For Mother’s Day, I took my wife hiking. We ate sandwiches on my fresh-baked bread to eat at the midpoint of the hike.
The Graveyard Fields is a mile-high valley full of waterfalls and, of greater interest to my wife, innumerable species of trees and flowers that she can identify and lecture me about. Lecturing on her various passions is her very favorite thing; I only wish I were a better audience. I do try to listen politely, but even now I am sure I don’t remember all the details she was telling me about all the different plants.
Fortunately the hike was pleasant and the motorcycle ride to and from there was also. This is a very popular area right on the Blue Ridge Parkway, but the crowds quickly winnow if you take the steeper hikes. Soon you will hear nothing but birds and, occasionally, the highway noise of the Parkway itself.
Why are they called "graveyard fields"?
ReplyDeleteThere are several stories about that. There was supposed to have been a massive windstorm that felled many trees, which looked like gravestones. Or, alternatively, logging made the place look like gravestones. A huge fire destroyed the dead tree stumps some while ago, so the evidence is no longer available.
ReplyDeleteThere was someone who had planted and harvested Fraser Fir Christmas trees in that general area about 30 or 40 years ago, if memory serves.
DeleteIf it is steep enough, it might be the graveyard of a hiker's assumption about her fitness and stamina. (Not that such has ever happened to me, of course.)
ReplyDeleteLittleRed1
One learns a great deal about that subject around here, LR1. :)
ReplyDeleteThere was a period in the 30s when Tolkien, George Sayer, and the Lewis brothers, Jack and Warnie, would go on weeklong rambles, staying at inns every evening. The Lewises liked to hike, covering distance and admiring the landscape. Sayer, and especially Tolkien, would stop every hundred or so yards to admire some wildflower or tree, and want to explain to the others about it. The Lewises eventually decided that they'd had enough, asked George to keep an eye on Tollers, and walked on ahead to the inn, sometimes having dinner and waiting a further hour or two before the others arrived. The next year they didn't invite him, though they would occasionally go on day hikes with him.
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