Fragments From Floyd

Being in the Blue Ridge

The Smokies are perhaps the most 'famous' part of the Southern Appalachians and are part--the broadest and highest part--of the Blue Ridge geological province. The Blue Ridge possesses a unique and more ancient history than the other parts of the mountain chain. Both the Smokies and the Blue Ridge get their names from the pervasive haze or transpirational "plant breath" that cloaks this thickly-forested region in a fine pale haze for much of the warmer months.

The Appalachians extend from just south of my home town of Birmingham, Alabama (some would argue it can be traced from here westward, underground, to the Ozarks) to the Gaspe Peninsula of Nova Scotia (and some would argue the Appalachians extend geologically to northern Great Britain where the same serpentine rock under our Appalachians lies under the Scottish Highlands.) The Blue Ridge is one "physiographic province" making up the Appalachian Mountain Range. It is a tourist destination--a "sexy" part of the maligned geosocial region named Appalachia--a term that was once synonymous with ignorance and poverty--a stereotype conferred at the turn of the previous century and made indelible by caricatures since, and which we are slowly and deliberately casting off.

The geology called the Blue Ridge is the remnant core of the earliest extrusion of molten earth that became mountains of igneous rock (quartz, granite). They appeared over a billion years ago. The smooth shoulders of today's ridges would hardly suggest that in fact these peaks were once higher and more awesome and rugged than today's Rockies. The Appalachians most conspicuous features today perhaps are the folded and faulted layers of sediment (sand, clay, silt, conglomerate, and also coal) that were pushed up by colliding tectonic plates some 700 million years ago after shallow seas had covered this part of the ancient world for millenia.

Goose Creek lies on the western face of the Blue Ridge and our creeks tumble down into the Big Valley, flowing past Roanoke and then on to the Atlantic. We have both kinds of rock on our place--Blue Ridge igneous and Ridge and Valley sedimentary rock because our valley lies along the junction between Blue Ridge and the new Appalachians. Our ridge to the east is mostly quartz; our ridge to the west is mostly shale.

"Blue Ridge" is part of our identity of place. Businesses, churches and organizations include the term proudly in their names. The region has its own history, topography and vegetation. If you know your rocks and plants, you'll know precisely when you've passed into the Blue Ridge from an adjacent physiographic province and especially as you rise more than a thousand feet out of the Piedmont. It is a bioregion in its own right, so clearly evident that its boundaries separated indian tribes and prevented accidental trespassing and reduced territorial warfare among them, I've read.

The land is beautiful, but it is also steep and rocky, and highly dissected into tortuous valleys that turn to gorges carved by tumbling streams. To us these old mountains are beautiful. The early settlers saw these jumbled mountains ridge after blue ridge from the first mountaintops as they climbed the escarpment rising up from the Piedmont. The view evoked the horror of impenetrable thickets of Rhododendron that stretched out for endless miles to the farthest hazy horizon. There were few passes through it traveling by horse or oxen-drawn wagons. Dan'l Boone's gap through the Cumberland part of the Appalachian barrier represented a most welcomed window to the West for the pioneers of those days.

Early migration and settlement in southwest Virginia followed the relatively level land and fertile valleys of the "Great Valley"; the Blue Ridge areas such as Floyd County were far more sparcely settled and much later, and in no small part by those wanting off the beaten path--seeking refuge from political or religious persecution; or come here to take advantage of the cold mountain streams suitable for the manufacture of untaxed corn products.

When it came time for Ann and I to return to southwest Virginia, we sought out the Blue Ridge, even though our first Virginia home of a dozen years had been in the Ridge and Valley and we still had friends there. It was to this particular ambiance of rock and forest and landform that we chose to migrate because it suits our temperaments in some ways I am yet hoping to understand. While to those outside the area, Blue Ridge may be the name on a promotional brochure hawking mountain communities for retirement, for us it is the name of the ground under our feet.

And so, when someone asks me where I live, rather than saying in more general way that I live in the southern Appalachians or Appalachian Highlands, I say I live in the Blue Ridge of Virginia. This is where I'm from... this is the land that has adopted us. And like children of adoption, we are here not by random fate, but because of all the places we could belong, this is the place that has chosen us for its children.

This post arises partly from the good discussion that has been going on in the comments to "Name ad Nauseum" (read comments here) and I wanted a longer "two cents worth". The image I shamelessly lifted and modified from Jim Fletcher's excellent photography at SmokyBlog. Thanks, buddy. I owe you one.

Posted by fred1st at March 7, 2004 05:47 AM | TrackBack