More woods around here

Anyone who is visiting, or lives in this area full time, knows that these Western North Carolina mountains are teeming with woods.  Ah, greenness abounds!

Summertime is upon us, with nice cool nights, some afternoon showers, and humidity that varies from 60 to 90 percent.  Fog is often what I first see in the mornings before that good old sunshine showers my eastern windows.

A mountain road with the sights delineated for travelers

So though there are woods in any direction you might jump, I'll share more of the latest of my day trips with you now.

Joyce Kilmer - Slickrock Wilderness, Nantahala National Forest

Up close and more personal.  The little things you see along a walk.  And I have a trusty camera that didn't run out of battery power for the whole first half of the walk.  And the second half I was so tired already I didn't feel like taking a single picture anyway, almost.

One of the streams which you fortunately get a bridge across

Interesting how the whole first half of the lower loop has been rubbed out...it's not that hard to find!

The trail is well marked, maintained, and has steps added to keep erosion under control

All the felled trees had already died, Hemlocks with an insect that has killed most of them in the forests in this area, and perhaps some chestnuts which died back in the 1920s from Chestnut blight..

With the death of the hemlocks, there is more sunlight filtering to the floor of the woods, so new growth is happening.  The leaves closest to me were Poplars, the children of the biggest trees in this woods already.  Tim remembers walking these trails about 20 years ago, and they were very dark indeed with all the hemlocks.

One of the few examples of wildlife we saw...a few dogs were walking the path as well (on leashes) ahead of us

Today's Poem:

The Fog

by Carl Sandburg

 THE fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Into the woods

Yes, I did it.

K, it was the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest, and the huge poplars were worth the effort.  I did hug this one, the first that extended above the normal canopy to the sky.

And my biggest gratitude is that my body stretched itself beyond what I thought was possible, and I didn't have severe reactions...I was able to breathe (panting all the way) and walk slowly up the side of a mountain for a half mile.  And I didn't cough at all during the walk. My friend, Tim, patiently followed along, and we talked and took photos whenever we felt like it.

Tim passing one of the removed Hemlocks which had died from Wooly Adelgid blight

 Anyone else would have found it easy, but for my lungs, it was a constant push, and even in the longer hot and humid descent, no cough!

Many felled hemlocks along the way

 I may be able to go back out and walk around the marvelous trails (the easy ones of course) of these Appalachian Mountains.

Hugging a big tree, and not the biggest I'm told, but I didn't go all the way to the top of the trail.

There's not much clear area to look up to the tops of these Poplar giants

Dead Hemlocks still standing

I'll share some other of the lovely sites that we encountered on our walk tomorrow.

Today's Quote:
(yes, I'm in a poetry mode this week, so will be sharing some poems)

Nothing Gold Can Stay
by Robert Frost

 Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.