On my way to the Voice in the Wilderness Seminar, I stopped at an overlook on Skyline Drive to just look, listen, smell, and think about wilderness.  I stood there for about thirty minutes, looking down on a vast forest.  At first, the sounds that I heard were just silence.  But once I attuned to the wilderness below, I heard a far off pileated woodpecker calling as it flew from tree to tree.  It was so distant that I knew I would not be able to spot it, but I could hear where it was, perhaps a half mile down the mountain, where there was nothing but forest, a perfect home range for that bird.  That bird, though common, even near populated areas, represented what wilderness meant to me.  A place for nature to progress as nature wants to progress.  If a particular wild thing finds a habitat that suits it, then that wild thing chooses to exist there.

The purpose of the seminar was to learn how to observe, write, sketch, and describe the wilderness experience to others. We hope to become wilderness proponents.  After a brief introduction to the goals and methods of the seminar, we headed off to a six-mile hike in a wilderness setting.  I have written journal entries for years, but I have never attempted to sketch what I have observed.  My notes and sketches made during and after that hike follow.

(I.)

Along the Nicholson Hollow Trail, we saw and tasted blackberries, warmed by the sun as if they had been prepared by mom for the dinner table.  We saw a springhouse right beside the trail.  The carefully selected and placed rocks and flat stones, placed by an early settler kept the leaves out of the water

Why spend so much labor here, on the side of a mountain?  Who would want to struggle all the way up this steep mountain to build a springhouse?  Is it so steep here as to keep out settlers of the nineteenth century?

Not really, they were hardy folks who had to find land to work that did not belong so someone else, or perhaps land just not defended by a rightful owner.  This was wilderness then, and the settlers started the process of turning it into products for use by man.  Yet, in the 1930s, man took that land away from the settler’s descendants so it could go back to being wilderness.  The land was to become Shenandoah National Park.  The land would return to what nature would put here.  Nature has not yet seen fit to dismantle the springhouse, but some day, perhaps this evidence of inhabitation by man will be absorbed back into the earth.

 

(II.)

The trail passes along side a flatter section of land hundreds of yards wide.  About fifty yards into the area, there is an eerie shape.

After careful study from afar, the window frame becomes evident to the mind’s eye.  Then the true identity pops into your mind.  It is a rusty charred piece of an old automobile or truck.  It is probably from before 1935 when the park formed.  Nature is continuing to absorb it back into the earth and has been more successful than it has been on the springhouse.

Is it because this is land that had been cleared by early settlers?  Were there plantings of fruit trees here then?  When Shenandoah National Park was claiming the land, did the Park Service remove fruit trees because they were non-native

The answer to the first question is yes.  The area was cleared for pasture or fields for crops as Nicholson Hollow continued to be settled further and further up the mountain.

  But, the answer to the second question is no, the Park Service probably did not take any fruit trees out of here.  This was either pasture or annual cropland that was abruptly abandoned when the families were removed to make room for the park.  Many young trees started to grow at the same time in the former field.  As they competed for sunlight, some reached for the sky as fast as they could. That left tall vertical un-branched trunks and casting shade on the shorter trees, which then could not compete.  Most of the tree trunks look to be thick enough to be about seventy years old.  Perhaps shade tolerant trees will eventually find their way into the zone, as the ground covers have already done, and it will again look like a full eastern deciduous forest.

The Park Service did not remove trees to create this interesting legacy of the cultural history of Nicholson Hollow.  Blame it on mother nature, and mother nature will change it when she wants a change.

(III.)

As we took a break from the hiking to write about our experience so far, I found that I was sitting near the arbitrary boundary of the Designated Wilderness.  Congress designates wilderness areas so that the land can get certain protections by law from man once again taking control from nature. 

Visually, there is no difference between the mile or so we have already hiked and the land we are about to enter.  The wilderness we had just walked through is National Park, but is not designated wilderness, and as such, might someday have a road built through it by bulldozers and chain saws to provide overnight lodging for visitors of the park.  Now don’t panic!  There are no such plans in place that I know of, nor is there any reason for such plans at this time.  I simply suggest that should visitor numbers become large enough in this wonderful National Park, then planners will need to consider where to put more visitors.  In the designated wilderness ahead, power tools are prohibited.  The place is likely to stay wilderness. 

(IV.)

One of the planned exercises we were given during the seminar hike involved three steps to show the value of sketching to aid understanding.  When you sketch something, you have to notice more about it than if you simply glance at it.  We each received an acorn.  Step one: we wrote about that acorn.  Step two we sketched it.   Step three: we wrote about it again, hopefully with new insight about it.

Here are my results.

Step 1- Write about the Acorn:

I see a cartoon character in my hand.  It is wearing an enormous knitted cap that comes down over its face, only the chin is visible.  No!  It is a flying saucer with a sharp point on the bottom that pricks my finger.  No! It is an acorn.

Step 2- Sketch the Acorn.

Step 3- After Sketching It, Write Again About the Acorn.

The diamond shaped segments on the acorn’s cap rival the best tile work done on a Turkish minaret.  There is a tiny pinhole in the nut near where it meets the cap.  Perhaps it is a doorway created by a tiny insect needing to partake of the fine meat inside of the nut.

 

(V.)

As I hiked, I noticed amazing red-orange mushrooms on the raised banks on both sides of the trail.  The Mushrooms stood about an inch tall with caps perhaps a quarter inch wide.

These beautiful fungal colonies were not tight clusters of specimens.  They were scattered individual stalks several inches and up to a foot apart from each other. 

They held my attention as I hiked for about twenty paces.  Suddenly, the colonies were no more.  They stopped right where a trail crew built a water bar to take rain runoff to the downhill side of the trail.  Looking down the trough that takes rainwater out of the trail, the colonies continue down its banks.  But there are no red-orange mushrooms along the trail itself past the water bar.

Do the spores of these mushrooms propagate via the rushing waters from a heavy rain?   

(VI.)

Our group noticed a pair of small holes in the ground in the pathway of Nicholson Hollow Trail.  They were spaced about five feet apart causing us to wonder what caused them.  The diameter of the holes looks too large for chipmunk entrances, too small to allow entry of your fist.  After a few moments of discussion, a small flashlight pulled from a pocket. 

It was like the invention of Doppler radar, which allowed humans to learn more about approaching rain than ever before.  The small flashlight shed light down the hole, showing a large chamber with two side tunnels leading out in different directions.  We were enlightened as to how much of an ecosystem was beneath our feet; below the solid earth that we called a trail.

We knew more about those holes in the trail, but we still did not know who lived there.

(VII.)

One of the planned exercises was to sit alone somewhere along the trail and sketch one of several items named in a list provided by the seminar leaders.  I chose to attempt to sketch a cascade from memory, not a particular cascade, but one conjured up in my mind as I sat too away from the water to see or hear it as I sketched. 

This is my rendition: