The Sleepy Hollow Aesthetic
The real Village of Sleepy Hollow of Washington Irving's famous tale is located in the state of New York. But the Smoky Mountains region of Tennessee, where I currently reside, is remarkably evocative of the legendary setting. As an example of folklore rather than fact, Sleepy Hollow lives on in the timeless realm of imagination, and the spirit of the story can be experienced in any place that bears a certain aesthetic quality, which is heavily tied to a sense of nostalgia for early Americana and times-gone-by when local superstitions and folklore were more readily believed, often revolving around themes of supernatural activity and haunted places. I've assembled here a collection of photographs that I've taken in or near Smoky Mountains National Park, all of which I think communicate some aspect of the distinctive aesthetic identity of Sleepy Hollow as a legendary place. (For an in-depth tour of the actual Village of Sleepy Hollow as it really exists in New York, you can visit "The Real Sleepy Hollow" elsewhere on my site.)
Regarding the material setting of the story, the Smoky Mountains present every essential element commonly associated with the legend: rural countryside in a mountainous landscape; large, imposing trees; moody weather; a brilliantly colorful autumn season; numerous early American cabins, churches, cemetaries, and other reminders of 19th Century life and death; and - perhaps the most essential ingredient of all - lots and lots and lots of fog. Although the occurrence of fog is never specifically mentioned in the original literary version of the story, it has since become a consistent feature in the popular conception of the story's setting as a result of various adaptations of the legend, most notably the 1949 Disney cartoon and Tim Burton's 1999 film. This is just one of several additions that have been applied to the story in the collective perception of American culture during the past two centuries, and most of these changes have become essentially permanent in our sense of the legend's setting, regardless of how Irving himself might have originally imagined or experienced it.
To properly set the stage for this presentation, it might be helpful to consider this image from a movie poster for the Tim Burton adaptation of Sleepy Hollow:
That clearly spells out what we're looking for, although it's an idealized and exaggerated image of the actual setting of the tale. The movie was filmed in England, on an elaborate outdoor set, and the fog was generated by machines. I've captured images that present a similar setting, but involving real fog and authentic, preexisting buildings, as in this example:
Of all of the locations in Smoky Mountains park, a valley called Cades Cove is the most immediately reminiscent of Sleepy Hollow. In local parlance, a "cove" is a small valley sheltered between mountain ridges. In this regard, Cades Cove is not only geographically similar to Sleepy Hollow as described in Irving's tale, but also contains a collection of buildings preserved from the same time period - it's as if the valley had been caught in a time warp, preserving an essence of early Americana. Cades Cove is also the most reliably foggy location in the Smokies, and can be found wrapped in a shroud of vapor nearly every morning, when the rising sun interacts with the atmosphere, the landscape, and the relics of pioneer life to reveal a setting in which even a headless horseman or some similar wonder would hardly appear out of place:
In my own photographic documentation of the area, the pictures that I've tried to capture are visually beautiful, but with an undercurrent of mystery; images of this sort are appealing to the eye, but with an emphasis on drama rather than prettiness.
Of some importance in the story is an enormous, old tree that terrifies Ichabod Crane during his travels after dark. Cades Cove also has a tree of such singular character - an Oak, which stands isolated in an open field near the southern end of Hyatt Lane:
Fans of the legend will also be familiar, of course, with the old church and its graveyard, and the wooden bridge crossing the stream nearby. Seen below, the Primitive Baptist Church preserved in Cades Cove could easily stand in for the old church of Sleepy Hollow:
Other old structures, such as the many pioneer cabins preserved in Cades Cove, still remain standing from the 19th Century:
Also preserved in Cades Cove is this charming mill with a water-wheel, very similar to one that once existed in Sleepy Hollow:
Although the mill makes no appearance in the original legend, Irving mentioned the structure in a later essay from 1839, entitled simply "Sleepy Hollow," a nostalgic review of the changes that had occurred in the valley since the author's childhood; he described the mill as:
"...an old goblin-looking mill, situated among rocks and waterfalls, with clanking wheels, and rushing streams, and all kinds of uncouth noises. A horse-shoe, nailed to the door to keep off witches and evil spirits, showed that this mill was subject to awful visitations."
