As The Summer Solstice Nears

By Tom Poland

 

 

Nature Asserts Its Brilliance

 

Robert Clark and I produce “The Photo of the Week” http://www.photooftheweek.net/ Bookmark it and visit it each week from Tuesday on. We try to post a new one each Tuesday but sometimes it’s Thursday before life lets us get the new one up. We cover nature, mysteries, man and his creations, and more.

 

Drama In The Mountains

(Read as if hearing Sir David Attenborough’s narration.)

Our journey takes us to Appalachia where we see the power and majesty of minute droplets of water …. A storm rises over a ridge. Its vast quantities of water will unleash torrents upon the mountain cove forest—a unique ecosystem, though it shares a fate with man. Neither can exist without water, and that brings up a perplexing question.

If Earth’s water didn’t come from outer space, where did it come from? A 4.4 billion-year grain of sand holds a clue.

Scientists studying ancient grains of sand believe water was here from the start, secured in grains of rock. Once Earth’s crust began to solidify, rampant volcanic eruptions spewed out molten rock and water and an amazing drama took place. A saturated atmosphere rained a Biblical 40 days and 40 nights filling Earth’s basins and aquifers. When you sip a bit of water, you’re drinking Earth’s first rains. Absolutely extraordinary.

And our ridge? Fiery backlight gives the ridge a volcano-like semblance and we perceive ash clouds appropriately enough near Asheville, North Carolina. It’s as if Earth re-enacts her great volcanic release of water once again. And the rain’s journey? It’ll form the headwaters of a southern river, a journey for another day.

 

 

 

Off The Grid

“Look, a lizard!” shout school-liberated children. A brown-to-green-morphing Carolina anole, (Anolis carolinensis), signifies summer has arrived. This arboreal lizard closely related to iguanas lives in the Southeast and Caribbean. “Yes, mon, the islands.”

Where does an anole set up shop? In a three-square-yard area offering a lookout, a place to bask, and hiding places. They love dense greenery, shade, and moisture. They stalk small insects and spiders in trees, shrubs, and believe it or not on window screens. Adhesive toe pads let them cling to walls and limbs. Most anything.

Children implore the anole to show his penny—the vivid red dewlap males display. Seen less frequently is the smaller female’s white dewlap. Territorial males repel rivals and react with aggression to their mirror image.

Anoles change colors from bright, leafy greens to wood-like browns. They do so for concealment but change colors based on mood also. Don’t you wish humans turned cherry red when angry or bright green when jealous. Might stop a lot of foolishness. (Then again, chameleons walk among us.)

This anole intends to get off the grid once it secures dinner. If only it were that easy for people trapped in uninspiring jobs, thankless careers, and dead relationships.

 

 

 

Threads Of Silk

Witness a battle older than mankind. The irresistible force versus the immovable object. Water wins. Note the fractures freezing water cleaved in boulders. The battle never ends, and eons of weathering, water, and gravity shatter rock into seaward-bound shards. A beach of the future waits among the greenery, rock, and water.

See the copper-like glint of rock? Riches hide in streams. Aspiring miners (if you know one) will tell you. They pan for placer gold. Trout fishermen, too. They use their pan in an altogether different way, however.

This silky water, like “many threads being pulled,”* seeks the Atlantic, giving man many gifts along the way and receiving no small amount of abuse in return.

The Middle Saluda, thankfully, has a fairy-tale-like story. It was the first river South Carolina’s 1978 Scenic Rivers Program protected. Roughly five miles of the Middle Saluda and its major tributary, Coldspring Branch, enjoy a 600-foot wide scenic corridor from U.S. Highway 276 to one mile upstream of the defunct Cleveland Fish Hatchery.

The river, running through northern Greenville County within Jones Gap State Park, drops nearly 1,000 feet in four miles. Its clear, cold water supports self-sustaining trout populations … and beaches of the future.

* From James Dickey, Deliverance

 

All photos by Robert C. Clark.

 

Visit Tom Poland’s website at www.tompoland.net
Email Tom about most anything. [email protected]

 

Tom Poland is the author of eleven books and more than 1,000 magazine features. A Southern writer, his work has appeared in magazines throughout the South. The University of South Carolina Press has released his and Robert Clark’s book, Reflections Of South Carolina, Vol. II. The History Press of Charleston just released his book, Classic Carolina Road Trips From Columbia. He writes a weekly column for newspapers in Georgia and South Carolina about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle, and changing culture.

 

 

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