The Trail I Have Never Found Again
Old Man's Cave, Middle Earth, and the pleasures of losing your way
The first time I visited Hocking Hills was about fifteen years ago with some friends. Somehow, we ended up on one of the more challenging trails.
At least, I assume it was a trail.
We climbed over enormous boulders and jumped down the other side to continue following what appeared to be a trail. We walked for hours, farther and farther into the forest, until we found a stone staircase that took us even lower into the gorge.
It was beautiful. It was also becoming increasingly unclear whether we knew where we were. We simply followed the path, but we didn't know the destination.
By late afternoon, we finally came upon a parking lot. This was encouraging until we realized it was not the parking lot where we had left our car. Our car was apparently somewhere on the other side of Hocking Hills, and the sun would be going down in a couple of hours.
We considered our options and eventually approached a couple who did not look like serial killers. This was the full extent of our screening process.
We explained what had happened and begged them to drive us back to the main parking lot. There was no dignity in it, at all. They seemed to feel sorry for us fools, did not murder us, and returned us safely to our car.
It was an exhilarating and very enjoyable day with friends, nonetheless.
I have been back to Hocking Hills many times since then, but I have never been able to find that trail again. I have looked at maps and tried to recognize the boulders and the stone staircase. Nothing has ever looked quite the same.
Maybe we wandered onto a trail that has since been rerouted. Maybe my memory has combined several parts of the hike into one long adventure. Or maybe it wasn’t a trail at all.
That last possibility seems increasingly likely.
Whatever route we took, it introduced me to one of the most magnificent places in Ohio.
Hocking Hills doesn’t feel like Ohio once you descend into the gorge. The enormous sandstone cliffs, caves, stone bridges, waterfalls, and paths winding through the forest make it feel more like Middle-earth. I would not be completely surprised to see Frodo and Samwise Gamgee coming around a bend, although Sam would almost certainly have packed adequate food and known where they left the car.
Old Man’s Cave is actually a large recess in the sandstone rather than what we usually think of as a cave. It was named for Richard Rowe, a hermit who lived there in the early nineteenth century with his two dogs. He had traveled into the Hocking Hills region while hunting, found the cave, and made the area his home. He reportedly lived there for the rest of his life and is buried beneath the ledge.
I can understand why he stayed.
The gorge feels like a hidden world. It is cooler beneath the trees, and the rock walls, moss, ferns, and falling water seem to separate it from everything above. Trails disappear behind cliffs. Bridges cross streams and deep crevices. Stone staircases lead down to places you could not see from above.
Perhaps some of them also lead to parking lots miles from your car.
Old Man’s Cave is divided into several areas, including the Upper Falls, Upper Gorge, Middle Falls, Lower Falls, and Lower Gorge. The names in Hocking Hills—Old Man’s Cave, Devil’s Bathtub, Cedar Falls, Ash Cave—only add to the feeling that you have entered a story. They sound like places marked on one of Tolkien’s maps.
Hocking Hills is understandably popular, especially on summer weekends. Sometimes the parking lot fills, and cars circle while drivers look for someone who might be leaving. Once you find a space, you join a steady stream of people heading toward the trail.
Most visitors are respectful of the place. They have come for the same reason you have: to see the waterfalls, walk through the gorge, and spend a few hours somewhere beautiful. But when the trails are especially busy, hiking through Old Man’s Cave can feel a little like waiting in line for a ride at Disney World.
You walk a few feet and stop. Someone takes a photograph on a bridge. A family pauses to gather everyone together. People coming from opposite directions meet on a narrow staircase and patiently work out who should go first.
None of this ruins the experience. The gorge remains magnificent, and I would not tell anyone to stay away simply because the only available day is a Saturday in July. Go. It is worth seeing.
But a weekday offers something different.
On a weekday morning, there is room to stop on a bridge and look down into the gorge without worrying about blocking the people behind you. You can hear a waterfall before you see it. You can take your time climbing the steps and following the trail through the forest.
You can experience the place at your own pace.
Without as many people around, you begin to notice smaller things: tree roots wrapped around rocks, ferns growing in crevices, and the changing colors of the sandstone where water has passed over it. You feel how much cooler it is at the bottom of the gorge. You look up and realize how far the cliffs rise above you.
There is something humbling about walking through a landscape that has been shaped so slowly. Water carved the gorge over time, gradually wearing away the sandstone and creating the cliffs, recesses, waterfalls, and passages we walk through now. None of it happened quickly.
Nature has never shown much respect for our preferred timelines.
Perhaps that is one reason places like Hocking Hills are so restorative. They remind us that the world is much older and stranger than the small portion of it we try to manage every day. For a few hours, we can stop checking the time and trying to accomplish something. We can simply walk, look, listen, and wonder where the trail goes next.
Although I now recommend having a map and at least a general idea of where the car is.
Hocking Hills is a treasure. It is one of those places that can make familiar Ohio seem mysterious again. Beneath the cliffs and hemlocks, among the waterfalls, caves, bridges, and winding trails, another world seems entirely possible.
I still wonder about the trail my friends and I found fifteen years ago. I wonder where it began, where it was supposed to end, and whether I would recognize it if I saw it again.
Part of me hopes I never find it.
Some places become more memorable because we cannot retrace our steps. That trail exists now somewhere between the actual landscape and the story my friends and I still tell: the day we climbed over boulders, descended a mysterious stone staircase, emerged in the wrong parking lot, and entrusted our lives to two strangers on the reasonable basis that they did not look like serial killers.
We were younger then.
But not, apparently, not bright enough to pick up a trail map at the visitor center.
