Dear Blue Ridge,
I’ve hiked your peaks and slept under your stars for a few years now, and each time I leave more full than when I came. You impart something rich; it’s hard to describe, but it’s sort of like how a home-cooked meal warms the belly and the heart. Time spent with you is nourishment in every sense. I owe you some gratitude.
I want to recognize your generosity as an ecosystem. You protect those with nowhere to go, reserving rooms for pleistocene relics. Red squirrel, fir tree, chaga, black-throated blue warbler (sadly, no Mastodon remain, though they would not be out of place). Flowers, ferns, and boreal balsam fir. All these find refuge in your ancient soil.
These bundles of fur, plant, and mycelial structure embody the influence of the past glacial epoch; their existence here blurs the boundaries of time. You provide refuge for species commonplace in Canadian forests, and yet, 1,000 miles south, on the great southern spine of the Appalachian Range they live in you.
You guard the doorstep to the atmosphere’s attic. When water knocks, you let it in. At Black Balsam Knob, where I’m walking now, your ground bursts with water, fed by cloud, rain, snowmelt and mist. Your springs are countless and humble as a mud puddle, yet they are the birthplace of rivers so powerful they carve the landscape like a widdler’s knife, so clear they could be made of glass. Your springs have a mind of their own, yet they stay to their determined courses, following plans drawn up by gravity, grooves deepened by time.
Battered by winter’s screaming winds and ice storms, your hillsides heave a sigh of relief with the arrival of spring. White blossoms on blueberry bushes droop their heads, gazing down toward trillium and lilly and meadow grass. Bumblebees have their work cut out here, trying to pollinate countless shrubs spanning entire mountainsides; they work diligently without rushing.
Along with your ripening berries will come black bears, your fuzziest residents, who will gorge themselves on the sweet fruits of summer. Though numerous, they will easily go unseen, making themselves invisible in the thick scrub as they wish, like actors dropping through trap doors. Their scat, though, will betray their presence and replenish the seed bank in your soil.
While I walk across your ridgeline, you grant me permission to be rather than to think; to be a human being, to be alive, to be awake to the eternal moment. I know it may seem odd to you, but this state of presence is a rare luxury for humans. We’ve somehow forgotten where we are and what we’re doing. You, however, haven’t moved much in 500 million years. Sure you’ve changed a lot in that time, but how could you forget where you are? And it’s clear you know what you’re doing—your residents are a testament to that.
Oh, and the last time I spent the night on your ridges you hit me with a wild wind storm and I woke up with frost on my mustache. I don’t know if you remember, and I’m sure it wasn’t personal, but damn that was a cold night. Maybe next time could you give me a heads up?
You are sunshine and wind. You are rock, grass, and infinite sky. I’m a pretty big fan of what you’ve got going on. Thanks again for sharing yourself with us rumbling, tumbling humans.
Your friend,
Jon
Jon Gorter (‘17) graduated from Calvin with degrees in English and environmental studies and holds an MS in natural resources from the University of Michigan. He enjoys fly fishing, mushroom foraging, and waterfall scrambling near his home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.
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I do so miss those mountains.