Wild Appalachians
I've never been to these mountains before, but one of my first memories are of it. I was in third grade and had proudly answered a question asking what mountain range spanned the east coast, but I didn't quite know the name of it and I called them the Application Mountains. The whole class erupted in laughter at me. Now, on about the 30th anniversary of that experience, I find myself in quaint little Bryson City which is nestled into one of the many valleys of this range.
One of the silos holding banjo music. The more I look at it, the more it offers: part agrarian artifact with metal textures, part alive with vine reticulum, part fabled castle.
This place is like Disney World for the two-wheel enthusiast. There’s hardly a stretch of flat, straight road anywhere, and every few minutes I hear cruisers and adventure bikes roll by the B&B. In every direction out of Bryson City lay twisting mountain roads that offer stellar technical riding full of grades and turns and can induce a cardiac event. These Appalachians are a remnant of a massive mountain range that spanned the continent of Pangaea, and other parts of the old range are now in Scotland and Africa. Wow! I’m amazed by this fact and what geology offers - through it, we expand our perception of time and the world we live in. I think it’s right up there with paleontology and astrophysics in that regard. After a short ride through history, I arrived at one of about a dozen trailheads not far out of town. In these long periods between states and B&B’s, it’s these moments that excite me the most. Seeing a strange forest, listening to its sounds, just walking along the earth and seeing what the soil is like from that geology. It didn’t take long to realize that the telephoto lens was dead weight though, since the brush is so dense I can’t peek through it and there are no vantage points above a tree line. But I’m happy to take the lens for a walk over the crisp leaves that litter the forest floor as I have this entire place to myself.
This valley beyond used to be full of people, but in the 1940’s it was flooded to provide hydroelectric power for aluminum plants in nearby Tennessee. The communities were moved out though the graveyards remain, and the federal government agreed to build a new road to view them. But the project was abandoned after encountering environmental risks, and now the far side of the tunnel ends with trails that head out into camp sites and graves.
I realized my dream of seeing the mountains when they’re smokey and snapped a ton of pics at each vantage point along the mountain road and around town, and repeated it the next day when the phenom continued. And then it continued the next day, and I realized that they’re ALWAYS hazy! Google says the haze is from the collective breaths of the millions of trees and plants that grow thick here. The haze makes for amazing evening atmospheres here as it catches and refracts the tangerine light, like sunset through wildfire smoke. But even at mid-day the atmosphere can delight, when clouds cast labyrinthine valleys and endless tunnels of green into shadows. What enchantment the weather brings here, these spellbinding clouds over the unforgettable Application Mountains.
