Woke up to a nice gentle summer shower this morning here in Sumner County, TN, just enough to give the grass a cool drink before the sun bursts through the clouds and sucks the moisture back out of it. These native grasses in our area once drew the great horse breeders that settled here, built their plantations close to the Cumberland River, imported their fine studs from all over and raised horses that could outrun anything that Andrew Jackson could put up against them from his plantation just outside Nashville called The Hermitage. The horse breeders of Sumner County built a race course in the flat bottom of the Cumberland just outside Gallatin and horses would be brought from near and far away to race against the Sumner County horses. The grass was the big draw, as the first Long Hunters that came down the river in the mid 1700's were amazed to find the huge herds of Eastern Buffalo grazing in the river bottoms and in the large grassy meadows that were the results of the Indians burning away the cane and scrub oak as they did so often that gave the grass opportunity to grow and become strong. Two of those Long Hunters, brothers Anthony and Isa.ac Bledsoe, came to stay a few years later and built a log fort just a short distance from where I am sitting on our front porch with my coffee. The younger brother, Isaac, exploring from where the Long Hunters had drawn their canoes up to the banks of an inlet just off the Cumberland and set up a station camp for their hunt, took off to the North East following a game trail through the woods. When he topped the hill, just 5 miles from our old farm house, he said, "there were so many buffaloes gathered in the bottom around the salt lick that I feared for being trampled to death by them". When the two brothers and their families built their Bledsoe Fort, of logs and rock, and started planting the surrounding fields the Indians, who used the area for a common hunting ground, simply responded by killing every settler they could catch in an unprotected situation. The gentle rain that has been falling this morning, running down in little rivulets to join with our creek called Deshea, that finally runs into Bledsoe Creek and then on to the Cumberland, is peacefully chuckling over the rocks and gravel beds. Yes, peaceful Deshea Creek, which got its name from the Deshea family of early settlers that lived on it's banks, and where two of their small sons, walking along our creek in the 1790's, tossing stones in the water to make them skip, were suddenly set upon by Indians and tommyhawked to death and scalped as if they had never been. Yes, the wilderness that we now find so peaceful was once a dark and bloody land and only strong men and women who would not be turned back but came to stay and carve out their homes for the generations to come, were able to tame it. And that first Long Hunter, who topped the hill to see our virgin land, Isaac Bledsoe, was killed in later years as he was gathering more logs to add to Bledsoe Fort, set upon by hordes of screaming savages, cut down and mortally wounded, and scalped as he lay dying, within sight of his Fort. His family became the cornerstone of the area now know as Sumner County, Tennessee, and that bottom land that had all the buffalo around the natural salt rising from the dirt will forever be known as "Bledsoe Lick". And on that property would be built the old stagecoach inn that would be called "Wynnewood" and where, two hundred years later, in reverence to the old ones that came before, I started a show called "Heart to Heart". I had no grand vision for it, other than just to honor my friends and creators of the music that I love. I wanted no script, no format, just friends sitting in a beautiful location and sharing stories and songs to an audience that might care. Today, I quietly sit and drink my coffee on a front porch of an old farm house while the gentle rain falls and runs down to the creek to flow into the Cumberland....and all is well. Thank you Lord for the blessings of simple things like a chuckling creek. -Stan
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