Linville Falls

[thesummerqueen]

Instead of spamming the member photos thread, I thought I'd post my stuff here. I had a really shitty week, and this is the way I escape emotional and mental pain.

This link gives an adequate history of the area. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ance...istory.htm


Stopped at Brown Mountain Overlook to peer over the mountains.


Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl's feather!
- 'Fairies,' William Allingham


The climb to the first overlook was cluttered but not too difficult.






"Ay me! ay me! the woods decay and fall;
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground.
Man comes and tills the earth and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan."
-Alfred Lord Tennyson


Down to the first overlook

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The way to the second overlook:

The rail beyond provided scant protection through this pass, where one slithered down steep mud-slicked rocks to a narrow, marshy loam ridge below.


A doorway to some fairy realm.

"By the craggy hill-side,
Through the mosses bare,
They have planted thorn-trees
For pleasure here and there.
If any man so daring
As dig them up in spite,
He shall find their sharpest thorns
In his bed at night."
- 'Fairies', William Allingham


My plant ID powers failed here. There are so many ferns in the NC forests, and we only learned about 12 of them.


The path continued on rail-less narrow ridges, wet with rain and matted with leaves. Roots twisted everywhere, tripping up feet that weren't deliberately placed.




No lie - the stairs were as steep as those in Cirith Ungol. (I know, I’m a huge dork)


And sometimes there were corners where hewn blocks were left, like the remnants of ancient temples.




The second “overlook” at the foot of the falls.

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Duggard's Creek Falls

I had come down from the difficult trail that led to the previous pictures and took this easy one in order to rest. My asthma was bothering me, for I am losing weight but not putting on enough muscle and strength of lung to handle mountain climbs.




The water had weathered the stones away.






Elfin steps to higher ground.

[Jackalope]

Very beautiful.

[thesummerqueen]

The next paths I traced back up to the falls were much easier.

This next overlook, much higher than the first (or second, obviously), had hewn stone steps that led to this weathered outcropping over the river.



The falls start simply, in low cuts.


Then the river begins to funnel…


And the river wound around the bend...


Until you couldn't see it anymore...


...till it hit a corner and spiraled with a roar...


And down it swept to a sudden and ugly drop off.




The fourth overlook was much higher, and one could barely make out the vicious path the river cut through the mountain.


While below the falls the river began a placid if rocky path, winding ever downward.

---

"I thought how utterly we have forsaken the Earth, in the sense of excluding it from our thoughts. There are but few who consider its physical hugeness, its rough enormity. It is still a disparate monstrosity, full of solitudes, barrens, wilds. It still dwarfs, terrifies, crushes. The rivers still roar, the mountains still crash, the winds still shatter. Man is an affair of cities. His gardens, orchards and fields are mere scrapings. Somehow, however, he has managed to shut out the face of the giant from his windows. But the giant is there, nevertheless.
- Wallace Stevens, Letters, p. 73


Back I turned, along a path barely marked out.


At the final, highest overlook
"It was not that the jagged precipices were lofty, that the encircling woods were the dimmest shade, or that the waters were profoundly deep; but that over all, rocks, wood, and water, brooded the spirit of repose, and the silent energy of nature stirred the soul to its inmost depths."
- Thomas Cole


They were ancient, these trees, and there is no sense of scale except to say that the leaves on the rhododendrons to the left were twice as long as my hand. And these were the smaller trees, the narrower younger ones that stood guard around the behemoths no usual tourist would see. Older than our grandparents, unconcerned with our ephemeral human trifles. We will age and scrape out short mediocre lives, then return to the soil. They will age, and quietly sunder mountains, feeding on our sinews and weaving roots amongst our bones.




Again, there is no real sense of scale in my photos - I am 5'3" and weigh about 140. I could have slid into that log and spent the night as if in a roomy sleeping bag.

[Tempus]

That very first picture reminds me of where I used to work. Those images make me want to go for a walk in the wild, very nice.

[frankiej]

Lovely. Those pictures have brightened my day.

[thesummerqueen]

"There is pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more."

[picto90]

Pictures have the ability to lift dampened spirits, actually walking this trail must have been something else entirely. Thanks for sharing

[thesummerqueen]

Pictures have the ability to lift dampened spirits, actually walking this trail must have been something else entirely. Thanks for sharing

It was an invigorating experience, despite hurting my foot again and thoroughly exhausting myself.

[LastPoet]

Beautifull, so that's what you meant for "that's why I went off to the woods".

I kudos it!

[picto90]

It was an invigorating experience, despite hurting my foot again and thoroughly exhausting myself.

Well I'm sure it was worth it nonetheless.