The rock bridge

 We found the rock bridge over the Yellow River on one of our tramps last week. It’s so obvious, you can’t imagine how anyone could not know it’s there.

I mentioned it Feb. 14, 2023 (“The trail that runs nearby”). The old Sandtown Trail, used by native peoples long before the arrival of Europeans, runs north of our house. Rockbridge Road follows the trail, and to get anywhere we have to get on that road. I wondered whether there had been a rock bridge at some point.

I couldn’t find any information. The New Georgia Encyclopedia, a wonderful source for invasive species like me, was silent on this point.

Mark Pifer, who writes about local history, said he thought the rock bridge was not a human construction but a series of rocks or boulders in the Yellow River that allowed a traveler to cross on foot.

Since reading that line, I have been searching.

If you go to Yellow River Park, a county park east of Stone Mountain, you’ll see it. Near the north end of the park there’s an observation deck on the west bank of the river. If you look north, it appears that a rock formation runs across the river.

The bed of flat rock looks like a causeway.

It’s an illusion. From that vantage point, you can’t see the open water near the east bank and you can’t see openings in the rock that allow the river to flow through, falling about a foot.

But you can see why everyone who knows the land would call it the rock bridge. 

It’s a small thing, but to me it points to the divide between those who know the land and those of us who don’t.

Some things are so obvious to those  who know a place that they just don’t mention them. These obvious things aren’t written down. And within a generation or two, the perfectly obvious has to be rediscovered.

I grew up near Abilene, Texas, not far from Fort Phantom Hill. As a boy I heard about the phantom, or ghost, that haunted the ruins of the old fort on the hill.

But, as the writer and historian A.C. Greene pointed out, there was no phantom, just a phantom hill. If you come toward the site using the route of the old Butterfield stage coach, you see what appears to be a hill. It’s another illusion. And it’s another case of people losing touch with a natural feature of the landscape.

I wish it were easier for newcomers to learn about the land. Learning about a place is always harder than it looks.

Source: Mark Pifer, Native Decatur; Decartur, Ga.: Downriver Books, 2018.