It catches me unexpectedly, missing you so.
The fog creeps in, sometimes for days.
Yet I’m grateful for the depth of our friendship
And the chance to honor it.
I run alone through the woods for miles
Missing you quietly.
This gallery contains 80 photos.
Click on the thumbnail to scroll through the photo gallery. Photos are roughly in chronological order, July 20-31st, 2015, for the 9th class of Forest Ecosystems of the Southern Appalachians at the Highlands Biological Station.
On our last day of class, we climbed the section of the Bartram Trail toward Scaly Mountain. We hiked up into the forest and stopped. “What’s the story here?” was the question of the day, and indeed, of the whole Forest Ecosystems class–the question we answered for every site we visited. This time, however, Julie, Alan and I were quiet, while our students looked around, dug into the soil, assessed the canopy, measured the slope, counted the herbs, identified dead trees and conferred with each other. They were seeing the story of this forest for themselves.
Rhiannon’s aster (Symphyotrichum rhiannon) may only exist at the Buck Creek Serpentine Barren, a small and unusual serpentine soil habitat managed by the US Forest Service in Clay County, NC. Small preserves like this one are critical to conserve plants and animals that require specialized habitat–in addition to the aster, four species of butterflies also call Buck Creek their only home in the world.
Look for the flat, treeless bog in Panthertown Valley from the summit of Little Green.
Inside the Panthertown bog. Bogs are rare habitats and are home to many rare and specialized species.
A soggy bouquet with five species of sphagnum: Sphagnum recurvum (green), S. capillifolium (yellow green), S. bartlettianum (red), S. angustifolium (yellow), S. fuscum or S. warnstorfii (brown).
