Monuments

I guess you probably already know that our mountains in Virginia are old. I mean, REALLY old, to the tune of millions and millions of years old. That's why I felt like I was walking back in time the minute I set foot on the Hightop Mountain Trail, which is part of the 2100+ mile Appalachian Trail . It's filled with--as I'm told Nathaniel Hawthorne once put it--"earth's undecaying monuments." 

Huge boulders stacked one on top of another suddenly made me feel very, VERY small and in awe of the unimaginably powerful forces that put them there.

Hightop

It's been too long. I realized that as soon as I stepped out of my car onto the Hightop Mountain Parking Area in Shenandoah National Park. I used to hike the park's trails regularly. Now, because of their distance from me, it's something I do maybe, if I'm lucky, once or twice a year. I'd like to promise myself to return more frequently, but I know I can't. I can only make the most of the opportunities I have. So here I am about to embark upon another adventure up the Hightop Mountain Trail.

Return to the Sea

As this region prepares for yet another round of high tides and coastal flooding as the result of a close brush with a hurricane (Erin), I'm reminded of how Tidewater Virginia was all once the bottom of an ocean anyway. The evidence is never far from reach.

Chesapecten Jeffersonius

Chesapecten jeffersonius? I think so. If so, then Wikipedia says that it is "the fossilized form of an extinct scallop, which lived in the early Pliocene epoch between four and five million years ago on Virginia's coastal plain."