Quiet Time.

As often as I can, I take off to the mountains and go hiking. Generally I am seeking solitude to go along with my exploration of forests. There's not much better than sitting quietly in a silent forest and not hearing the sounds of other humans. No machines. No voice. Just the wind. Some bird song. Perhaps the exclamation of minor destruction as gravity pulls down a dead limb somewhere in the trees.

So that's what I did on Saturday. I drove to the Curtis Creek area near Old Fort NC and climbed a mountain, viewing a couple of waterfalls along the way. Once at the summit, I just sat down and enjoyed the silence.

After relaxing and meditating there for a long time I packed up and headed down to see a couple of the waterfalls I had passed to reach the summit. And there, again, I just sat to contemplate the scenery and to daydream.

Taking it easy on the summit of Buckeye Knob. Just me and the trees and the breeze.

Green Knob, way off in the distance, across the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Meditation.

Upcoming Backpacking Trip

I'm going on my first backpacking trip for quite some time this weekend. Andy Kunkle, Bob Johnson and I will be headed to the Pisgah National Forest to do an overnight loop hike in the Curtis Creek area.

Andy and I hiked there last summer to find a grove of old growth hardwood trees, which we succeeded in doing. I'm hoping to stumble across some more great old trees when we're there on this trip, although we'll be in a different drainage area and hiking slopes a few miles away from where the big trees were.

I've also been to this area on a couple of other hikes with Andy and once before with Bob Johnson. One was around this same time a few years ago when we hiked up to Green Knob and into some really cold weather. On another trip we went to find some waterfalls and to seek out wildflowers--and discovered that forest that year was packed with an enormous crop of deer ticks. I'm hoping we don't find ticks this time, but since we really didn't have a winter this year, I will not be surprised if we have a problem with ticks.

I'm pretty sure that this is Mackey Mountain. This was as close as we got to Mackey on that hike, but on this trip we'll actually be going over the summit.

Boone the dog, and me. This was at a nice waterfall we visited. Boone will be along on this trip, too.

I had almost forgotten than my son, Andy, was on this hike until I started pulling up the photographs from this trip (April 2009).

This photo is sad for a number of reasons. First of all, this is a really nice waterfall and it's almost completely hidden by fallen hemlock trees. Secondly, the hemlocks died and fell over because they were infested with hemlock wooly adelgid, the pest that is killing off all of our hemlock forests. This particular scene is exceptionally painful because this had been a grove of very old hemlocks. Now they're all dead and gone. I doubt there's a living hemlock left in that section of Pisgah National Forest.

Me and the Ticks

Just before I went on the hike to Buckeye Knob I was reading the comments on a tree society board that I frequent. They were posting technical information about how DEET doesn't really stop ticks and that for ticks you need to use something called Permethrin which is highly toxic (even more toxic than DEET) and should only be put (sparingly) on clothing.

I always take DEET with me when I go into the woods. It's one of the items in my pack that's with me wherever I go. I use it when gnats and biting bugs are getting on my nerves. Since I wasn't being bitten by such critters, I didn't use the stuff.

However, everyone else decided to use DEET when some nagging (but not biting) flies began bothering us, and after I found a tick on each of my legs.

"DEET doesn't do any good for ticks," I told everyone. Hey. I'd read it on the Internet. It must be so. To my credit, I'd also read something similar in print, so I felt I was standing on something like solid information. To their credit, everyone else figured I was full of shit and used the DEET.

By the end of the hike, I'd pulled no less than eight ticks off of my body. Everywhere from my knee to my right butt cheek.

All of the folk who used DEET on the hike made it out of the woods without a single tick.

I, the lone hiker who failed to use DEET, was food for the little bloodsucking assholes. I learnt my lesson.

Afterwards, I read the fine print on what people were saying about the DEET. In a nutshell, what they (and even the companies that produce the stuff) say is that DEET doesn't "kill" ticks. However, it does a decent job of "repelling" them. Fuck me for a moron.

One thing that had me unconcerned as we tackled this peak is that, in all of my 30+ years of hiking in the southern Applachians, I had only ever gotten one single tick on me, and that was on Pinnacle Mountain in South Carolina. Before that, none. Before Buckeye Knob, one. The day of Buckeye Knob, eight.

You'll pardon me if I conclude that global warming has been an influence on this. Scientists have been telling us for some time to expect the spread and increase of certain vermin into places where they had never (or sparsely) lived. Seems like the real deal to me.

My friend Jack Thyen took this shot of me near the summit of Hickory Knob. We were all busy taking photographs at one of the few breaks in the forest cover where one could find a long range view.

Here I was on the summit, exhausted, feeling every ounce of the 20+ pounds I'd gained since 2007. I'm really out of shape and hope to get back into my regular hiking condition as I hit the trails more often this summer. I suspect, also, that this was the spot where the ticks really jumped aboard the Good Ship Bob. (Another Jack Thyen photo.)

As I lay prone on the top of the mountain, this tree was looming over me. I don't know what it was. If you can ID it, let me know. (Click to embiggen to see the bark.)

Another view of the tree and limbs. The tree encroaching in the lefthand side is some type of maple (not sure which species), but that's not the one that concerned us.

Here's a closeup of the newly opened leaves. I assume these will get larger as Spring proceeds. These had just appeared and were very fresh. Many of the trees on the ridges were still bare.

Here's another one. If you know what this is, let me know. We see it often in the Southern Appalachians, but none of us know what it is.

Hiking to Buckeye Knob

Hiking to Buckeye Knob.

After hooking up with Andy Kunkle and his puppy-dog Boone in Gastonia, we drove up to Marion NC where we met with Jack Thyen and Joel at the Wal Mart parking lot just off NC 321. This was the view of the mountains looming above Marion. In that bunch somewhere are Mackey Mountain and Buckeye Knob where we were headed. They're not really large mountains by NC standards, at less than 3500 feet in elevation, but they do rise impressively from the lower country where Marion is situated.

Soon after beginning the hike, we came to this waterfall on the trail. This was actually the best of the pair of falls on the route. The other one would have been a good place to take photos, but dying hemlocks have fallen into it and blocked it off.

View from the top of the falls.

The view from the base of the falls.

Flowers

Andy Kunkle, Jack Thyen, Joel (sorry, I forgot Joel's last name), my son Andy, and I gathered on Sunday for a hike in the Mackey Mountain area near Curtis Creek in the Pisgah National Forest here in North Carolina.

Jack Thyen, My son Andy, and Joel hike through a dying hemlock forest.

The area's a good one for hiking with lots of impressive peaks, some good waterfalls, and patches of virgin forest here and there. In fact, we hiked near some old growth forests, but as our schedule and trail conditions would have it, we didn't actually get to take a close look at any really big trees.

The main purpose of the hike was to get a look to see how this year's crop of wildflowers was doing. We did see a fair amount of wildflowers, but nothing really spectacular, except for some very vigorous and colorful patches of Dwarf iris. There were other flowers popping up, but nothing that particularly impressed me.

We bagged one peak, that being Buckeye Knob, which tops out at a bit over 3,200 feet. Not very high by North Carolina standards, but the long hike to the summit was tough. The weather was hot, dry, and the ridgelines were parched out from lack of rain. One thing that I learned, to my horror and disgust, was that these woods are PACKED with ticks. This seems to me to be a good indication of the effects of global warming. I've been hiking and backpacking the southern Appalachians for well over thirty years, and I'd only ever gotten a single tick on me while in the high country--that being on Pinnacle Mountain in South Carolina a few years back. But on this trip I pulled eight ticks off my shins and thighs!

The guys on the hike who used Deet, however, didn't get any ticks on them. I didn't use any, and pretty much got covered with them. Next time I'll use the Deet.

This was a very tough hike for me. Once again I was reminded of my age, and of how out of shape I've gotten over the past year. I felt every ounce of the twenty pounds I gained after walking away from the diet in early 2007. One realizes the extra poundage as you labor up a steep slope on the way to a summit. It sucks! I keep telling myself that I'm going to shed those twenty damned pounds of lard, but then I go back the flatlands and eat fried chicken. Alas!

Oh, well. I'm going to give it another shot. Twenty pounds--I can lose that much.

Early azalea. We found a few of these opening up.

Violets.

I have no idea what these are. But there were lots of them.

I'm told that these are called Dwarf iris. Probably the prettiest flowers I saw all day. We'd pass large patches of them making wonderful color upon the forest floor.

More unknown. A small, delicate flower.

I am ignorant of this one, too. But it made for a great photo.

The first waterfall, with Boone pausing between splashing time.

Andy Kunkle taking a photo of azalea while I take a photo of Andy taking a photo of the azalea.

Some tree beginning to blossom. Another mystery for me.

My son, Andy, at a small waterfall along the trail.

These looked like tiny white bells. Very pretty. I don't know what it is.

I was told what these are, but I've forgotten. These were also on the forest floor in great abundance.

Violet.