Mystical Limberlost

Shenandoah National Park first captivated my heart in the nineteen-fifties. Sufficient nagging if my parents that, “Other families take summer vacation trips.” had finally convinced them to book a room at Big Meadows Lodge. Dad had been and Army officer assigned to a couple of CCC camps in the thirties and thought it would be nice to see what other CCC boys had done. Mom wanted to hike the “Limberlost”, a storied stroll through a hemlock forest.

We took that walk through the hemlocks soaring on thick trunks far above us to a canopy of needles so thick that only the hemlocks knew for sure that the sun was there. The wide space between the trunks was nearly devoid of the usual thick understory vegetation of an eastern USA forest.

The hemlocks used up most of the sunlight’s energy in the high ceiling of this natural cathedral. The roots of the hemlocks took the moisture and nutrients from the soil. Not many other plants could live on the wide-open ground between the soaring pillars. The daytime sunlight was so suppressed from us – pilgrims on our journey through this place of reverence – that we looked for stained glass windows to open to allow more light. But of course, there were no windows; it was a forest.

It was not so dark that we could not see. But we would wonder, “What troll or fairy or other mystical wisp might be just behind that great thick tree trunk twenty yards away?” And there were no mystical beings, just a mystical feeling in the Limberlost.

The Limberlost became a must do walk on future trips, and I continued the trips with my own wife and children. We found one of those hemlock trunks that we all hugged together, linking hands with each other forming a human measuring tape. We found that it took five of us to be able to reach all the way around. We looked for trolls.

In the late nineties, I had the opportunity to bring my mother, then ninety years old, back to the Limberlost. The trail had been improved to be a handicapped accessible trail. That meant that my mother could sit on one of the frequently spaced benches whenever she needed to rest. She claims that she sat on every bench. I just claim that my mother hiked the Limberlost Trail at ninety years young.

The mystical feeling was still there in the Limberlost, but something was different. We knew about the hemlock wooly adelgid, a tiny insect that was slowly killing hemlocks elsewhere, and we were worried about them coming here.

Now, six years later, the deed has been done. The hemlocks in the Limberlost have died. The trail became a potentially dangerous place. If a dead tree decided to fall down and someone using the trail was handicapped, or ninety, or could not run fast enough, than disaster could happen. So the Park Service did what they had to do if they wanted to keep the Limberlost Trail open. They reluctantly cut down the hemlocks that could fall now or later onto the trail.

I walked the Limberlost Trail today and the sky above it was visible. It was as if there had never been stained glass windows of a cathedral – instead the great pillars were down on the ground like the ruins of an ancient Greek temple. I found a cut off stump by the trail and counted the growth rings at two-hundred and ninety-six. This temple was indeed ancient.

Nature means change, evolution, variation, erosion … and new growth. There will be new plants establishing themselves in the open spaces where they could not grow before. And someday, in another era, perhaps hemlocks or trees like them will slowly claim the Limberlost to be their own and close out the sunlight to the less lofty plants below. Perhaps the trolls and fairies and other mystical beings will return. It will take centuries to happen, but it will seem mystical to the people who venture into the Limberlost.

-- Bob Kuhns