Over 100 miles and DRENCHED - but DETERMINED!!

The one immutable force out here in the Appalachians that never evades the hiker is TIME. It lays heavy on these mountains. Eroded, carved, etched, scraped, and decomposed elements of every portion of rock, root, sky and spirit stare you in the face as you walk every day. If it's not how fast you can high-tail it to the next shelter before the skies open upon you and make your boots slosh for days, it's the geology. Unlike the pervading youth of the Rockies where the mountain spines grow straight and strong, the ancient bones of the Appalachians are bent and burdened with age. The mountains here are playful and light at times with bird song and the play of light amidst the mountain laurel, but in an instant they pour out huge, angry bursts of rain and wind. Mike and I have been at the mercy of these grandmother mountains, the oldest moutain chain in the world (maybe the Urals are a tie), for the past four days. Holed up in a one man tent, shaking too and fro like a ship on the ocean, we have weathered torrents of moutain storms that don't promise to let up for weeks. A hell for us (not to mention an inseperable part of the quest!), but a heaven for those who call these mountains their home. An unforgiving drought has been plaguing the southern Appalachains for three years and the rain has been bringing smiles to the faces of the town folk (although the bedraggled hikers have a different face to show). Life is coming back to these hills in the form of bright green sprouts, Spring, wildflowers in every color and crops that are doing better than they have in years, not to mention the reservoirs that are filling back up from dangerously low levels. All that AND all the hidden creatures of the undergrowth and detritous that creep up to the surface during times of drenching. Think salamanders galore (much to Mikes happiness), snails crawling on every rock, millipedes the size of your hand, jack-in-the-pulpit coming out to preach and the very wet, sometimes frustrated, sometimes smiling faces of Mike and Lisa peering into the fairy mists that follow the life-giving, Spring calling, hiker wearying rains.

I'm writing this from the little 'hiker-hotel' Ron Haven's Budget Hotel in Franlin, NC. We visited a Civil War Museum today (after ICE CREAM - raspberry cobbler flavored) that advertised reinactments of Southern Surrender due to the War of Northern Aggression. The museum started with the Cherokee people's habitation of the area with LOTS of collected arrow heads - in fact the site of Franklin was the ancestral capital of the Cherokee people. The Nantahala State Forest, where Mike and I will be hiking (5,000 feet above sea level), means "the land of the afternoon sun" in Cherokee because it takes until noon for the sun's rays to penetrate the deep forest floor and extend to the mountain streams that feed and nourish the valleys of the Nantahala. The valley's have recently been layed seige to by hordes of feral hogs - groups of which have spread from domesticated hogs raised by yeoman farmers when they came to settle Appalachia from places like Scotland (we visited a Scottish Tartan Museum today - NO McGraths - we looked Maura - butt it's Irish then in'it Lassie?) and England. The hogs are HUGE and are regularly killed by bowmen for sport - there are postings on trail heads that advise hikers to wear orange b/c hunting is allowed in all wilderness areas along the trail. The evidence of the hogs is VERY obvious - whole swaths of forest floor are dug up, ripped, and uprooted by little snout and hoof prints. This is even more obvious in the clear cut areas where the forest has re-grown but only with one type of tree (poplar seems to do well in clear cut conditions) that grows but all others are conspicuously absent or filled with cankers and cancers that are obvious signs of forest sickness even to the non-biologist.

North Carolina's forests have been noticably healthier than Georgia's (although there is a reverse correlation with their shelters - yech). The following is a list of all the flowers that I've seen, common and Latin name included. Mike's awesome and talented friend Charlie will soon recieve a CD of all the pictures we've taken so he can use his photo-skills to post them to this blog - picts should be evident in a week or so (THANKS CHARLIE!!). For those who are pseudo-plant freaks like me, just google the name and you'll see a pic of the beauts that Mike and I have - or just wait for the picts (none of the computers we've been on so far have let us download images...). PS - Sue - in a 'Gem and Mineral Museum' there was a whole back room with a case of pre-Columbian artifacts - one Wari piece (not display worthy but I thought of you looking at your whipped frosting deserts of Peru).

Appalachian Flowers - the complete list (so far and in no particular order of incredibleness):

1. Toadshade (Trillium sessile) - Lily Family
2. Turkeybeard (Xerophyllum asphodeloides) - Lily Family
3. Squaw Root (Conopholis americana) - Broomrape Family
4. Large-Flowered Trillium (Trillium grandiflorum) - Lily Family
5. Flame Azalea (Rhododendron calendulaceum) - Heath Family
6. Cutleaf Toothwort (Cardemine concatenata) - Mustard Family
7. Crested Dwarf Iris (Iris cristata) - Iris Family
8. Common Blue Violet (Viola sororia) - Violet Family
9. Bluets (Houstonia caerulea) - Madder Family
10. Star Chickweed (Stellaria pubera) - Carnation Family
11. May Apple (Podophyllum peltatum) - Barberry Family
12. Catesby's Trillium (Trillium catesbaei) - Lily Family
13. Nodding Trillium (Trillium cernum) - Lily Family
14. Common Strawberry (Fragaria virginiana) - Rose Family
15. Daisy Fleabane (Erigeron annus) - Aster Family
16. Mountain Laurel (Kalmia latifolia) - Heath Family
17. Hobblebush/Moosewood (Viburnum lantanoides) - Honeysuckle Family
18. Pink Lady's Slipper/Pink Moccasin Flower - biggest Orchid in N/A - yeah! (Cypripedium acaule) - Orchid Family
19. Plantainleaf Pussytoes (Antennaria plantaginifolia) - Aster Family
20. Golden Ragwort (Senecio aureus) - Aster Family
21. Trout Lily/Dogtooth Violet (Erythronium americanum) - Lily Family
22. Smooth Solomon's Seal (Plygonatum biflorum) - Lily Family
23. Painted Trillum (Trillum undulatum) - Lily Family
24. Dwarf Ginseng (Panax trifolius) - Birthwort Family
25. Jack-in-the Pulpit/Indian Turnip (Arisaema triphyllum) - Arum Family

Birds coming soon.... PS - most of the flowers are edible in some sense (mom - don't worry, i'm not doing the eating).

Also, Mike has recently been given a trail name, so decided by a special congregation of Appalachian gods, called for the grand purpose... his NAME is WARBLER!! Perfect, I'd say. He's always looking up for the myriad colorful feathers that flit around us and I'm always looking down for a unique flower or, of course as my trail name implies, RAMPS. RAMPS and WARBLERS it is from now on! Mike likes to call it a spin off of the Nintendo game Wizards and Warriors.

List of unusual and interesting people to come too - soooo many - will take another hour to compile and once more - another person needs to use this technology besides me.

Goodbye and wish us sun!!

Love,
lisa