Mens Journal

NOTEBOOK TRAVEL&ADVENTURE

C

ESSNA DECOSIMO and Daniel

Lindley are at church on a Tuesday

afternoon in Chattanooga Ten-

nessee. Lindley a celebrated chef who has

openedthreerestaurantsintownissmoking

and sketching in his notebook. Decosimo an

artist and sculptor is talking art and religion

and the latter’s loosening grip on the city. “It’s

historically a very puritanical community and

spending money on t he ar ts — especially elab-

orately — was frowned upon” says Decosimo.

“New blood here is helping to change that.”

Tucked into the Tennessee River Valley

Chattanooga is ringed by jagged ridges and

sheer gorges. Lindley 39 grew up on one of

those framing ridges Lookout Mountain

1700 feet above town. He’s spent the last few

years turning an old Methodist Episcopal

Zion church where we’re lounging into his

eccentric art-f illed home. In place of a bap-

tismal font there’s an indoor pool. Decos-

imo whose bronze f igures decorate many

street corners in the city — and Lindley’s liv-

ing room — was raised on Signal Mountain

touristy version of Asheville North Carolina

or a cheaper Boulder Colorado — with a lot

more diversity. Here’s how to make it your own.

DAY 1: APPALACHIA

MOUNTAIN BIKING

Chattanooga is surrounded by recreation-

heavy public lands like Prentice Cooper State

Forest: 25000 acres of oak and hemlock trees

with 119 miles of trails — all along a gorge

known as the “Grand Canyon of the Tennes-

see.”Andjust30minutesawayisRaccoon

Mountain home to some of the best moun-

tainbikingintheSouth:morethan30milesof

intermediate to advanced singletrack. When

my girlfriend and I went a portly park ranger

named Gary turned to us and warned “I don’t

want to scare you or nothing but this place

is pretty much the same as when the Indi-

ans left. So watch out for rattlesnakes cop-

perheads things like that.” But he insisted

“you’ll have a good time!”

Indeed we did on two black-diamond-

rated trails called Live Wire I and II tight

turns sprinkled with rocky ledges and jumps.

Coming around a bend later on the blue-

rated switchbacked Small Intestine trail a

clearing in the trees revealed a wide-open

view of the Tennessee River the only large

canyon beside a city in the southeast.

DAY 2: SOUTHERN FARE

Eating is a sacrament in the South and there

are few better places to do it than Chatty as

residents call their town. Lindley’s spectacu-

one of Chattanooga’s other major perches.

Each has lived in some of the world’s great

creative centers — New York Italy France —

but Chattanooga population 177000 is the

place to which they both eventually returned

to make food and art where steel and smog

once reigned.

“This town was a blank canvas when we

arrived back here” says Lindley. “It was full

of opportunity that’s being fulf illed now in

kitchens art studios and the outdoors.” It’s

remarkable considering that just 20 years ago

the city was basically an industrial wasteland.

“It was block after block of nothing” he says.

The ’90s brought a revamped riverfront

spurred on by the addition of the Tennessee

Aquarium one of the world’s largest fresh-

water aquariums and the reopening of the

100-year-old Walnut St reet Bridge to pedes-

trians. A city that for decades put its faith in

heavy industry is now thanks to a coalition

of progressive leaders turning to art and the

outdoors and the result is an adventure hub

unlike any other in the South or West: a less

The South’s New

Mountain Mecca

Chattanooga once one of the nation’s dirtiest

industrial zones is now an adventure hub on a par

with anyplace out West.BY CHARLES BETHEA

Chattanooga

clockwise from

left: Biking at

Raccoon

Mountain;

commuters on

the Walnut

Street Bridge;

bouldering

at Little

Rock City.

MEN’S JOURNAL 36 SEPTEMBER 2016 photographs by MARIA LIOY