Appalachian Mountains, Virginia

Big Meadow Camp, big rains all day with acorn mortars

Appalachian Mountains, Virginia

9/26/10

It is a game of seek an wait.  We are early for the fall colors of the Appalachian Mountains.  Late September to early October is when they seem to be gathering their strength for a last run at at life.  A diminution of death’s turn through affirmation by fire.  The autumnal  earth’s fecund oder of wetness and soil,  of sweaty brows under knit caps, of the crunch and crinkle beneath our feet.  Autumn is the beginning of the end, an end that never really completes itself as we wrap our necks with wool and turn up our collars coddeled in  warp and weft.   Is it not wondrous as squirrels sprint from tree root to limb and back certain in its ability to gather and thwart winter want.  

As a climber in my youth of the granite slabs and spires of the Pacific Northwest’s Cascades Mountains of 8-12 thousand footers I am reluctant to call these Appalachian hills mountains. These hills instead roll like great ocean waves with crests of deciduous cloth as luminecent as walls of sea.  These are muscled hills underlain with granite bones and water.  These are old hills whose leafy skin is  sloughed off each fall and reborn again as  always  since the First day.  These are old hills that once were mountains  upthrust like the Himalayas.  These are hills that were once  an ocean sea.  These are hills whose valleys, draws, ravines and clefts move clouds of mist at great speeds and slow speeds  in the same  breath with wispy tendrils  clawing to and fro and upwards and thus the aappelation The Great Smoky Mountains.  They breath and smoke like humped dragons whose heads are buried beneath the leaves.  They are a treasure these hills.  

Today it is raining and it is such a relief from the heat and mug of DC.  We have begun the Skyline Drive atop the “Montains” at the northern tip of the Shenandoah National Park.  It is a 110 mile curving, climbing, dropping  drive along a spine that holds you to 35 miles an hour.  To go any faster  would loose your vision to the enchanted.

Here in the higher elevations of 3000’ forest floors of fields of fern are already so evanescent yellow that they light up the underside of the canopy of leaves above them.  Sumacs, as usual, have  the jump on vermillion.  You can feel the other flora anxious for the right combination of sun and temperature and time to fire up.

The trailer is parked in Big Meadows Camp and it is raining not hard and fast but slow and steady.  Each rain drop is individually heard with the occasional acorn pinging off the Airstream.  We are dry camping again, no power, water or sewers.  So it’s battery and candle power.  Tomorrow we will probably go no further than 30 miles down the road to another hill top park.  Perhaps there we will stay a few days to let the colors catch up a little closer.

It’s a game of wait and seek.

It’s “Woodsmoke and Oranges”

It’s the high mountain larch above timberline with its cloak of gold already three weeks 

       worn, the bugler from on high.

It’s the staccato rain flicking Airstream’s skin

It’s wine and hot dogs and candle light

Its the big down coverlet

It’s the rolling waves of dark hills outside

It’s the starless night

It’s how we seek and wait.

Goodnight to all our friends.  Here’s  listening to the same water tumbling from the  same sky.

Tony and JoAnn

Appalachian Hills with Shenandoah Valley beyond then West Virgina