And I’ve been doing lots of hiking since that’s what the parks down here offer. In between regular daylong downpours I’ve walked to stone arches, waterfalls, stone houses and an old railroad bridge. In most cases, the journey has made the hike worthwhile. Oh, the sights themselves have been impressive though hard to photograph. How does one show that a stone arch high enough to have full-grown trees under it in not very small with baby trees?
Other sights are equally hard to capture. There is a giant-leafed magnolia that has leaves 2ft long. Dried, they are white on one side and brown on the other. When I come across an area where they grow, it looks as though someone has littered a box of kleenix sheet by sheet with several catching in trees. Then the entire mess has been rained on a few times. We’ve all seen kleenix like that; it looks a mess and so does a hillside littered with those leaves. It’s eye-catching however not photo-worthy.
Eight-ten years ago some pine borer worked its way through the mountains so entire stands of while pine are dead. Most are still standing. Entire hillsides are covered with gray bones of 50ft trees that case a rather eerie gray light. At the same time new white pine are growing in the under-story. For the most part they are 3-8ft tall. White pine have long needles growing at the end of their branches. They are in constant motion so under the gray light is frothy green movement that looks rather surreal.
More impressive are the rock walls that suddenly appear along a trail. The sides are usually weathered into curly ridges and pocked with holes as softer material weathers faster than the harder stuff. In some places, entire sheets of rock have broken away leaving long shallow caves that are called stone houses. The trails running along those faces typically have a drip line running down them. Sometimes the rock face is still dripping so one weaves in and out of periodic droplets. If there is moisture there is also lots of magnolias, moss and rotting downed trees. The trees give off a pleasant earthy smell. If there is sunlight, it makes the tops of the magnolia turn golden-green. The combination of smells, color and dripping water create an impression of rainforest rather than hilly Tennessee.
If I go hiking the day after a heavy rain, and they have all been in the 2-3 inch range, there is still water everywhere. It runs through some campsites, it becomes trickles that join together and form small streams often down the path I’m walking. Or it leaps down hillsides in rock-strewn channels forming small waterfalls on its way. Easy fords over those channels become challenging as previously dry stepping-stones turn into slimy water-covered foot traps. The water force is so strong that it can undermine those stones causing them to shift when they are used.
The Big South Fork rises dramatically from those rains and becomes a roiling mass of yellowish mud-laden water. Part of one trail wound along the river for a ways and I could see water-trapped leaves in branches higher than my head. The trail I was on had clearly been covered with water; mine were almost the first footprints. In a few softer places I could see a bobcat had preceded me.
There are also bear, wild boar, deer, raccoons and tree-climbing fox that have retractable claws. I probably will not see any of them. Next update will be from the Natchez Trace as I work my way south of Nashville and deep into Mississippi.
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