Fragments From Floyd

This is the beautiful secluded Blue Ridge preserve where the fog (just coming in when this picture was taken), wind and rain thwarted my wildflower photography plans, for the most part.

But as you can imagine, even the walk into the woods around the pond in the drizzle was spectacular.

To never stop and ask directions–even when you are lost: it is everyman’s dream. For Gary Boyd, the dream has come true in the form of a laptop, Delorme maps software and GPS. And yesterday, the ultimate test: finding Fred. It is actually harder, they tell me, than finding Waldo.

Thanks to Gary and wife for making the effort to wind around our slow and crooked roads and get to know Floyd after reading about the county and its events and personalities now for some little while. I hope he returns to Texas with good memories of the county, the commonwealth and the folks he met along the way…and all the wrong turns made right. Safe travels on the way home today!

And speaking of travels…the image here is from a visit to Chateau Morrisette Winery last week that gave me an opportunity to travel a bit of the Blue Ridge Parkway. There is still some color on the ridges, and as you see here, the Friends of the Parkway crews have been busy repairing the rail fences that add so much to the rustic character of the drive.

Even with the late spring frosts, and even possibly because of the dry summer we’ve had overall, some are saying it will be a good fall forest color season. And it is happening fast! Our maple, seen here 11 months ago, has by the end of October lost almost all its leaves, while today, they hold fast, brown-tipped from frostbite in May, but coloring up nicely.

The Blue Ridge Parkway visitors are already finding their way off the high road into Floyd, Galax, and Roanoke–and other reasonably convenient places for gas, lodging and food.

With the seasons so oddly off this year, rather than the 2nd and 3rd weeks of October for peak, it just might be a bit later this year. But then, I’d best consult the local woolybears about that first.

I’ve stood only once on The Pinnacles of the Dan River (topo). And it was perhaps the only place I’ve been where you could underhand toss a stone and have it fall a thousand feet before it landed—in this case, in the tiny thread of the Dan River headwaters far below. I can’t recall much of that hike except that it was very botanically rich. We lived in Wytheville at the time, and I was in unfamiliar territory; now, this is not that far from home, and traveling down the parkway as we often do, as the crow flies, we’re only a few miles from this striking landform.

Take a look at the Google Map screenshot and follow the winding path of the Dan near it’s westernmost source in Patrick County. Rather than taking the shortest path south into the piedmont, it courses south and for reasons lost to geological history, cutting its way deep into the mountains before turning south. Most of the rivers drop in elevation has already happened by the time it reaches the Pinnacles (hence the 1000 foot precipice) though the surrounding land elevation stands in great relief, Mountains against NC Piedmont through which the rest of its journey carries it. (Google Earth: find Kibler, VA)

This, of course, is a river system, not a single stream, and encompasses some 3300 square miles of land drained by tributaries of the Dan that I’ve never heard of: Mayo, Smith, Sandy, Bannister and Hyde Rivers, each with their own pattern of feeder creeks, springs and branches draining swamps, shopping center parking lots, pig farms, and forest before the common stream of the Dan joins the Roanoke River.

And so any drop of rain that falls in Goose Creek will eventually mingle with a drop from the Pinnacles, or Mayo or countless named and nameless creeks of the Dan and yet other feeder rivers before it all flows into the briney Albemarle Sound.

Some would consider the time I spent yesterday looking at maps a foolish waste of time. But I have now a better sense of my place in the world. I know the lie of the land in a deeper way. And when it rains again (soon, we hope) I’ll imagine two drops, one starting in Nameless Creek and the other at Pinnacles, meeting finally before merging in the Atlantic. That daydream seems to me worth the moments spent exploring this place we all call home.

Soon, the leaf peepers will come. But perhaps, even more so that in past years, the IF, WHEN and WHERE of fall foliage remains to be revealed for the Fall of 2007.

What with the late frost that killed or surpressed leaf growth over a wide swath of the east–and higher elevations and deeper valleys especially–plus the off again-on again drought of the second half of summer, it’s going to be an unpredictable autumn leaf-peeping season.

And of a sudden, yesterday turned fall in Floyd–perfectly timed for the Taste of Floyd and Heritage Festival, though the poor folks who set up the tents Friday night in the dark, the rain and the wind have my sympathies. And while the skies were crystal blue yesterday for the event, the wind was no friend. I told somebody that “anything with a higher center of gravity and more wind exposure than a man hole cover is GOING to blow over today!”

And I will learn–if I ever do this kind of book table again (I’m thinking NOT) I’ll carry ROCKS FROM HOME, bungee cords, and a lot more masking tape. The booth next to me blew over entirely, while it was only my note cards and books and bookmarks and poster I retrieved time and time again.

I met quite a few nice folks, including some who had read Fragments before finally relocating to Floyd, others who had read the book and some visiting Floyd from “off mountain” for the first time. It was altogether a nice day, but I don’t think I’ve ever been so wind-burned in my life!

The Blue Ridge Autumn note cards that many of you helped me chose are now with the printer in Wytheville. I’ll let you know when they arrive, especially for the half dozen or so who have already put your name on the list for one or more packs. And hey: be thinking about note cards as Christmas stocking stuffers, as part of gift sets (Slow Road Home plus a set of notecards for $20 plus shipping) and for writing those post-season thank-yous.

And a little extra: a video created from the notecard images (30 seconds) over on Nameless Creek blog.

It’s cooler this morning, and I’m thinking fall. And this image of the lone tree from Rocky Knob suits my thinking purposes. From here, I watched the migration of hawks, and met others there also attending to dragonfly mass-movements–the first I’d heard about that.

This is a vantage point from which to watch the color fill and fade from a million living leaves.

From here on a blustery day, the first distant snow flurries will trail along like gray curtains slanting behind blue-steel clouds over Walker Mountain.

A lone tree in a high place; a rocky crest that weathers the worst the seasons can cast against it: this is the elevated and elevating image I’ll carry with me today in my plodding routine. You’re welcome to borrow it for your thinking purposes as well.

How does one say (other than by dividing the 120 days from the official start to the official end of the season) when we have reached and passed the mid-point of summer? (That numerical midpoint would fall on about August 5.)

Our wildflowers move through the blooming of their lives, the hands on that grand clock that measures the passing of time in larger chunks than minutes and hours.

The Joe Pye Weed is half its full seven feet height and its flowers have barely opened.

The round sweet-scented ball of flowers of the common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) are turning brown, the spiny pods are just beginning to grow the silky “kapok” threads that will loft its seeds into the polar wind of an October day. (Read more about this interesting group of plants.)

The corn ears (for those whose gardens fortunate enough to have survived the deer, Japanese beetles and summer storm blow-down) is starting to show brown tassles. It won’t be long now.

The fireflies flash in twos and threes, not by the hundreds now. And the night insects reach their crescendo during the warm nights of late July.

The orb weavers have begun to drape their sticky strands across the forest path we walk every day, and the red-spotted “efts” we saw on the trail earlier in the year have grown up, lost their orange glow, and returned to the watery part of their lives.

(The milkweed–Asclepias tuberosa–pictured here is common along the Blue Ridge Parkway just now.)

I have often tagged July as my least favorite month. The heat. The humidity. The general torpor and boringnesss of our traditionally hottest month I can live without.

And at least so far, I’ve really not had much to complain about.

Last night in town, the backdrop of sunset changed every minute. Town was abuzz with Jamboree goers–and those who preferred to enjoy their music from under that wonderful sky in the late afternoon.

All seemed well with the world–even in dreaded July–and we’re enjoying more clear, crisp mid-summer weather that we deserve.

It looks a bit like a gigantic dandelion, with the “poofball” as my kids called it up to three inches across. Also called Western Goat’s Beard, Wild Oysterplant, Yellow Salsify, Yellow Goat’s Beard, Meadow Goat’s Beard, Goat’s Beard, Goatsbeard, Common Salsify, or Salsify, its European kin, Tragopogon porrifolius, makes an edible root eaten for its mild oyster-like taste.

This plant was new to me in the late 70s, an invasive from Europe, first spreading in the western states, and this past weekend, found everywhere along the Blue Ridge Parkway.

My kids loved this plant–one we really had to look for back then. If you take a single “parachute” from the head and remove the long stalk and seed at the bottom of it, the top pappus bristle “sail” is so buoyant it will hang in the air like a strange sea creature suspended in a clear ocean, even on a windless afternoon. They would chase it across the pasture until it vanished into the inverted depths of the ocean of mountain air.

Larger image of Tragopogon dubius is here.

This tall wraithe of a forest wildflower is Black Cohosh. Like so many other wildflowers that are many times taller than wide, it’s a hard one to show off in the best light. Unless, of course, you seek and find the best light.

And that is not all that hard to do along the Blue Ridge Parkway in the morning hours before 10 or afternoon after 3 in the summertime. Shafts of light slanting through the forest selectively illuminate your subject against the black velvet backdrop of unlit shadow, eliminating the busy, distracting blobs of shape and color that leave the eye searching for the picture.

You may have heard of Black Cohosh, if not as a wildflower, as a medication recently in use to treat menopausal symptoms. See this Mayo Clinic report on Black Cohosh. I suppose the drug companies accept wild-collected stock, but haven’t heard of people collecting it for cash like they do Galax, Running Cedar, Ginseng and such. I’ll have to explore that issue. There’s sure plenty of it in the rich woods along the ridges here’bouts.

The larger image does a better job of showing this plant off at its best.