It was nearly dark as I made my way along a footpath I could barely see. I resisted the urge to use my cell phone as a flashlight, though it wasn’t because I was worried about the power consumption. Rather, I wanted to spend a moment disconnected from everything, instead in tune with the woodsContinue reading “2020/10/20 – Catawba River Rendezvous”
Category Archives: Pisgah National Forest
2020/10/20 – The Tall Way Up Shortoff
Hiking up a mountain is a phrase that sounds fairly ominous for those who haven’t done it a couple times. For those who have, they know the journeys are not the dragon filled, death defying escape that they might have imagined. For one, dragons are expensive, so due to budget cutbacks they only appear on weekends now on most trails. But getting to the top is often a circuitous route involving only gradual climbs, a few highlights along the trail, and at least in Appalachia woods and other features which obscure the totality of the climb and keep you in anticipation of what you’ll see next.
2020/10/19 – Vengeance on Flat Laurel Creek
I had taken a big gamble by taking this trip in the shape I was in, and I had done some crazy things. I navigated an unmarked hike in Linville Gorge of all places, including a trail segment so steep it was laughable. I had just done the longest hike of in the mountains of my life, and done it solo with two bad hips. I had driven on mountain roads an entire day on a tire going flat. I had used an Amazon hub. I stopped at stop lights. There were a lot of firsts this trip. So I wasn’t going to let another stupidly steep slope stop me again, even if it was getting dark and I was having to go down first, uncertain of how difficult it would be to get back up, especially with a camera bag and tripod on my back.
2020/10/18 – Sitting Bear Stands Tall
I peered over the edge, trying to figure out which route which cause a slightly marginal decrease in the likelihood of severe injury compared to the others. So too were close to ten others, hikers who had come from the other direction on a loop hike, not the out and back I was taking, and thus had not yet experienced this thrilling trail segment. I had come across them on my return trip, and had discussed strategies for how to handle this tricky section. My preferred method was the butt method, where you don’t run the risk of having your feet fall out from under you since you aren’t on them in the first place. This tried and true strategy is idea for Florida flat-landers, especially ones with bad hips, and it’s the exact strategy that I decided to employ here. Soon I was sliding down foot by foot, my hands gripping for patches of firm dirt, tree trunks, and roots, whatever would help me make a controlled descent besides the friction between my butt and the ground below which had long since caused the back pocket oy my pants to lose its functionality. And soon, most of the folks behind me had joined in, so there were a near dozen of us sliding ungracefully down the slope, all on our butts. From below, we might have looked silly for those not in the know. For others, they know that’s it’s just another part of hiking in Linville Gorge, one of the most rugged hiking areas in the East.
2020/10/17 – Lost Time, Lost Cliffs
My car said it had a flat tire. Driving down Interstate 40 in the ballpark of towns preparing their application for a second stop light, this wasn’t exactly an opportune time (I will say that I have yet to find an opportune time for a flat tire warning). It was early on a Saturday morning,Continue reading “2020/10/17 – Lost Time, Lost Cliffs”
2020/10/16 – Doing Time at Silvermine Bald
I’m not sure if the ridge that the Blue Ridge Parkway rides west of Asheville through Mt. Pisgah and to the Great Balsams is actually the Pisgah Ridge. I saw that name on a sign once, though, so I’d like to think it is. Maybe its name is Gerald. I like to learn a lotContinue reading “2020/10/16 – Doing Time at Silvermine Bald”
2020/10/16 – Heading West along the Big East Fork
I couldn’t feel my legs. That might have been a little more disconcerting than it was, for at least it had a rational explanation. I had been standing in near-freezing water for nearly a minute (I have it on good authority that I could tell it wasn’t freezing because it wouldn’t have been water anymore). I was standing, barefoot, in the Big East Fork, a river that drains an area flowing from the Black Balsam/Graveyard Fields area of the Pisgah National Forest. It wasn’t for no reason that I was doing this. I didn’t recreationally try to catch hypothermia. It was the only way I had found to get a good picture.
2020/07/04 Jumping John Rock is a Gas, Gas, Gas
I wasn’t sure I could go. I was pacing, or at least the best approximation I could do, back and forth in our hotel room, testing out the injured foot that would need to have far more than the 20 hours I’d give it to recover from the nasty turn I had given it on the Flat Laurel Creek Trail. It really wasn’t good. My foot had swollen so much through the gaps in the compression sleeve that I was wearing that the edges nearly cut my skin. I wasn’t sure I could walk down to the car, and was half hoping Jess would push me a luggage cart. I could barely make it from bed to bathroom, and yet in less than an hour I was hoping to tackle a 7 mile, 1100 foot elevation gain hike.
In normal times I might have heard the fat lady sing. But these were covid times, and the fat lady’s performance was canceled as it was against CDC regulations.
2020/07/03 – Sam Knobs and Broomsticks
I kicked it into high gear and moved as quick as I possibly could, poles and feet crashing in furious and uncoordinated fashion into the grassy ground along the trail. And that was when it happened. My right ankle in foot erupted in pain as I had misstepped and landed with my foot sideways on the uneven ground. I couldn’t tell what was actually hurt, foot, ankle, pride….I just knew that it was NOT GOOD. Now, as somebody who has been hiking for years, I’m quite used to the run of the mill twisted ankle. On longer trips I usually get a good twist about every three days. Sometimes, like at Grandfather Mountain in 2017, that ankle twist will be with me for weeks. Twisted ankles are quite common for Jess as well, to say the least. As a former cross country runner, I’m well accustomed to just dealing with your run of the mill ankle twist. But nothing about this felt run of the mill.
2017/10/21 – Black Mountain Magic Woman
Somewhere in front of us was a mountain. Not that we could see it, but we were taking it on good faith that it was there. I don’t know why, considering the Blue Ridge Parkway signage had been rather inconsistent this summer of 2011, but we were. We could definitely see the base of it, but impenetrable mist shrouded much of the top. And that top seemed to be enormously high – far higher than I had ever imagined could occur in Appalachia. Not that I had ever spent much time imagining the tallness of Appalachia. I was from Florida, after all, where the largest hills nearby are landfills (one might think I am joking. But it’s pretty much true). This massive peak was beyond anything I would have expected. It was mysterious, foreboding, fantastical. For a second I thought I might have been in Alaska, and that was only partially because I would end up in the hospital later that night with a systemic infection.
J. Parker Nature Stories 