately returned to the wild to live out their days among the Indians. It reminds me of what I’ve heard about some participants in the Civil Rights movement, that after such a harrowing and heady experience, normal existence just seemed kind of empty to them. I’m guessing that is also the experience of many soldiers. In Lewis’ case, there is also strong evidence to suggest that he was bipolar, and it is known that he struggled with alcoholism and also was possibly afflicted with dementia-inducing malaria. Regardless, he had written a will during this last trip, and had already unsuccessfully tried to kill himself several times during his final weeks, so yeah…is there really a question of how he met his end?
Even in the winter, the area was so peaceful and comforting. I wish he had been able to find more comfort along this trail.
By the way, the kids totally concluded he was murdered, and I decided to let them hold onto to that theory a little longer. How can 7 and 8 year olds really comprehend mental illness, after all? While I spent the time contemplating Lewis’ inner life, they were playing tag among the trees, happy to be out in sunshine-y weather. Which is how it should be, of course.
Afterward, we drove into town, hoping to visit the tiny museum, which unfortunately, was “closed during the winter months.” What the what?? Whatever, we had fun outside of the museum, where there was an old train car and a depot.
The area around the museum, alas, had fallen into disrepair, leading Luke and Anna to conclude that the inside of the train car reminded them of the crashed plane from the pilot of LOST:
Thankfully, there were no dead bodies (and as to why my kids have seen the pilot of LOST, all I can say is, Don’t judge me…)
Despite its spookiness, the kids loved it, and we were right on Main St., where most of the shops were open and bustling, so it wasn’t unsafe or anything.
It was sad that the museum was closed, but like I said, it was fun to poke around outside. Although, Luke concluded, “I don’t know how anyone stands living in Hohenwald!” What can I say? He’s a city boy at heart:).
