Deadfall

Hightop Mountain Trail

Shenandoah National Park

 

Woodland Sunflower

Hightop Mountain Trail

Shenandoah National Park

"In spring and summer, the small blue and yellow flowers of bluets or Quaker ladies (Houstonia caerulea) line many trails. May is the time for pink azaleas (Rhododendron spp.) to bloom in the forest and along Skyline Drive, followed by the white flowers of mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia) in June. Summer is the time for flowers such as columbine (Aquilegia canadensis), milkweed (Asclepias spp), nodding onion (Allium cernuum), ox eye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare), and turk's cap lily (Lilium superbum) to bloom. Also in summer, look for the yellow and orange flowers of touch-me-nots (Impatiens spp.) along streams and near springs, and countless spiked blooms of black cohosh (Actaea racemosa) rising above the forest floor. The Park's growing season concludes with a strong display of goldenrods (Solidago spp.), asters (Symphyotrichum spp.), and wild sunflowers (Helianthus spp.) into the fall." -- Shenandoah National Park

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."

Trail Bites

A recent return to the Greensprings Interpretive Trail revealed higher than usual water levels in the swamp and . . . a correspondingly high number of bug bites. Ouch!