Ted. The
mountains of the southeastern US have a distinctive charm.
They are not as
rugged as the Alps of Europe or New Zealand, nor as tall as the Rockies. They
don’t have glaciers or tundra. They are old, though. Really old. You can get a
sense of it watching a tiny stream as it carves it’s way across solid granite.
Trilliums have bloomed here every spring for millions of years.
Wild azaleas shout out in a dozen hues of orange for the benefit of the bees, not humans, who only arrived here a hundred thousand years ago.
On returning to Georgia, Judy
and I always feel compelled to make a pilgrimage back to the hills we love. We
have walked a bit of the Appalachian Trail every year for 34 years. Blood
Mountain seems steeper and taller than it used to. Now, it is our turn to stand
aside and let the thirty somethings race past us on the trail. We slowly wind our
way down into Neels Gap just as that stream has for countless eons.
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