Bebout Hollow: Part I

Connecting and reconnecting, the first steps in a new future

Around Christmas time I once again found myself in the company of Lachlan Bebout, a friend since high school with whom many travels and experiences have been shared. I hadn’t seen him in a long time, about a year and half, as he had spent the majority of the last several years traveling and seeing new places. In fact the last time I saw him was on a road trip we did together that took us to the tip of the Gaspé Peninsula in French Canada. Upon his getting burnt out from a busy year of travels involving multiple states and countries, he decided to return to our native Tennessee and see about being in one familiar place for a good little while.

A side note about Lachlan: He is the very reason I picked up a camera in the first place. Our best friendship started in late high school, just before our senior years, and saw us adventuring and picking through all the hidden gems that East Tennessee had to offer. He was fresh off the heels of Mr. Feathers photography class and brought his camera along for all of these expeditions, and as best friends are so prone to taking each others traits and habits, so too did I start bringing a camera. It was not long before we found ourselves in a healthy rivalry, with one always trying to find an interesting scene or detail before the other, so that we would have our rightful claim to that image. With him having taken the photography class and in turn spurring my own interest, I always felt like I was just a bit behind him. I was always in awe of the subtlety in his eye and his approach, how from the most innocuous places he could fashion such interesting photographs so effortlessly.

He is the inheritor of some 90 acres of forest in Parrotsville, TN. It’s the same land he grew up on, the land he took his very first steps, the place he found his love for the outdoors. It fell into his hands after a horrible tragedy: one October day in 2022, his father, who had been living there in his home for decades, left for work and came back in the afternoon to a pile of rubble and cinders where the home once stood. An electrical fire took the house and with it the two lovely dogs Pluto and Jo and a lifetime of memories, all of it reduced to naught but ash.

The land then sat unoccupied for years as vines grew into the barns yet standing, trees and shrub started overtaking the dirt roads, and earth continues its reclamation the we fight against with all our effort from they very moment a building is completed.

Lachlan invited me to come help out on the land as he takes the first steps towards making these 90 acres hospitable to home and life once more. And of course I accepted, for who doesn’t love helping their friends work on their land? I can think of few things as rewarding as spending a day moving dirt in the sun with someone you’ve known for a decade.

In the same way that I see Lachlan beginning a new phase in a lifelong journey, I saw this as an opportunity to both involve myself through contribution of physical labor as well as document this journey with my cameras. We are both in our 27th year, and these ideas of stability and homeliness are taking stronger roots in our brains while the flowers of adventure are dying out. Helping and photographing this is a way of exploring those newfound desires for stability and making a life for oneself.

Our first task of the day was clearing trees and plants that had begun to encroach upon the dirt road leading up to where the house was. A simple task, but one that needs doing at some point. We slowly made our way up, loppers and axe in hand and a growing pile of dead plant matter behind us. The work was simple and straight forward, a great task for reconnecting with an old friend and connecting with the land.

After an hour or so of cutting and talking, the road led us up to the cinderblock foundation marking the old house’s footprint. I had been to this house before some years ago, and so I had some memory of what it looked like, but in it’s current state it may as well be completely detached from that memory, as if there was nothing ever here but this pile of rubble, so thorough was the destruction. Lachlan walked me through the floor plan, showing me where the front door was, the kitchen, living room, his sisters room, and his room. He walked to the corner where under a layer of dust and ash sat his bed frame. He recalled sleeping in this bed for years, and grappled with the reality that the very metal frame that held his body in rest is now one of the only remnants of this fire. I remember thinking to myself “This will make a great picture”, and so I took a photo.

Our tour of the rest of the house showed us few other surviving artifacts. Rusted metal, some porcelain dishes. Concrete. I remember him saying that even his rock collection was completely disintegrated, not a trace to be found.

Despite standing there with him in the charred skeleton of that family home, a place where memories dance through the mind like wisps in the wind, where one remembers cold nights by the fire and warm dinners and the sound of the cicadas droning coming through the cracks, I was but an onlooker. I do not lay claim to these memories, I do not hold that space dear to my heart, and as such I can not fathom what it means to see all that laid to waste in a few hours and left to be reclaimed by the earth. I do not have to struggle with the reality that all that is now a grey pile, bereft of any mention of a life, family, love. All I can do is witness and honor, and so I took photos.

As we decided our tour of the ruin was complete, Lachlan to the top of the hill behind the house. From there, especially in the leafless forests of winter, one can find a very nice view of the mountains and knobs in the vicinity. He pointed out to me every single knob within view (and even some obstructed by view) and named them all, some names I recognized such as the iconic Mt. Leconte and many others that no one would have any business knowing unless they were a proud local. His knowledge and love of this land is plain and clear.

I remember asking him how much of this 90 acres he had seen. His response: “Probably 100% of it”.

We decided that we had worked enough to warrant a walk through the woods. Lachlan and I have walked many miles through many different woods together, and in fact he is the very reason I even found a love for the outdoors anyway, so I gladly agreed to put down our tools and check out the land.

As we walked we talked about our lives, being burnt out from travels, community, our futures. I remember even in high school him talking about coming back to this land one day and working it, making it his own. In those days it seemed like that kind of experience would so far off in the future, after we dedicated ourselves to seeing as much of the world as we can, for our adventuring hearts would surely never falter. I wouldn’t have expected at that age that all it takes is a decade of living before one starts to start thinking more about the future instead of the present. Being there on that day and seeing the very beginning of the process felt like witnessing a prophecy come true.

As we continued our walk Lachlan spoke about becoming more familiar with the local wildlife of this cove. It’s one thing to recognize some birds and plants when your out in the world, but it’s another entirely to be seeing the very same ones day after day, plants growing and dying with the seasons, birds flying to and from the same tree every day as they feed their young. Watching trees put up new leaves, drop their seeds. I think we all crave to have intimacy and belonging within our place of living, but so rarely do we get the opportunity to have something of our own and develop that intimacy. For this coming familiarity with land I envy Lachlan.

We explored some of the many old barns and buildings that dot the landscape from its many years of use as a farm. Doing this brings me back to the adventures of our youth, where our insatiable appetite for seeing new things led us to walk through many abandoned houses, office buildings, factories, even towns.

After completing a nice loop hike along various ridges and valleys, led by Lachlan’s impeccable internal map of this forest, we returned to the barn that housed all the tools and serves as the main building in lieu of the former house. Our final task: clean up. Any place once occupied by man and then left abandoned is often prone to be the resting place of human junk and detritus, and this land is sadly no exception. We shoveled and raked and swept up a big pile of things that would have been useful to someone at some point long ago and drug it to the inevitable trash pile that always forms when rehabilitating a place. Nearby old cars sit and crumble.

I had a very pleasant time photographing Lachlan and the land as he begins to work it. I knew upon the first invitation that this would be the beginning of a long term project. I intend to make the drive to Parrotsville as often as I can and help with whatever needs doing, and I will always have my cameras with me. Next I intend to bring my 4x5 camera and make some large format photos of the place.

I thank you all for reading this, and welcome your thoughts and feedback.

PS: I had initially thought I would be posting once a week here, and I’m now realizing how bold of a claim that was for me to make. I’m now hoping once a month is a more realistic goal. I am new to this longer form of sharing and I am doing my best.