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The Long Walk Uphill

Walking up the small mountain above the house into the wooded hillside this morning with Moose and J.D. I could not help but notice the many changes that have occurred since I was there years before. Asking myself why it had been so long since I had visited that particular spot I paused and pondered its beauty and made a small vow not to let so much time pass again before I returned. It has been too many years since I had been up to the higher elevations at the rear of our property. The dappled sunlight freckled the forest floor and moved with the currents of the wind as the trees danced above us dodging and burning spots of light on the forest floor. I climbed the incline towards the national forest that conjoins the back property line. Still early enough in this spring of 2014 I did not have to worry about the ticks and red bugs that feast on humans and own this part of the forest later in the summer. It was cool and breezy, a perfect crystalline blue day for climbing through the heath thickets and the rhododendron hells and was quite comfortable despite the rigors of the climb. The mountain laurel and rhododendron remained sound asleep and barely showed any hint of the spring time change in their as yet unfurled blossom and leaf buds.

The forested slopes were different since I had last visited. The many trees had grown larger and consequently weeded out the smaller, weaker versions of themselves and consequently proffered a more open vista than I remembered. There were a number of downed giant trees lying on the ground, sad like so many fallen warriors, decomposing, shedding their bark and now soft spongy interiors back into the moist yielding covering cloaking the earth. They had succumbed to high winds, heavy snows, disease and whatever other force that was at work there while I did not visit them. They lived their lives up on the hill exchanging with me, oxygen for carbon dioxide unseen and unthought-of by anyone. The inclined hill was covered with leaf litter and detritus shed by the indigenous trees and other plants from past years that had grown so deep that my feet sank into the spongy, moist depth of it. Not so many years ago an intentionally set fire on Rich Mountain burned for weeks and destroyed the nurturing cover and smoked the air so heavily that many people had to leave and find other places to stay till the leaf litter had finished burning. It took weeks.

This rarely explored area of the Rich Mountain wilderness is extraordinary with the fresh flush of spring on its face, still dripping with dew from the early morning. There was no sign of the showy orchid with the striking purplish and white bloom that appeared a few weeks ago nor the pink lady’s slipper that produces erotically, exotic pink blossoms for mother’s day each new year. I missed them as I walked this morning but am sure I passed within spitting distance of them and didn't notice. Moose and J.D. were with me running rampant through the underbrush so my attention was somewhat diminished for plant watching as my dogs are so entertaining. Periodically they would stop and have what seemed to be an all out fight just this side of a bloodletting for no apparent reason. Moose pounced on J.D. and intentionally rolled her for some twenty yards down the steep incline while her teeth snapped the air searching for a piece of Moose’s flesh. Afterwards they continued their trek undaunted by what had just transpired and seemingly devoted friends once again. They are mother and son and seem attached to each other but fisticuffs do occasionally happen, usually over food.

Coming down the hill returning home after a long strenuous hike I heard the rustling creek and noticed the showy white double file virburnum extravagantly blooming down by the water with wedding cake audacity, shedding petals and stamens with excessive abandon into the icy water.  upward