Forgotten lessons

Flame azalea shows off in the recently purchased Nature Conservancy Nine Times Preserve. A Jack-in-the-Pulpit flourishes in the Side of the Mountain Creek drainage at Jocassee Gorges. Healthy populations of rare Trilliums result from good management practices in the Jocassee Gorges, which have been heavily logged for generations. Fire is still used as a tool in South Carolina’s Jocassee Gorges Wilderness.

A land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members and also respect for the community as such.

-- Aldo Leopold

Somewhere along the line we’ve forgotten the lessons of the great naturalist and ethicist Aldo Leopold and have begun to kill our wild world with kindness.

All too often headlines obscure this fundamental truth, hard though it might be, with stories that are unarguably terrible but mask what counts.

The incredibly devastating wildfires that have become a seasonal visitor in the West are a good example. They ought to be a wakeup call for fundamental changes in management practices.
Instead they’ve become the focus of paralyzing debates on the evils of clear-cutting. Clear cutting isn’t something to be advocated; neither is doing nothing.

In South Carolina’s Jocassee Gorges wilderness area they still use fire as a tool, much like Leopold advocated, for species go extinct in the dense thickets just as quickly as they do under the saw, or bulldozer’s blade.

Along the border between North and South Carolina is the Blue Ridge Escarpment. It is undergoing the greatest plant extinction since the end of the last ice age, 18,000 years ago, on the isolated rock outcrops and iconic coves of the region, say experts.

Many of the plants that have vanished in the Upstate survive in other parts of their North American range. Drought driven by climate change and basic changes in how the land is managed is responsible for most of the loss, say experts like Patrick McMillan.

He is host of South Carolina Educational Television’s “Expedition” series, professor at Clemson University and curator of the herbarium of the Campbell Museum of Natural History.
Dr. Doug Rayner, a botanist and professor at Wofford University in Spartanburg for 19 years, agrees and cites the rapid disappearance of rare species of tropical ferns endemic to the mist zone of the Eastatoe valley in the Jocassee Gorges.

These findings are echoed by amateur botanists and outdoorsmen who live in the region. Men like Rick Huffman of the Native Plant Society and outdoor writer and author Dennis Chastain.

“No one knows how much we’re loosing,” McMillan said. “There are probably plants gone now that weren’t even on the radar as endangered. We just don’t have the kind of staff it would take to survey and find out; but the losses are huge.

“We’ve learned something about climate change. It happens quickly once it starts.”
A lot of the figurative “heat” over drought has eased in the Southeast over the past few months. It has rained and cities like Atlanta are breathing easier over their water supply.

But the fundamental forces driving drought, like those driving climate change, haven’t changed. In the Southeastern mountains of the Blue Ridge and Appalachians, arguably, more species of plants and animals have gone extinct that anywhere else in the United States.

If you want to get an idea of just how devastating man’s effect has been here go to Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest in far western North Carolina and look at the pitifully few remaining forest giants.

Giant poplar trees were endemic to the Southern Mountains and are examples of what was once a forest of incredible diversity that stretched from the Atlantic to the Great Plains.

Industrial logging took care of all but a few pockets of the forest giants and somewhere around the first Earth Day American society discovered that conservation was chic.

Chic seldom works well when dealing with Nature “red of fang and claw.”

Somehow, we must find a balance because balance is surely what we still lack more than 60 years after Leopold’s death.

Nothing, it seems, is simple about biological diversity.

Rayner said the Bog Rose orchid, or Dragon’s Mouth (Arethusa bulbosa Linnaeus) used to be found at one spot in northern Greenville County. The little flower is probably gone there now, although colonies survive in other areas of the country.

“It hasn’t been seen in Greenville since the 1970s,” Rayner said. “I’ve looked for it on five occasions and haven’t found it. This loss is not so much because of man, but because the bog where the flower lived filled in.”

Or the bog was shaded out, as McMillan put it.

Thousands of years ago massive creatures like the mastodon, the wooly rhinoceros and other “mega-herbivores” kept bogs open by grazing and beating back intruding overgrowth.

Those massive creatures were wiped out by variety of factors, but were replaced by other large herbivores like Eastern elk and bison, he said. About 12,000 years ago man first came on the scene and used fire to keep areas open for cultivation. Europeans, in turn, took the Indians’ place and maintained the open spaces with grazing animals and cultivation.

In modern times areas were designated as special and preserved and managers like Mary Bunch at the Watson-Cooper Heritage Trust site were forced to hire workers to keep the bogs trimmed out so that a federally endangered specie called Swamp Pink (Helonias bullata), can survive, McMillan said.

Swamp Pink is one of the most unique and beautiful wildflowers in the Eastern United States and survives at Watson-Cooper and in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, he said.

The problems with bog species pales in comparison to the decimation McMillan reports in the protected zones of the escarpment due to drought. The complex interrelationship between plants and animals in this ecologically robust region threatens more than just plants, he said.

“I can’t think of a single animal specie that we’ve lost,” McMillan said, “But all of the species of animals that are dependent on high moisture levels are under considerable stress.”

Globally, the escarpment region is an epicenter of salamander species, he said, with many different kinds of salamanders concentrated within micro climates conducive to their survival.
Yet, during a recent survey near state Route 11 McMillan reports being unable to find a single green salamander (Aneides aeneus). “That particular spot is one of my most reliable ones for finding them in the fall of the year. That doesn’t mean they’re gone. It just means conditions (no rain) are not favorable for them to be in their normal area right now.”

McMillan is quick to note that climate change is also what made the escarpment area unique in the first place. “It is vertical refugia, a place where unprecedented specie diversity has been concentrated in a small area by changes in the climate over a relatively long time,” he said.

“Plants can escape warmer times by moving a few hundred feet upslope or cooler times by moving into the bottoms.”

Small animals like salamanders do, too.

And man, by his traditional uses of the land in the mountains, has actually been a great preserver of many rare plants and ecosystems, McMillan said.

It is the well-intentioned efforts at preserving special areas by stopping traditional usage that has wiped out some populations of plants, he said, by shading the bogs where they grow and closing off the ecosystem from the sunlight it needs to thrive.

The green salamander, unlike its stream-dwelling kin, relies on atmospheric moisture to keep its skin hydrated. “We had one day this year with 16 percent humidity,” McMillan said. “That’s unheard of (in this region). I’ve been in Phoenix, Ariz., many times when humidity levels where higher than that.”

According to the Chattooga Conservancy, a Georgia group focused on preservation efforts, breeding female green salamanders require cool, clean and moist horizontal crevices or narrow chambers in which to breed. The habitat provides a specific micro-climate necessary for successful embryonic development. Due to these unique habitat requirements, the Green Salamander is patchily distributed and uncommon throughout its range.

“But where you do find green salamanders, you find lots of them,” McMillan said, “But not this year.”

Trout, obviously dependent on water, have suffered a decline McMillan described as dramatic and scary.

Most are rainbows and browns, not native trout, he said. But the little jewels that are native to the region, the brook trout, are holdovers from the last ice age, too.

And illustrative of the complex relationship between plants and animals in the escarpment, climate change coupled decimation of the hemlock trees by the wooly adelgids (Adelges tsugae), an invasive specie, have put brook trout at extreme risk.

“I’d classify the destruction of the hemlock forest right up there with loss of chestnut trees due to blight in the last century,” he said. “So far as trout are concerned loosing the hemlocks is like loss of ice in the arctic; it affects everything.”

Rayner sees the same factors at work with his research. “Global warming is increasing factor, particularly in gorges. I’m seeing more and more species crammed into smaller spaces because of climate change. Eventually species will have no place to go and will become extinct.”

Rick Huffman, an amateur botanist and president of the local chapter of the Native Plant Society, is less than sanguine about man’s effect on rare plants. “Twenty percent of all known species have gone extinct since 1900 in our area,” he said. “Most of that is due to habitat loss.”

Historically the Upstate has been a caldron of overuse and misuse of natural resources. “Cotton farming is the best example,” Huffman said. “The landscape still bears the scars of that here.”
Dennis Chastain, who is on the state’s drought response committee in addition to his work as an outdoor writer and author, said this drought might well be the “new normal for us and the implications of that stretch out of sight right now.”

“The fact is the mountain climate is completely out of synch,” McMillan said. “The decline of the mountain sweet pitcher plant (Sarracenia rubra ssp. Jonesii) is a classic example. I’ve been working for nine years trying to revive one of the best sites for the plant in Pickens County. Because of the tremendous surge in drought conditions during the past two years I’ve lost four of the five populations and the fifth won’t survive to the end of the year.

“I can’t emphasize enough how rapidly this is happening. In my lifetime, in the place where I grew up (Alleghany County, North Carolina, along the Blue Ridge Parkway), the woods I walked in at five and six years of age are just gone. The whole world has changed.”

Wadakoe Mountain's secret coves

Dennis Chastain at the amphibolite rock face he discovered in 2000. Pale yellow trillium (T. discolor) is found only in the Savannah River basin. Blue Cohosh (Caulophyllum thalictroides) is common on Wadakoe and rare elsewhere in the state; Sweet White Trillium (Trillium simile) thrives in the secret coves as does Yellow Mandrake (Disporum lanuginosum).

Charles Henry Sowell photos

The secret coves of Wadakoe Mountain hide in plain sight; in the spring they are home to an explosion of rare plant species that live in a series of ecological hotspots scattered over the north face of the mountain.

These secret coves are anything but easy to get to, but they hold part of one of the greatest concentrations of rare plant species in South Carolina. Their discovery, like so many things in the world of science, was purely a matter of happenstance.

Many of these plants are found nowhere else in the state. Some of them, like the Plantain Sedge, are supremely unimpressive to look upon. Others, like Foam Flower, or Nodding Trillium are gems.

Patrick McMillan, naturalist at Clemson University and host of ETV’s “Expeditions” program, has been cataloging rare species on Wadakoe since shortly after the discovery of the mountain’s uniqueness at the turn of the century. He’s found more than 40 rare or endangered species on the slopes of the mountain.

The roots of this profusion of rarity are sunk into the singular geology of Wadakoe. The discovery of the mountain’s uniqueness happened one day while Dennis Chastain was out hunting.

“I happened across this deer trail that had been worn hip deep into the side of the mountain back in 2000,” he said while leading a recent tour of the secret coves.

“Being a hunter (he is also a talented amateur botanist with books on mountain wildflowers to his credit), I followed the trail to see why so many deer were using it.”

What he found was an exposed rock face made up of amphibolite – a metamorphosed rock rich in calcium and magnesium, a poor man’s marble. The deer had, quite literally, licked the face of the rock smooth and were eating the dirt at the base of the rocks. Later he and friend Wes Cooler started finding plants that were unfamiliar and they sought help identifying them.

On the day Chastain lead the tour of the secret coves, a herd of nine deer were trooping up the trail leading to the rock face.

Wadakoe alone in the region is built on foundation of amphibolite; deer crave the minerals for their nutrient value. So do the plants.

However, for plants there is the additional benefit of calcium and magnesium making the mountain’s dirt basic versus the normally acidic soil of the surrounding mountains.

On Wadakoe there is almost no mountain laurel, or rhododendron – both acid loving species. The soil is “sweet” and many species of plant, like Sweet White Trillium (Trillium Simile) and nine other species of trillium thrive on it. Some species are not common anywhere else along the Blue Ridge Escarpment. On Wadakoe one can stand hip deep in rare Blue Cohosh (Caulophyllum thalictroides), while surrounded by troops of white trillium, under a canopy of titanic hickory and poplar spiced with rare Butternut trees (Juglans cinerea), a variety of walnut.

Butternut trees, by the way, are best known in Southern parlance for their use in dying Confederate uniforms a yellowish-brown in the later days of the war.

The coves on Wadakoe’s north-facing slope are part of an intricate system of “nutrient sinks” that funnel food and water down slope until they hit an obstacle and concentrate there.

Standing on the broad plain of Eastatoe Valley in Pickens, Chastain points out the salient features of a low range of spur mountains that run from near Sassafras Mountain (the state’s highest peak) to Dug Mountain near the shores of Lake Keowee. Wadakoe is the last mountain before Dug.

“If you look closely, you can see the drainage basins,” he said tracing one in the distance with his finger on the north slope of Wadakoe. “Where those basins hit an obstacle they form what is called a cove. Nutrients are concentrated in those coves (which range in size from about an acre to a few square feet on Wadakoe) and form an ecological hotspot.”

Later in the day, climbing up the basin Chastain had distantly traced, the dirt was richly black in color beneath the forest floor litter and colonies of dozens of rare plants battling for a spot in the weak early spring sun.

In one spot, in about a square yard, one could find rare mountain Ginseng rubbing shoulders with Foam Flower, Canada Waterleaf, Blue Cohosh, Sweet White Trillium and Plantain Sedge.

Climb out of the drainage onto the dry slopes of the mountain where nutrients are not concentrated and the forest floor is typical of the region, albeit without laurel or rhododendron.

Holiday hiking lessons

People have always been drawn to the high places – the mountains and the hills.

They still are today. Even in this holiest, craziest, most frenzied of holiday seasons some people still find themselves turning to the heights along the South Carolina-North Carolina border. They seem to move of volition other than their own and are not dismayed by that in the least.

In earliest times, this attraction between man and the heights has been called an inchoate response to majesty. Later that metamorphosed into worship (often of the mountain itself); today it has become a need to feed one’s city-starved soul and, perhaps, relearn some things we’ve forgotten.

Go to the mountain early, before dawn if you can, and watch the glory of a new day’s birth far from the hum of tires and the stench of exhaust fumes.

On a recent Saturday, Caesar’s Head at dawn was wrapped in a hush so deep it seemed a sin to breathe. No traffic noise. No wind; just the sky reaching out, ever eastward, and darkness.

Until, at last, there is a glimmer of rose and hint of cerulean to defy the photographer’s best efforts. As there is light, you know why the temple in Jerusalem was sited to face eastward; why our bright, light-polluted, modern world so often fails to satisfy. And, at such a moment, of course one must take a picture.

Even while the sound of the Nikon’s motor-driven shutter was busy defiling the temple, silence was rising, like a trout, and swallowed the technological intrusion.

Then, nearby came a faint rustle and plop; the sound of dew condensing and falling from countless leaves and branches. It’s a sound hovering between joy and sadness at the cusp of a new day. As quickly as comes that thought, dawn becomes full-blown and the nattering concern fades to black.

Lesson one: There are things of great importance in this world and my foolish worries need not apply.

Later, and deeper into the woods on the Raven Cliff Falls overlook trail, the day becomes defined by a wind shifting to the south; flowing over The Dismal (gorge) comes the smell of water in a parched land; and hints of a coming year’s life in the pine-cone like buds of mountain laurel and tightly curled rhododendron.

As the day winds on toward 9 a.m., the sounds of human joy intrude.

At first I’m angry. The mountain’s been mine now for a couple of hours, more than one should hope for at any time of year, and I’m busy trying to decide whether to photograph Raven Cliff Falls from the overlook or down in The Dismal.

It’s the voices themselves that dispel my disquiet. There’s something special about those voices. Joy, of course – but there’s something else, too.

Just what that special something might be becomes apparent as tall Al Artis and stumpy Clarence Wirt step out of the trail’s shadows.

Lesson two: Joy is meant to be shared.

Artis, 49, of Boiling Springs and Wirt, 50 of Woodbridge, Va., have been friends for decades.

“We get together a couple of times a year,” Artis said, “And when we do it’s time for a hike.”

The pair goes on to the overlook, quietly discussing past hikes and laughing about good times. Trailing behind, there’s an almost voyeuristic thrill in reliving those times with these two old friends. It’s the friendship and it’s the place that makes this so special, so I quietly leave them to talk overlooking the falls.

Lesson three: The mountain’s call can come long-distance and no one who answers it leaves unchanged.

There’s Jonathan Oliver, 21, a student at Clemson from Atlanta with time on his hands and a need to fulfill in his soul. “All my friends were studying, so I thought I’d check Raven Cliff Falls out.

“Man, this is gorgeous.”

Chris Fausnight, 23, Gilliam Housman, 23, and Deanna Grice, 30 answered the call from Augusta, Ga.

Chris, carrying a full-grown frame pack as practice for the Appalachian Trail, said “This is just a day trip. I’m not sure what made us actually come.”

But they made the drive and the look on Gilliam and Deanna’s faces spoke volumes to the effects a mountain can have on first-timers.

Mark Grant, 22, and Anne-Marie Martin, 21, came from Anderson with Grant’s 2-year-old Weimaraner, Sherman Lee. The look on the two young people’s face said they might well be traveling that way again one day soon as more than just a couple.

Sherman Lee didn’t seem to mind, so long as he could come, too.

Finally, Justin Stutler, 35, of Cayce was camping at Table Rock State Park when the tug of Caesar’s Head out-pulled Table Rock Mountain. “I want to see the footbridge over the falls,” Stutler said as he signed in to hike the trial. “Man, this (weather and place) is wonderful. I can tell I want to come back already.”

Table Rock petroglyphs

The view from the Petrogylph Site is a jaw-dropping gander at the tail of the Blue Ridge Escarpment; one of the carvings looks like the Clemson University tiger paw; about 600 carvings have been documented at Pinnacle Mountain; Dennis Chastain, just under six-feet tall, gives perspective on the sheer size of the Bear Cave.

Charles Sowell photos

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Primitive man’s perseverance always manages to astound.

Imagine how much time, sheer sweat, and devotion it must have taken for primitive North American Indians to chip out hundreds, if not thousands, of petroglyphs in the tough stone of the Blue Ridge Escarpment. Remember, metal was not used by these people. No hammer or sharp chisel to gnaw at the extraordinarily durable Table Rock gneiss.

The primitive carvings are located about 30 miles northwest of Greenville, SC. Hidden in plain sight for generations near the summit of Pinnacle – at 3,415 feet, the third tallest mountain in South Carolina – one of two peaks that make up Table Rock State Park.

The carvings are located just off the Foothills Trail, part of a system of footpaths that roughly follow the spine of the escarpment from Jones Gap State Park in the Mountain Bridge Wilderness area to Oconee State Park near the Georgia state line.

The Foothills Trail is a 76-mile long segment of path that starts at the foot of Table Rock, climbs up and over to Pinnacle and then crosses over to Sassafras Mountain, the tallest peak in the state.

The carvings are located off a much older path, a highway that primitive men and early European settlers used to cross over the imposing palisade of the escarpment and into the rich valleys of North Carolina and beyond.

The highway has carried everything from 20th Century bulldozers to hogs for early 19th Century Greenville and barefoot unknowns from the darkest reaches of American prehistory.

It runs along a geologic feature called “Long Ridge,” a seemingly gently sloping incline that climbs from the southwest to Bald Rock on Pinnacle Mountain where it joins the Foothills Trail.

There is no asphalt paving this highway, no concrete. This road is made of more enduring stuff; a stone called Table Rock gneiss which is one of the harder metamorphosed rocks to be found in this part of the world.

Travel this ancient roadway with someone who is able to read the markers and you’ll get a lesson in both history and human nature.

“This is where me and Tommy (Charles) found the first petrogylph,” said Dennis Chastain, an author and nature guide in the mountains of North and South Carolina.

About five years ago Chastain was approached by Charles, a state archeologist who was looking for petroglyphs. The carvings were being found all over the southeast and just days before Charles had found a couple of hundred petroglyphs near a waterfall some distance down slope on Pinnacle.

“Here’s where we found the first one,” Chastain said, pointing to a weathered oval with a raised center just off the main walking path.

The weathered patch of rock is a supremely unimpressive sight until you stop to consider that the little oval was carved into a legendarily tough stone by someone with no metal tools.

How these primitive North Americans did it is a matter of some conjecture, as is exactly who the carvers were. The best theory right now is the circles were carved by Indians of the Hopewell Culture, the mound builders, between 1,500 and 3,500 years ago.

“There is really no way to date this kind of carving,” Chastain said, pointing to a series of ovals and circles – each with a distinctive raised center which distinguishes the artifact from an accident of nature.

“There’s certainly nothing organic left on this exposed rock to do any kind of carbon dating,” Chastain said. “But we are pretty sure the Cherokee didn’t do them as writings about the tribe from the early 19th Century made no mention of carving in the tribe’s oral tradition.”

There is, of course, no way to prove this theory. But it matches what is observable and checkable about the Cherokee and the tradition of carving petroglyphs in American Indian culture. It is also one of Chastain’s pet theories on the carvings and on the multitude of stone shelters that dot the monoliths of Table Rock and Pinnacle mountains.

On a windblown patch of Pinnacle, under an achingly Carolina blue sky in the heart of winter, the tenacity of these earliest Americans is painfully evident. One feels it in burning thighs and wheezing lungs. The ancients trod this road as a matter of course, no horses. Our own European ancestors did it as a matter economics – driving hogs to market from Western North Carolina and Tennessee along the same paths the Hopewell and Cherokee trod.

Man has been traveling through this part of the world for eons; always on the way somewhere else. “This isn’t the kind of county that supports year-round living. Not enough water, no arable land. The people who carved these petroglyphs were passing through.

“Come on, wait to you see the Petrogylph Site,” Chastain says with a touch of the magician waiting to spring a trick in his voice.

And he does.

Hundreds of circles and ovals, one carving looks like a Clemson Tiger paw, others like daisy chains. Chastain stands with hands on hips surveying evidence of ancient exuberance.

“I think the carvings are of a religious nature,” he said looking Southwest toward the tail of the Blue Ridge Escarpment as it trails away toward Georgia. “I mean look at this view.”

Indeed, one gets a sense of ethereal grandeur here and can appreciate why the ancients chose this spot to chisel and carve.

And they had shelter while they worked, too. Chastain lead the way to a stone shelter, about the size of an apartment kitchen, just yards from the Petrogylph Site.

“You can see how easily this place could be made really livable,” Chastain said, scrambling into the small cave.

He leads on to the Lighthouse Cave. High on a white stone cliff a cleft in the rock was visible from the mountains of distant Georgia when hunters built a fire and gathered around to listen to their hounds chase fox or raccoon.

Less visible, but far more impressive from a size standpoint is the Bear Cave; the spot where Chastain and Charles encountered two black bear cubs and their 250-pound momma while on another archeological errand.

Two cubs scrambled out of one of the cave’s many clefts and sat at Chastain’s feet, bawling. Mom came along seconds later.

“Let me tell you, when that sow bear popped out, it got my attention,” Chastain said.

The sow and cubs eventually wandered off. Chastain lived to climb another day and the petrogylph carvers, seemingly, watched in silence.

Contact Chastain for guided tours of the petroglyphs at DChas878@aol.com or contact me at csowell4@gmail.com for directions.

Cold Mountain

Cold Mountain seen from the Blue Ridge Parkway outside of Brevard, NC; the summit at Cold Mountain seems tantalizingly close from down in the big timber; a massive hemlock blocks the trail between Sorrell Creek and Deep Gap; ferns occupy their own niche in a warm microclimate on the slopes of Shining Rock Ledge; Ryan Holder and his dad, Chris, pick their way back down the trail after spending an icy night on the peak of Cold Mountain.

Charles Henry Sowell photos


Sometimes the mountain wins.

North Carolina’s Cold Mountain, of movie and novel fame, did recently which proves that Tinsel Town and fiction writers often miss the real story.

In this case, more than four miles of spectacular climb on the Art Loeb Trail in Shining Rock Wilderness can humble; particularly when you’re north of 50 and the mountain seems made for those 20-somethings that thrive on thin air and float feet above the rocky ground as they climb.

Well, they float going up the mountain; all are footsore and slow when coming down.

Several lessons stand out from the aborted climb up one of North Carolina’s difficult 6,000 footers: Older persons can still make the hard climbs (they just take longer to do it) and stick to your plan.

People don’t get to be more than 50 years old in the outdoor world without picking up a thing or two along the way. Knowing your abilities – in this case with gratifying accuracy – on how long it will take to retrace my steps, saved the cost of a cold night on a big mountain.

If you believe the hiking guides, one ought to be able to climb Cold Mountain on Art Loeb and come back down in about seven hours.

Perhaps that is true, if you are very much in shape and are counting your hiking success by a clock.

Measures of that kind defeat the purpose of visiting a wilderness. Stopping to listen often will give you the joy of (perhaps) catching a glimpse of a Pileated Woodpecker. This increasingly rare bird thrives on the kind of big-wood mature forest found on the slopes of Cold Mountain.

Pileateds are the size of a crow with a scarlet topknot and black bill. They excavate a characteristic rectangular hole in trees to feed and nest in very large mature trees. Their feeding holes can be so big they cause smaller trees to break in half well up the trunk.

In the United States, only the Ivory Billed Woodpecker is larger and that rare creature (it was thought extinct for decades) has not been reported in North Carolina in a long, long time. Part of its historic range touched on the North and South Carolina coast.

Ivory Bills have a characteristically white bill and distinguishing white rump patch when seen from behind. Nesting Ivory Bills were discovered in the deep swamps of eastern Arkansas in recent years.

On Cold Mountain there are the more subtle surprises than raucous woodpeckers. Mountains in this part of the world are well noted for their biodiversity. Typified on this trip by thriving fern colonies perched atop small boulders in the otherwise winter-dead woodland. Microclimates are very much a part of the Appalachian biosphere and are not startlingly evident, except for the plants.

March is a good time to visit Cold Mountain since the worst of winter weather is done (hopefully); trees are not year leafed out and vistas are unobstructed. But be warned, in addition to a 2800-foot elevation gain from the Art Loeb Trailhead at the Daniel Boone Boy Scout Camp there is always the chance of bad weather and evidence of it abounds all along the trail in the form of downed trees.

Some of them are huge (particularly the hemlocks) and block the trail. Hemlocks in have suffered greatly from Wooly Adelgid an invasive insect that has decimated trees all along the Eastern Seaboard.

Downed trees aside, would-be hikers on the Art Loeb at Cold Mountain should be aware this is not a marked trail. The only maker you’ll see is at the trailhead. No blazes of any color are used in wilderness areas and it is easy to make a wrong turn, although not so much on Art Loeb.

Learn to use a compass and a topographical map before you go. Learn your pace on steep trails and leave plenty of time for mishap. Go prepared to spend the night and let someone know where you’ll be and when you’ll be back so that help can be sent if you’re late.

The Art Loeb Trail from Daniel Boone is the shortest trail to Cold Mountain at 10.6 miles, roundtrip. There are three other trials leading to the top. All of them are much longer and will lead you to Deep Gap on Shining Rock Ledge at 5,200 feet. From Deep Gap you’ve less than 1,000 feet to climb to reach the summit of Cold Mountain at 6,030 feet.

I’d been on the trail for six hours and had climbed to between 5,600 and 5,800 feet when I ran out of hours. It’s frustrating to be able to see your goal and know there’s no way to get there short of spending the night on the mountain.

As it was, I reached my truck at Daniel Boone with about 10 minutes of usable light left in the day. Be sure to take a flashlight even if you’re planning on only a day hike at Cold Mountain. Dark comes early in the deep valleys that make up the slopes.

The Daniel Boone Scout Camp is located off NC 215 about 30 miles from Asheville. Topographical maps of Shining Rock Wilderness are available at most local outfitters.

For more information go to http://www.hikewnc.info/trailheads/pisgah/pisgah/shining.html and for views of actual conditions on the mountains see http://webcam.srs.fs.fed.us/. Odds are the weather there is quite different and a little knowledge can make all the difference in a trip.

Contact me at csowell4@gmail.com for more information on the Art Loeb trail to Cold Mountain.

DuPont Forest's high plateau

Triple Falls as seen from the overlook on the Triple Falls Trail; Mountain Laurel blooms in June along the Trails at DuPont State Forest located just outside of Brevard, NC; Mountain bikers whiz over the Covered Bridge at the head of High Falls; Cathy, front, Stephanie, in red, and Jerry Stark of Shelby, NC on the Covered Bridge Trail; The Little River plunges 120-feet over the waterfalls at High Falls.

Charles Sowell Photos

The newest public access wilderness access in North Carolina, DuPont State Forest is only a few degrees different than the rolling Piedmont of South Carolina and Georgia; only slightly higher than the valley of the French Broad River and Asheville, or the Tennessee River in Knoxville. But what a difference those few degrees and feet can make.

It's the kind of difference that seems to fill your lungs with vitality and your legs with energy – or maybe it is just your mind that’s changed.

No matter. When it feels like you’re breathing through a steaming-hot wool blanket on Peachtree Street in Atlanta; when the sun beats hard enough on your head hard enough to actually feel the vibrations on Lakeshore Dive in Chicago then is the time to go high.

DuPont State Forest, straddles the state line between North and South Carolina, fills that bill in regards to altitude and, more importantly, as it relates to attitude.

DuPont is a land of many waters. Lakes and ponds abound as do high-mountain trout streams and waterfalls of all stripes. You can ride horses on many of the trails at DuPont. Mountain bikers are always welcome. And, if you’re of the plodding stripe, you can hike until your heart is content and your knees quivering.

You’ve got 10,400 acres to do it on, too.

A good introduction to the DuPont Forest is an improvised 4.5-mile loop trail that takes in the major waterfalls (Hooker, Triple and High falls) as well as one minor fall on Grassy Creek
Start at the Hooker Falls parking lot on Stanton Road, near the old DuPont Plant site. It is the only parking area located on the Little River. Take the quick (.36-mile) trip downstream to Hooker Falls – a wide plunge over a 12-foot tall ledge into the headwaters of Cascade Lake.

If you visit on the first day of the trout harvest (the Little River is a delayed harvest stream) you’ll have lots of company all along the river. You might even get to witness a tussle between a fisherman and goodly-sized rainbow, or brown trout.

The Little River is a fairly large stream through this section and caution should be used when taking pictures, or wrestling with a trout – especially near any of the waterfalls.

Back at the Hooker Falls parking lot find the stairway leading up to Staunton Road and cross the bridge over Little River and take the Triple Falls Trail, on the left-hand side of the highway.

Stick with Triple Falls until you cover the half-mile, or so, to the falls overlook. The Little River drops 150 feet in three cascades here. This is one of the rarities in the Southern Appalachians, multiple falls that are actually in sight of one another. The upper and lower falls of the Whitewater River, for instance, are about 2 miles apart.

Follow the Triple Falls Trail uphill (it is ALL uphill in this stretch) until you hit the High Falls Trail. Take a left here and follow until you reach the viewing area (about another half-mile).

High Falls, a 120-foot plunge from the Covered Bridge to a substantial pool at the base, is worth the hike. This is big water doing a big drop all in one place.

If your curiosity is pricked enough by your glimpse of the Covered Bridge at the High Falls overlook, keep climbing. You won’t be disappointed.

The Covered Bridge Trail cuts off of the Triple Falls Trail and parallels Buck Forest Road to the bridge. The bridge was to be the entrance to a gated community at one point and the roads beyond it reflect the developer’s skill. As it stands the bridge offers a good view of the High Falls overlook and the valley beyond.

Bear to the left beyond the bridge on Buck Forest Road and follow the gently rolling roadbed to Grassy Creek. Cross the wooden bridge here and look to your left for the Grassy Creek Falls side trail.

It’s a short hop down to Grassy Creek Falls, a gently sloping cascade covered by sheeting water.

Back on Buck Forest Road; follow it to the junction with Lake Imaging Road for a stead downhill to Lake Imaging, a warm water pond near Staunton Road.

It is a quick half to three-quarter mile hop down to the Hooker Falls Parking Area from the parking lot at Lake Imaging Trailhead.

How to get there: Take I-26 to Exit 53 (Upward Rd.). Turn left on Upward Rd. to US-176. Upward Rd. now becomes N. Highland Lake Rd. Continue to traffic light at US-225S (Greenville Hwy.). Turn left to first traffic light (Little River Rd./sign for Carl Sandburg Home). Turn right on Little River Rd. and go to end. Turn left at flashing traffic light on Crab Creek Rd. and continue for 7.1 miles to DuPont Rd. Turn left for 3.1 miles.

For more information, go to http://www.dupontforest.com/, which is the unofficial web site of the forest.

Or email me at csowell4@gmail.com.

Nine Times

From top, locally known as Mountain Honeysuckle (actually a wild azalea) these showy blossoms can be found on the Nine Times tract in April; Dennis Chastain looks toward Lake Jocassee from the top of Big Rock Mountain; Trailing Arbutus, a small white flower; Dennis Chastain holds a Luna Moth; and Birdfoot violets in bloom on Big Rock Mountain.

Hi, and welcome to Southern Biosphere. This blog will look at the highs and lows of living in, and loving, the outdoors of the Southeastern United States.

Perhaps no region of the country offers more people more chances to hike, fish, hunt, or just explore than the sliver of mountains tucked away in a four-state area defined by Georgia, Tennessee, North and South Carolina. More than half of the country's population lives within driving distance of this area.

And the area itself is growing like kudzu on steroids.

In my native Palmetto State people call the mountains the "Blue Wall." In everyday parlance, it is known as the Blue Ridge Escarpment -- a sinuous, winding, system of mountains that stretches from the the Little Tennessee River's headwaters in Northeast Georgia to Hogback Mountain on the border of Greenville and Spartanburg counties in South Carolina.

This is a land of heart-busting climbs; of rock walls that put cricks in your neck; of nesting peregrine falcons; and hundreds of rare and endangered plants and animals scattered in ecological micro climates that mimic everything from boreal Canadian forests to semi-tropical rainforest.

"The Wall," arguably, is home to one of the greatest diversities of flora and fauna on the entire Eastern Seaboard. Much of that biological diversity is threatened by forces far beyond human control. Some of it is not.

Right now, one of the biggest issues facing conservationists are efforts to preserve an ecologically significant chuck of land know locally as the Nine Times tract.

Nine Times is exceptional for two reasons. One, it is the largest parcel of undeveloped land left along the Blue Ridge Escarpment; and, two, the tract holds a significant number of rare and endangered plants and animals within its 2,000 acres.

Dana Leavitt, land trust director for Upstate Forever (the region's premiere preservation organization) says plans to preserve the tract have hit a speed bump.

Funding sources have dried, leaving Upstate Forever w-a-y "out on a limb.” In 2007, the organization mortgaged its soul to buy 560 acres of the tract from Duke Energy and set up a two-year option to buy the remaining 1,648 acres for $4800 an acre.

Since then, Upstate Forever has managed to offload the 560 acre tract to The Nature Conservancy, recouping part of their cost and ensuring the most ecologically significant portion of the tract is preserved. The conservancy plans to open that section of the tract to the public this spring.

A November deadline looms large for the option to purchase the rest.

Upstate Forever plans to ask Duke for an extension on their purchase option and, perhaps, for a reduction in price. “Economic realities being what they are, we don’t think that’s unreasonable,” Leavitt said.

New rounds of meetings with public and private groups are set for the near future as Upstate Forever tries to set up a similar coalition of groups to the one that came up with the purchase price of Stumphouse Mountain in Oconee County.

“We’ve gotten the most ecologically important section of the tract (the 560 acres on the southwest side of E. Preston McDaniel Highway) protected,” Leavitt said.

After Wadakoe Mountain, Nine Times has been called the most environmentally sensitive area in the region. Wadakoe enjoys special protected status as a state Heritage Trust site, a designation Nine Times does not have.

Dennis Chastain, author and outdoor writer, has spent a lifetime chasing game and classifying plants on the slopes of the mountains that make up Nine Times. Every spring he leads groups into the area to view some of the rarest plants in the East.

He took me onto Big Rock Mountain last April and showed off some of the tract's best (pictures are attached). This spring promises to be even more spectacular as a decade-long drought that has gripped the region has eased.

Flowers seem to do better when they get a little water.

Nine Times would do a lot better if it were to come under the protective arm of a conservation-minded group, or coalition of groups.

As it stands, no one is lining up to contest Upstate Forever's plans for the area. But Duke Power holds all the face cards in this high-stakes game of poker and their consent to an extension of the agreement is essential, Leavitt said.

Otherwise, there just might not be a wildflower tour at Nine Times for Dennis to lead next spring.

For tours contact Chastain at DChas878@aol.com

For more information on The Nature Conservancy's slice of Nine Times contact Kristen Austin mailto:kaustin@tnc.org

Upstate Forever's Dana Leavitt may be contacted at dleavitt@upstateforever.org.