DAYS BEFORE MY VISIT to Davis Ford, a remote Duck River location near Columbia, Tenn.,where 22,000 Confederates crossed in the late fall of 1864, guide Neal Pulley shoots me an eye-opening text: “Bring some orange. Don’t want to get shot!”
No fan of becoming an inadvertent target of a deer hunter, I scour a big-box chain store for an orange vest. No luck in sporting goods. But in the men’s clothing section, another quarry is cornered: a gawd-awful, orange sweatshirt.
Poorer by $7.87, I toss my purchase into my duct-taped car and almost immediately suffer from buyer’s remorse. In a plastic box in the trunk rests a fluorescent, yellow cycling jacket—the perfect hiking attire.
This trip feels jinxed before it starts. Still ornery, I drive the next morning to Columbia, Civil War country about 50 miles south of downtown Nashville, for a rendezvous with Pulley, an expert on obscure Davis Ford and the Battle of Columbia. Fabulous stories linger in the beautiful, rolling countryside a Confederate
