Graveyard Fields
This flat mountain valley just off the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina is not unlike other mountain valleys. Surrounded by mountains named Black Balsam Knob, Tennent Mountain, and Sam Knob, in August it is filled with goldenrod and the last of the wild blueberries. This place and others like it define our relationship with natureââall of its parts are different expression of the same energyâ (Robinson Jeffers).
The Park Service history says the name may have come from a windstorm fell that downed hundreds of trees or extensive logging in the early 1900âs. Either way the stumps eventually resembled moss-covered graves. Later fires devastated the entire valley, apparently heating the soil enough to sterilize it so that plants had difficulty growing. Now some trees, shrubs, and grasslands are slowly thriving. It is a ghostly but enriching landscape.
The Park Service history says the name may have come from a windstorm fell that downed hundreds of trees or extensive logging in the early 1900âs. Either way the stumps eventually resembled moss-covered graves. Later fires devastated the entire valley, apparently heating the soil enough to sterilize it so that plants had difficulty growing. Now some trees, shrubs, and grasslands are slowly thriving. It is a ghostly but enriching landscape.