Land clearing in Auburntown, TN

Poplar Stand, before Auburntown

That was the name first, for the poplar, and the ground hasn’t changed its mind about growing timber fast. This is the outer edge of the Nashville Basin, a bit over 700 feet up, Ordovician limestone underneath. Where the soil runs deep along the creeks, poplar and box elder come back a few seasons after the last mowing. Where it’s thin over rock, cedar takes it instead. Two kinds of ground inside one fence line.

Four creeks inside half a mile

Saunders Fork, Leach Creek, Carter Creek and Marshall Creek all run within half a mile of the crossroads. Saunders Fork carries this end of Cannon County north into Smith Fork Creek and on to the Caney Fork. Bottom ground that close to water stays soft into spring. Privet and cane and briars hold that bottom, and wheels sink before they clear it. Ground like that is worth waiting on a dry stretch, or a hard freeze.

Highway 145 comes in as Woodbury Road

It runs a shade under ten miles from Woodbury, up over Dividing Ridge and the Frank B Walkup Memorial Bridge people call the Bridge to Nowhere, then back down to about the height it left. Woodbury sits in the East Fork of the Stones River valley; everything on this side drains north to the Caney Fork. Bench and ridge ground is shallower, and cedar claims a field about the time grazing stops. A bush hog just cuts the top off. Taking it at the ground slows the comeback.

Wilson County starts just north of town

The county line runs less than a mile north, and Highway 96 crosses it into the southeast corner of Wilson County, below Statesville. Lebanon is twenty-two miles northwest. Cannon County is mixed farming and livestock ground, so what closes in here is pasture and field edge, a lane grown shut to the back of the place, cedar filling in where cattle kept it down. None of it reads the same from the road.