VA Shenandoah National Park: Big Meadows Ramble

The Big Meadow - wetlands, heath barrens, grassland

We waded into Big Meadow from the far site of the first CCC camp to be built in what would be become Shenandoah National Park, where the outlines of the mess hall, camp office, flower gardens, and bunkhouses are staked out by four corner posts. We'd come around from Skyline Drive walking the shoulders of the meadow on a mowed path that led to a far tree line. The Byrd Visitor Center looked tiny in the distance with all its traffic and noise. Walking waist deep into the heathlands, we were accompanied by the calls of Meadow Larks, Field Sparrows, Indigo Buntings, and Tree Swallows.

 Huckleberry

We were also immersed in a sea of Bumblebees, their humming vibrated through vast stretches of Highbush Blueberry and Huckleberry. In the distance, a team of USGS bee surveyors worked another heath patch collecting specimens that would measure the diversity of Bombus species here. Red Admirals and Skippers floated from blossom to blossom and Eastern-tailed Blues drifted across the narrow path at our feet. A White-tailed Deer bounded clear across the bowl of the meadow and sent Amos into a tizzy. 

Highbush Blueberry

Amos about to tell the world he sees a White-tailed Deer

USGS survey team

The mystery of whyy the Big Meadow is here at all is a question not easily answered. Environmental historians and geographers agree that it is a cultural artifact that predates European settlement and may even be a clue about the area's prehistoric past. Despite partial clearing to make way for the large CCC camp and its associated grounds, the meadow has returned and is under the care of National Park Service stewardship. When I asked a botanist about their survey, she explained that they happen every few years to compare species divesrity over time. "It's a mystery to us even now," she said, "why the fens and the rare plants they contain? Why the heath barrens where nothing else can grow? And why this site is so resilient, even in the face of measurable impact of climate change?"

Interupted Fern, Osmunda claytoniana

Columbine, Aquilegia canadensis

When we inquired about walking through the meadow at the Byrd Visitor Center, the ranger at the desk assured us that we need not worry about following an established trail, that game trails made by deer intertwine throughout and that we can simply find one and off we go. I have to admit, as a "stay on the trail" advocate, the idea of offically sanctioned meandering intrigued me.  While we were wading through fern and heath, we watched another intrepid group try to navigate the game trail system only to give u0p when the trail they were on simply disappeared. They went out the way they came in. When our trail did the same, we stood for a few minutes to find an  older, over-grown trail that we followed carefully through prickly Blackberry patches that drew some blood. We emerged onto a better deer trail, triumphant that we had crossed the entire meadow using deer-only paths. 

Mound-builder Ants

Fern field at the woods edge

Grasslands rim the bowl of Big Meadow

Big Meadow gave us almost two hours of constant wonder-wandering, the kind of slow probing into the wild heart of a highland wilderness that reminded us of what it is to be in awe. Though we followed no established human trails while the come-and-go game trails allowed us to experience immersion in an ecosystem (actually - several) without feeling compartmentalized by the edges of a human-made space.  

Virginia Pine growing prostate - injury or wind or deer browse?

Laura wading through branbles on a very faint trail

I will always love the wild open places. I dream of prairies and grasslands and meadows so vast that to travel through them is made possible by the bison who laid the trail over thousands of years. Sometimes I plot and plan how and when to return to the Mid-West and Plains and reunite with these spaces and environments which I last visited while doing my doctoral research many years ago. So this wonderful wandering fit the bill for me - and for Laura, who said it was one of the best "hikes" we'd taken so far in our many years exploring the Shenandoah. 

Emerging from the wild to the tamed meadow.

"... because while wandering down the path of wonder, I briefly escape the world of separation and enter the world of unity."

Hermann Hesse

VA Shenandoah National Park: Loft Mountain Loop - 3 miles

Loft Mountain Loop via Appalachian Trail and Frazier Discovery Trail: 3 miles

The Loft Mountain Loop (plus one mile getting turned around) took us three miles around a beautiful saddle and ridge circuit that started and ended at the wayside at Loft Mountain (MM 79). We initially wanted to extend the loop by walking the water station service road to the AT but couldn't find the connector so turned around and walked back to start the loop at Skyline Drive. No matter, it was a great day on the trails in the Southern District.

Root scramble

Overhang shelter

Quartzite fracturing

We climbed the west slope of Loft Mountain, past a closed PATC shelter and rushing spring pipe, and on up to an intersection with the AT.  Turning left on the AT we climbed even further, steady upwards on the famous trail and along came four thru-hikers, tags dangling from their packs, heading northbound. We stopped to listen to Overnbirds, Towhees, and Woodpeckers. "How many lives have been changed by these white blazes?" I wondered aloud. My sister added "And how many souls healed?"

Quartzite daggers

First lookout with Turk Mountain rising up from the valley

At the first overlook we looked southwest across the valleys and ridges of the Southern District. Smoke and water vapor blurred any view beyond ten miles but the prominent cone of Turk Mountain rose up out of the haze. At the second lookout we could see the stern-end of Massanutten, the famous canoe-shaped double ridged mountain, stood in dark contrast to the brightening skies. The haze gave every mountain a dark shadowy look while valleys were filled with smoke. A slight scent of burning balsam was in the air. 

Granite summit of Loft Mountain

At the summit we were just at 3,000 feet while the plant life around us took on a very northern look including great swathes of sphagnum moss, a tough old Table Mountain Pine, and a scattered stand of Spruce. Beneath the cover of the pine, a juvenile Black Racer whipped across the trail with its lunch of Black-Cheeked Salamander half gobbled down. We were really happy with that! It stayed in place long enough for us to observe its forward-facing, large eyes - its head blunter than a Black Rat Snake. 

Broad-Winged Hawk feather

Table Mountain Pine and its "mouse-tailed" cones

American Chestnut

We searched for and found an occasional American Chestnut surviving high on the bluffs in shallow soil with cold exposures. Some of these survivors were producing decent numbers of burrs. Mountain Ash was flush with red berries. Huckleberry and Low Bush Blueberry were heavy with green-blue berries with another week to ripen. Ravens quorked above us. We admired a Broad-Winged Hawk feather and I wondered if they are nesting nearby, surely with fledglings ready to launch. Dog Hobble or Mountain Maple did its best to trip us up on the decent. 

I will always love the diversity of crags and bluffs. 

Columbine in abundance!

Black Racer easting a Grey-Cheeked Salamander

With the trail loop almost complete, a fine mist moved upslope and we walked into pockets of leaf-drip and showers. Sounds of motors drifted up from the Skyline Drive with the faint sounds of people talking and laughing at the wayside. Someone slams on breaks - a deer crossing no doubt. A band of motorcycle riders lean into the big curve around Rocky Top just north of us and their collective growl grows louder as they approach Loft Mountain.

Gilled mushroom and friends 

Scratch-and-bite post for Black Bears

With our approach to the road, we see utility poles that carry lines into the valley where the pump station sits on the headwaters of Ivy Creek. One stands out from all the rest, skinny waisted at five feet from all the back-scratching bears who've bitten and clawed the wood to raise splinters and jagged prongs for the perfect deep massage. A bear trail runs right up to the pole and crosses the service road to the creek. The pole and the trail no doubt have served generations of bears who have marked, bitten, and scratched their way out of hibernation into an Appalachian summer for years. 

Fanous cement posts of Shenandoah trails

Up from  the piped spring

AllTrails map (minus our foray down and back a service road)

Notes:

American Black Bears love utility poles. For the curious naturalist, different marks on different trees and poles may mean different things. https://bear.org/marking-trees-and-poles/

VA Shenandoah National Park: Upper Pocossin and Dean Mountain

 On a hazy, Canada fire smoke-filled day in Shenandoah National Park, we decided to go exploring down a nearly hidden fire road off Skyline Drive to visit the ruins of the Far Pocosan/Upper Pocossin mountain community and mission. Like so many dozens of other mountain communities, this village crossroads and surrounding hill farms were cleared to make way for the new park in the 1930s.  As many of our hikes in to the park have revealed over the years, the story is a similar one of displacement, resettlement, and return to nature.

Remains of the mission worker's house

As we walked along we encountered a bear-scrounged tree missing its yummy ants and cronchy beetles. We were happily surprised by the calls of Blackburnian and Hooded Warblers and escorted almost the whole way down the holler by Eastern Wood Peewee and Goldfinches. The road under our feet slipped from pavement to cobbles to dirt to wagon ruts to single-wide trail. 

Mission workers house next to the stone chapel at Upper Pocossin Mission.
Source: Larry E. Lamb Collection (BRHP) 

At the crossroads, we explored for an hour or so, poking in and out of cellar holes, peering into the precariously leaning remains of the mission house, probing stone foundations and the remaining stone steps. I don't know why we didn't go further down the road towards the South River - there are more ruins and foundations, including a cemetery closer to the river. Instead we lingered for long in one place. I can't speak for my sister, but I found myself lost in imagination, trying to reanimate the place in my mind. Could I hear hymns being sung in the church or children reading aloud to their teachers in the school? Or did I hear someone yell a warning to folks further down the holler that a revenue man was making his way over from Dean Mountain?

Tall Thimbleweed, Anemone virginiana

In this place,  a bridle path and trail intersection are all that remain of the busy mountain crossroad. I tried to imagine the general store and post office, and in the 1920s, a filling station (built in anticipation of increased vehicular traffic as the national park was established). The people who lived here had an intimate knowledge of the land as farms, orchards, and wild edges that climbed the mountain to its ridge.  To outsiders like those mission folk, the mountain community here was isolated, superstitous, marginal, and in need of a modern God. 

Amos on the steps of the Upper Pocossin Mission Church

A builder of churches, Minister Frederick Neve answered the call to build Epsicopal missions clear up the spine of the Blue Ridge Mountains across seven Virginia counties. He arrived in Virginia from England in 1888 and served as rector of Emmanuel Church in Greenwood, Virginia, until the mission bug bit - and bit hard.  Receiving permissions from the regional bishop, Neve set out to site, build, and staff a dozen new mission churches and schools to serve mountain communities.  With each site, he included the main church or chapel, mission worker's home, and a school or community hall that doubled as school and meeting.

Left front facing corner of the church. 

"After the work [in the Ragged Mountains] had been carried on for some time, I could not help thinking what a good thing it would be if the same kind of work could be extended to the Blue Ridge, where I knew from what I had heard, the conditions were very similar to those prevailing in the Ragged Mountains, only worse...my idea was to plant strong missions all along the Blue Ridge, about 10 miles apart." - Frederick Neve, 1902

Black bear scavaged tree

Of course the communities that Neve selected for "saving" didn't all want to be saved. In fact, many resisted his efforts and in the case of Upper Pocossin, violently so.  The community liked its isolation and that, for them, could be interpreted as a kind of depth of place felt by people having for so long been left alone.  But the Episcopal Church prevailed and the mission was built and the young, good virtuous women of God, sent to serve as school teachers kept diaries and wrote letters home. They painted a picture of both pity and reverence for these people, being not at all what they had expected, and with whom they found a firece sense of independence and spirit. 

Missy Breeden, at her home in Upper Pocossin Mission. She was given 
lifetime tenure of her home by the NPS and died in her beloved
cabin in 1949.  Source: NPS Archives

The intersection of trails that wraps around the ruins once carried horse and wagon, buggies, and mostly people walking up and down the mountain. Before the mission, the most engagement these folks had with the federal government would have been the post office. A young mission worker wrote home that while the community folks were interested in what was happening in the outside, they were content not to have the government or wars or extractive industries intrude upon their world.  Over time, the community came to accept the young mission workers and their church. No one could have imagined then the impact the new park would have had on this and dozens of crossroad communities throughout the Blue Ridge in the coming decade.

The abandoned stone and timber built Episcopal church,
Upper Pocossin Mission, 1940s.
Source: Larry E. Lamb Collection

We hiked back up the old road to the Skyline Drive and the hidden dirt lot where we'd left the borrowed truck. (I hope I can get my truck back soon!) Then we drove to another hidden road and found the Dean Cemetery, still in use and very well cared for. Again, we lingered here. The Dean Mountain community thrived on the western flank of the ridge, opposite the Upper Pocossin community.  Reading the log book for comments left by relatives and visitors was really cool. 

Dean Cemetery

The system of mountain roads that once tied these far-flung communities together are now designated as fire roads and can be explored with thr right maps. Not all are marked today as trails in the park literature, so many are overlooked by hikers. It made us more curious about finding and following these old roads, though there are many folks who have made it their outdoor passion to do this and several folks have written books or maintain YT or blogs about these adventures. 

Artifact from the Dean Mountain community

Later, at home, I consulted the NPS historic tract map to see which families owned which tracts at the time of the park buy-outs (or in some cases, aquisition by eminent domain). Many of the names we read on stones in the Dean Cemetery were also names from Upper Pocossin: Meadows, Greene, Dean, etc. These communities married into each other and maintained ownership of vast sections of mountain properties as farms, timber land, and orchards. The roads that connected them, as well as some of the existing trails, were walked or ridden by these people to visit, attend meetings, burials, church, and weddings for two hundred years. 

Pocossin Road  

These paths as fire roads or trails today, were the connective strands of a web of communications and thriving mountain society a hundred and more years ago. The idea of isolation and marginal existence was misapplied to these communities by outsiders then and enhanced by the take-back-by-nature appearance of these places today. Though I love the wilderness that is the park today, the road system and trails have taken on new meaning for me as I look forward to more fire road rambles to come.

Toppled stove chimney of the Pocossin Mission church.

Far Pocosan, Night or Day

Reverend Frederick W. Neve

Knight ushers in the Brighter Day

And yet she does not pass away; 

For strange to say

She shines and drives dark away.

Since this is so, it must be right

To call her Day, as well as Knight. 

 

AllTrails Map of the Pocosin Road (now Pocosin Trail) and Dean Mountain

Notes:

Ben Swenson's excellent blog Abandoned Country is a great source of information about these disappeared places that nature is now reclaiming. https://www.abandonedcountry.com/2013/01/07/far-pocosan-wild-with-moonshine-whiskey/

 

Blue Ridge Heritage Project is dedicated to raising awareness and educating SNP/Blue Ridge Country visitors about the displaced people of the Blue Ridge during the 1930s-40s. 

NPS Tract Finder Map is a useful tool for finding the old road systems (now demarcated as fire roads) and the family names of last owners.