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| Brown-Headed Nuthatch (p.eppig) |
There's something to be said for wonder-wandering, a slow meander walk that takes us this way and that, without a start or finish. The Appalachian spring accommodates this lovely style of walking because every hollow or knob makes the emergence of wildflowers and the appearance of migratory birds a very intimate, local affair, happening in its own time in its own place. Factors like slope aspect, altitude, overstory/understory, and micro-climate can result in very different iterations of springtime. Rivers and creeks were running full while I craved a vernal pool to look for salamanders. I found a bunch of Eastern Newts in a ruined beaver pond pool along the Pink Beds Trail in Pisgah NF where I laid across the board walk and just stared dreamily into the water.
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| Eastern Newt |
The Southern Appalachians are a naturalist's dreamscape, especially in spring when wildlflowers blossom and bees begin to fly. We encountered a single B. sandersoni stumbling across a fireroad on our way to Bridal Veil Falls in Pisgah NF on a chilly morning. I lifted her on to my hand and she luxuriated in the warm of the sun and my warm-bloodedness. Her wings were still small and not completely unfurled, wrinkled a bit at the edges but stiffening as I stood there watching. I resettled her on a sunny, sandy patch just as a mountain biker zoomed past, crunching with a fat tire the very place where she had been crossing. Whew!
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| Sanderson's Bumble Bee Bombus sandersoni, (p.eppig) |
We don't know a whole lot about Sanderson's Bumble Bee. Like many species in the Southern Appalachians, they occur in rich hollows and ravines in distinct local populations. I didn't make the identification in the field but took lots of pics and a sketch which I used to key out with a USDA Forest Service Bumble Bees of the Eastern U.S. (pdf) I keep in a Dropbox file. (See Notes, below)
I travel with a small tablet that contains all of the guides and keys I have found useful in my field work, and this is one of the best for my spring forest rambles.
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| Blue-Headed Vireo, Pisgah National Forest |
Blue-headed vireos were everywhere. Their call is distinct from other vireos in that it is melodic, slow and sweet. Unlike the chatty Red-Eyed Vireo or raspy White-Eyed Vireo, the Blue-Headed has the closest thing to a southern drawl for a bird. "How Yoooo? .......Watch y'all doin? .........Hey there!........" Unlike many southern songbirds, the population of BHV's is increasing, due in part, says the Forest Service, the the patchiness of many of our national forests where controlled logging is permitted. Overgrown second growth or young forest is the perfect habitat for this handsome vireo and I really enjoyed spending long sits in the forest listening to them.
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| South Fork Mills River, Pink Beds Trail, Pisgah National Forest |
Spring is fickle business in the Southern Highlands. It might be roaring ahead in one place and barely started - or stopped - in another. The river plain of the Pigeon Branch along the Pink Beds trail looked barren and empty (except for the BHVs and Eastern Newts) while noisy waterfall ravines were popping with wildflowers and early migrant song.
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| Looking Glass Falls, Pisgah National Forest |
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| Granite - a nice fine grained specimen. |
At Looking Glass Falls, Cheryl and I had a hard time hearing the birdsong above the crash of water but we saw plenty of feathered forms flitting about the rich ravine forest that I giggled with delight! Migration time is full of returning birds and birds passing through - the forest is alive with movement. Even the quietest corridor through the woods is, if you stand very still among the giant trees, a fury of small things coursing through the canopy.
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| South Loop of Pink Beds Trail |
The Southern Appalachian Mountains are mysterious and secretive. There's a reason we don't know everything there is to know about the cove forests, knobs, and balds, but we aren't given the reason why. Instead we are invited to discover the reason for ourselves, one-on-one with the rhododendron thickets and old man's moss. The mountains keep treasures hidden and unknowable unless you have the "eye and ear" to see and hear them, and only then can you unlock a wealth of wisdom.
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| Warning for White-Nose Syndrome |
I'd like to list all the places we went but I'm afraid it would serve as just an inventory, an index void of the profound sensual experiences of early spring in the pockets and hollows that should remain nameless. I don't understand a lack of curiousness. Listing seems to me to filter the capacity for learning, with affection, about a place full of mystery and myth. This is where folklore and poetry holds power of place, lists aside.
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| Cheryl and I at Issaqueena Falls, SC |
James Still comes to mind. He died in 2001 at the tender age of 91. Born in the Alabama Highlands, he lived most of his life in the Kentucky mountains and earned his eyes and ears roaming the land in search of stories found in the nameless places. He had a deep and insatiable passion for learning about everything and met the mountains "eye to eye." He ruptured stereotypes about southern Appalachian folk as illiterate, simple, and incurious. This was quite a feat in the 1930s when the entire country viewed the region as backwards and shallow-minded. It's a persistent stereotype, however, and we need to study his work more now than ever while listening to our young Appalachian poets and writers who follow in his footsteps. This can't be listed, but it can be lost.
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| James Still. Photo credit: University of Kentucky |
I am wealthy with earth and sky,
Heir to far boundaries of field and stream,
And scarce can keep track of so much property:
Cloud herd, dew diamond, midge and bee,
Wasp-way, wind’s wisdom, and the foxfire’s gleam
I am rich despite a seeming poverty.
Heir to far boundaries of field and stream,
And scarce can keep track of so much property:
Cloud herd, dew diamond, midge and bee,
Wasp-way, wind’s wisdom, and the foxfire’s gleam
I am rich despite a seeming poverty.
James Still, 1906 - 2001
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| Dwarf Crested Iris, Iris cristata (Yellow Branch Falls, SC) |
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| Oconee Bells, Shortia galacifolia (Highlands Biological Station, NC) |
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| Halberd-leaved Violet, Viola hastata (yellow Branch Falls, SC) |
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| Trout Lily, Erythoronium americanum (NC Arboretum) |
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| Wake Robin (in bud), Trillium cuneatum (Highlands Biological Station, NC) |
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| Pitcher Plant, Sarracenia purpurea (Highlands Biological Station, NC) |
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| Skunk Cabbage Symplocarpus foetidus (Highlands Biological Station, NC) |
On a side trip returning from Yellow Branch Falls Valley we visited the Issaqueena Falls reached by a well-visited short trail to view a stunning 90' cataract. Thinking about folklore and story, I was amused by a kiosk storyboard that featured a time-worn tale of some Indian maiden flinging herself off the heights. These kinds of lover's leap tales were familiar anywhere a local 19th century railroad, hungry for tourist revenue, happened past a natural height. I've seen dozens of trail head information boards, brochures, and even historical texts repeat the same, off-putting tales about failed love affairs between some heroic white frontiersman or brave and an Indian maiden/princess/chief's daughter. Dissecting such a story in the context of the hundreds of others that span the railroad routes across the country, one sees rather quickly that these tales seem cookie-cutter, degrading. I wish interpretive historians entrusted with public educational materials exercised a bit more thought and critical consideration when repeating a railroad tourist tale as historic truth.
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| Issaqueena Falls, SC |
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| Odontoschisma prostratum |
While walking at the Highlands Biological Station in Highlands, N.C., my friends and I admired all the emergent plants - spikes and unfurling things, fat buds and bulbs, fresh green blades. Being a scientific research center there were lots of nondescript mounds of duff labeled but absent plants until a later, warmer time. It was a wonderful walk along the well-made trails but I often lagged behind, stopped by some named thing. I came across a liverwort, Odontoschisma prostratum, lying thinly across mounds of moss. It had no common name with only its Latin name appearing on its label and I wondered about this. Later I searched through my resources and guides and still I could find no name other than Latin, so I sounded out the scientific name over and over like a mantra - O donto schisssssssma prostratum. I sang it out loud in the shower, over and over like something sung at evening prayers. Who needs a common name when you can be a Gregorian chant?
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| Eastern Towhee |
I was born humble. At the foot of mountains
My face was set upon the immensity of earth
And stone; and upon oaks full-bodied and old.
There is so much writ upon the parchment of leaves,
So much of beauty blown upon the winds,
I can but fold my hands and sink my knees
In the leaf-pages. Under the mute trees
I have cried with this scattering of knowledge,
Beneath the flight of birds shaken with this waste
Of wings.
I was born humble. My heart grieves
Beneath this wealth of wisdom perished with the leaves.
My face was set upon the immensity of earth
And stone; and upon oaks full-bodied and old.
There is so much writ upon the parchment of leaves,
So much of beauty blown upon the winds,
I can but fold my hands and sink my knees
In the leaf-pages. Under the mute trees
I have cried with this scattering of knowledge,
Beneath the flight of birds shaken with this waste
Of wings.
I was born humble. My heart grieves
Beneath this wealth of wisdom perished with the leaves.
I Was Born Humble, James Still
Notes:
Eastern Bumble Bees of the U.S.
https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/documents/BumbleBeeGuideEast2011.pdf
Blue-Headed Vireo profile https://birdsna.org/Species-Account/bna/species/buhvir/introduction
James Still profile http://www.ashevillepoetryreview.com/2003/issue-13/the-poetry-of-james-still
Highlands Biological Center plant list with flowering times: https://highlandsbiological.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Flowering-Times.pdf
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