Another Snippet

North Carolina is sunny as I leave Hot Springs with Montreal, Kutsa and a raft of other thru-hikers. We walk through bright, leafless forest and deep ravines that slope down in to a green darkness. Rhododendron grottoes offer cool relief from the hot sun. On a high ridge, morning dawns with a cold light that reflects off many thousand delicate leafless branches. Wildflowers are abundant. Small wild iris, deeply purple. Bluets with their tiny pale, almost white, violet petals. Wood anemones blanket the forest floor like snow.

On a sunny morning I pass the graves of two Union soldiers,father and son, from North Carolina; a few hours later I see the grave of a woman who died one day short of 100 years. Just north of Big Bald mountain, the forest is open and serene in the gentle evening light. Great logs lie scattered everywhere. Some are mere mounds, almost completely absorbed into the ground under a carpet of moss. Others are moss-covered skeletons, slowly giving way to wind and water. Moss advances onto newly fallen trunks and branches, beginning their return to earth.