Chuck Sutherland

Verble Hollow This cove in the area of Monterey is home to a spectacular 80 foot waterfall that emerges from a cave, and disappears into a cave. The caves are nerd-holes (caver jargon for a cave that only a geeky caver would want to visit), but the configuration of a waterfall isolated on a mountainside is pretty impressive. If you've seen Virgin Falls, or Lost Creek Falls, this should look familiar since it's the same geology that causes the others. The land is managed by Belle Ridge Retreat . They have cabins, campsites for RVs and other vehicles, and trails for hiking and UTVs. You can connect with them on Facebook also. Bee Rock An east facing cliff face just outside Monterey with an overlook, climbing routes, and a beautiful bed and breakfast called  The Garden Inn at Bee Rock is just some of what you will find there. The inn and the overlook are on separate properties, but access may require cooperation of the inn. The main rule for accessing the Bee Rock ov...

Originally appeared in STANDING STONE PRESS, Monterey, Tenn., October, 1980 Reproduced with permission. Dr. Richard C. Finch Associate Professor of Geology Tennessee Technological University Imagine that you are a fish ... a long, long time ago. You are a marine fish, swimming in the shallow sea that covered most of Tennessee during the Early Devonian period. Although life has barely crept out onto the stark land surfaces, the oceans teem with myriad life forms, and you are King: the largest, most sophisticated animal alive, with no enemies big enough to worry you. You are content, for the world is yours. Summertime and the livin’ is easy... Fish are jumpin’... Suddenly, as you are basking in the sun-warmed surface waters, a bright speck of light in a different portion oi the sky catches your eye. It is difficult to see at first, and you struggle to focus and see across the ocean – atmosphere interface, but faster than the sentence can be typed, and long before your fish brain ca...

When most folks hear about Jackson County, Tennessee, not much comes to mind. With the small city of Gainesboro, and the nearby Cumberland River, on the surface there seems to be little of interest there. Nothing is farther than the truth. Many people don't realize that Cummins Falls is in Jackson County. While Cummins is an amazing waterfall, this blog post is about the less well known locations. Not all of these are on public lands, and I do not encourage trespassing. Please be respectful of landowners. Flynn Creek Impact Structure That's right, there's a meter impact site in Jackson County. Maybe two. It doesn't look like the classic Barringer Crater impact though, and for good reason. The feature is quite old (around 360 million years before present), and it ended up getting buried under a lot of sediment, which was both good and bad for us. Good, because it preserved the structure, bad because it takes a trained eye to figure out what's going on. Mu...