I Can See My House from Here –
The view from atop Sassafras Mountain, from which you can see four states.
Feel like a challenge? Drive about 122 miles to Pickens County and ascend Sassafras Mountain’s 3,560 feet – by car of course. When you do, you’ve reached the highest point in South Carolina, its rooftop. Standing on Sassafras Mountain you can look over a rippling green land in spring, a darker green in summer and a color-struck land in autumn. I’d avoid it when winter’s icy grip holds the land.
South Carolina’s rooftop attracts highpointers, people who pursue the sport of ascending the highest elevation in a given area. Thus do they come to South Carolina’s rooftop.
I’ve made it to the top in early morning. At dawn sun glints off three lakes as the forests of four states mutate from black to olive green to jade: From Sassafras Mountain you can see the Volunteer, Tarheel, Peach and Palmetto states. Lakes Jocassee, Keowee and Hartwell look like shiny dimes from 3,564 feet and they pale silver as the sun climbs.
In summer the rooftop grows pretty hot. Haze obscures things and the distant lakes appear ill defined. Atmospheric lines of blue, gray and white air stack along the horizon like lake sediment. One summer day all that hot air played a trick on me. It created a mirage. A freighter appeared to steam across Lake Keowee toward Jocassee. My Vortex Diamondback 8×42 glasses verified things. The freighter was there, all right, headed for mountain swells. It steamed along but got nowhere, this shimmering ship from the sea that cannot be.
In a blink it disappeared. Gone. I looked through the glasses again and saw a small watercraft plying the lake’s veneer, a feathery wake trailing it. This Fata Morgana brought to mind Hemingway’s “True at First Light” and a mirage extraordinaire he witnessed.
“In Africa, a thing is true at first light and a lie by noon and you have no more respect for it than the lovely, perfect weed-fringed lake you see across the sun-baked salt plain. You have walked across that plain in the morning and you know that no such lake is there. But now it is there absolutely true, beautiful and believable.”
You needn’t worry about mirages and you surely don’t have to be a highpointer to go to Sassafras. Strike out. It’s a great place to experience other seasons. In August you can stand atop Sassafras Mountain and feel fall’s chill. On Sassafras a man can see for miles and miles and miles, as Mr. Townsend famously wrote. Standing on South Carolina’s rooftop you look over a rippling green land and smoky blue hills. As night draws nigh wine, yellow, orange and cinnamon hues prevail until shadows reign supreme.
One final note: A recent South Carolina Geological Survey assessment downgraded Sassafras Mountain to 3,533 feet, because of grading that lowered the natural height. It still stands at least 50 feet higher than nearby Hickerynut Mountain (3,483 feet).
If You Go …
Sassafras Mountain
• 1399 F. Van Clayton Memorial Highway
Sunset, S.C. 29685
• 864-654-1671
• Lat/Lon: 35.06470°N / 82.7775°W
•www.visitpickenscounty.com/vendor/124/sassafras-mountain/
Learn more about Tom Poland, a Southern writer, and his work at www.tompoland.net. Email day-trip ideas to him at [email protected].
