Time for another peaceful, and relatively easy, hike in & around the Atlanta area. This outing took place at Cochran Mill Park, south of Atlanta.
As the map shows, this place has a LOT of trails!
The big hike is up to Henry Mill Falls (not a big waterfall) in the upper-left corner, but not the destination of this EASY day. As shown below, we stayed on the orange trails. I’ve marked it up a bit with some points discussed further in this posting.
After crossing the road near the parking lot you’ll feel yourself going downhill quick. Of course, it was already getting warm and I let my imagination think of when I’d be heading back up this steep hill at the end of the hike. I’m a up-then-down waterfall hiker myself. 
Soon you see Cochran Mill Falls which is not too big, but would surely look awesome with some water volume running over it.
It has a nice little pool at the base for wadding in and if you’ll look below you just might find a troubling image of something that looks way out of place. Hint: the curly headed guy in the lower-right corner who has a machete or sword sheathed. WTH??
After crossing Little Bear Creek you take a left down a very nice and wide path with green everywhere you look.
A short walk on the trail makes has you feeling like Robert Front when you find this scenic fork in the road. We took the high road!
Not much further we found a bridge towering over Bear Creek which technically was the back entrance to the Bear Creek Nature Center. Pretty views for sure, but MORE hiking than was planned for today so we stayed on the orange trail system.
More hiking with the trail sloping on the left down to the creek.
Eventually, you’ll spy a nice slide waterfall on the left – maybe you’ll spy on some folks just enjoying it, too!
Here is the view from the top of it when you step off the trail.
Looking to the right you will notice a little damn that is slowly letting out the water from the small reservoir you can see on the map.
Walking down the slide you can see the water far below.
Halfway down revealed the carefree couple spied earlier from the trail.
And then the lower elements of the slide.
Selfie Time! I even got photo-bombed (actually, bad framing on my part it seems; haha).
Time to get moving and yep, you guessed it… MORE trails. It is a very lush trail system and I really enjoyed all the trees.
Eventually you loop back to the original falls and the walking bridge just downstream.
And, of course, one last pic of Cochran Mill Falls!
So… it is “Heritage and NOT Hate” if I understand the argument right. It is a gleeful, and naïve, reminder of a time in American history that somehow has been romanticized by Southerners. We are all supposed to be happy and supportive of folks that wave the Confederate flag in front of their house and from their pickups. Anyone calling it out as offensive is labelled a hater towards white people. Let us have our “heritage” and don’t oppress it seems to be the mantra.
But, when we have an entire race of people who actually were oppressed in the most intense of ways, we tell them to “get over it” and remind them that “we didn’t enslave you”. Some folks simply can’t understand why many others cannot get past this history, but oddly they themselves are the ones holding onto history. Yes, a history of Hate. Like it or not, it is a heritage of Hate. I know that’s a big pill to swallow, but it is the truth.
Let’s remember the “good old slave states” for a few moments. For years, they were able to count each one of these souls they owned as a three-fifths of a human for their population numbers to ensure they had elected officials in the House of Representatives. In fact, that 3/5th number angered them so much for years that it was economics, NOT a love for all things Johnny Reb feels near and dear, much less “Northern oppression” on a way of life, that forced the slave owners running the states to secede from the Union.
These leaders started a war that killed 2% of the US population at that time; an estimated 620,000 soldiers. That number is higher than ANY OTHER WAR we were in….
Source; https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/civil-war-casualties
Yes, like most every other major conflict in human history, this one was about money and not the freedom to drink lemonade on your rocker out on the front porch of your plantation. WE (because I am a Southerner) can enjoy those things that make us Southern AND shed this holding onto a (false positive) past that seems to be remembered as a great thing.
WE can also lighten the F up about being angry that black people aren’t done dealing with the long term effects of their ancestors being brought to the USA against their will and enslaved. If those “great” people of the Old South would have just been motivated about “Made in the USA” and helping people earn a “living wage” then we would have HIRED the folks that were already here (or increased immigration) and not have to create an economy on cheap(er) slave labor.
Wait, the mindset which thought that was a good idea are now pissed that we now just outsourcing (essentially) slavery to other parts of the world because Americans are too darn “expensive” to hire. Hmmm, but that’s another thought for another blog post…
Let me be clear; I do NOT support violence and my recommendation would be to place compensatory memorials alongside all of these monuments that folks are rushing to tear down. But… I’m also fed up with those who want to have their cake and eat it too about history. If you want folks to honor your “Heritage, not Hate” way of thinking then you need to be fair enough to take a very hard look at how that heritage (of hate) has impacted generations and stop telling them to forget the past when you can’t seem to move beyond it either.
And…. Aunt Jemima is NOT the black history that anyone except racist white folks want to save…
Good article on this topic from FOX NEWS, https://www.foxla.com/news/the-real-history-of-aunt-jemima-and-the-brands-first-model-nancy-green, as well as one a bit more explanatory; https://medium.com/@blackexcellence/aunt-jemima-it-was-never-about-the-pancakes-14a48a6523d.
And another AND… Please stop all this insane talk about a civil war. The only civil war I’m worried about looks a lot like the Handmaid’s Tale…
In parting, I personally believe that being a police officer is one of the hardest jobs imaginable and that I respect them and believe the vast majority of them (just like the population as a whole) are good people. I just believe we need more oversight of them and they need to feel comfortable calling out the bad seeds in their ranks without being a traitor to their professional culture. Why… because my daughter is right; Black Lives DO Matter, too!
Let’s just hear it again.
Comments welcomed…
Gretchen and the kids found a little nugget right in our own back yard. Seems Dallas (Georgia, not Texas) has a little waterfall called High Shoals Falls.
Once you park in the little lot identified in the blog link earlier, you “get to” walk past this old cemetery on the way down the trail.
And just as the blog post said, we found it to be a popular swimming hole.
It is a pretty little waterfall for sure.
Great place for a family selfie!
Connor and I decided to take the the trail on the right up to the top.
We made it!
And we got a good picture of the girls below.
After we got back down to the bottom, Zoe and I worked our way over to the right of the base of the falls.
We got an up close view.
And one final one before we headed back out.
This is a nice little outing for anyone in the Atlanta area and I highly recommend it.