Late August found me walking through Sandy Springs's wooded slopes in the Sandymush Mountains west of Asheville. I was thinking that nursery logs are a sign of a healthy, mature forest when I stumbled upon this beauty. The log had rotted away leaving only the sculptured roots of the young tree that had grown up upon it.
The loamy soil covering the ancient granite boulders at Sandy Springs sustains an astonishing array of lush, deciduous plants. The land almost qualifies as a rare northern hardwood rain forest. It's a funnel shaped 300 acre plot at the very top of a high valley among the most ancient mountains on earth.
I have been coming to Sandy Springs since I was about 3 years old. My heart swells when I look across the valley to Sharp Top. I sit on the cabin porch at twilight and soak in wood thrush songs drifting through the darkening woods. The splashing of spring rain swollen streams running down the valley fill the moist moments between each lyric call.
You can watch the seasons spiral through their rhythmic cycle from the porch rocking chair. Around you will sing an ever changing chorus of wind, creatures, trees, thunder, and the whispering streams.
I fell in love with nature searching for salamanders under Sandy Springs's granite rocks.
My mother and father have cared for this place for almost all the years of my life. They have spent countless hours clearing the orchard, fixing the roads, repairing the cabin, and most of all, fighting off the invaders. I remember a 13 year old boy beating back hordes of bamboo with his magic walking stick sword until the orc hordes scampered away across Gondor's foothills.
My mother and father have cared for this place for almost all the years of my life. They have spent countless hours clearing the orchard, fixing the roads, repairing the cabin, and most of all, fighting off the invaders. I remember a 13 year old boy beating back hordes of bamboo with his magic walking stick sword until the orc hordes scampered away across Gondor's foothills.
My mother and father have nurtured other spaces on this planet such as the Beaver Dam bird sanctuary in north Asheville. They are lovely souls defending a besieged and sickened planet. Like the elves of the ancient world, nature's torment saddens their hearts.
The nursery log tree made the most comfortable chair. Decades ago this young tree had gathered nourishment from a rotting log that must have been just a little less thick than my legs are long. Now I could sit comfortably with my back on the trunk, rump on the root ball, and boot heals perched on the ground. Listening to a family of chickadees working their way westward along the slope, I wondered what these woods might look like forty years from now.
I long to see that transformation but this forest is in peril. My parents are searching for a way to sustain High Springs even as they has lost their ability to reach the most distant, craggy places. And there lurks the hated enemy, Chinese garlic mustard, ready to sweep down the slopes like a wall of screaming goblins.
On this trip to Asheville I helped my parents move out of their house in preparation for their move into a retirement community. On the last day of my stay, after the big move out, we followed their complex set of backroads shortcuts that Google Maps confirmed was the ideal route to the cabin. One of High Springs great beauties is that it lies beyond the last road on Google maps. Pavement turns to gravel and then to a bone jarring ride over mud coated stones. No cell phone signal bounces through Sandy Springs's branches. Most days all you hear is sky, streams, and animals passing through the forest. Not a car, not a plane, not a beep.
As I walked up the winding trail behind the cabin I was grateful not to see a single stalk of garlic mustard. This plant, which I have come to call Devil Weed, produces thousands of seeds that explode in a wide radius when the dry pods are brushed. Once scattered on the forest floor the seeds persist for five years. Any disturbance of the leaf litter brings a new set of seeds into contact with a gorgeous, moist soil that propels their nasty tap root down and vigorous stalk up. In the second year of life Devil Weed springs towards maturity earlier in the spring than the native flora. As it grows it's roots exude a toxin that kills herbaceous rivals for sun, soil, and water.
Unchecked, Chinese garlic mustard will kill an eastern forest. Hundreds of thousands of mustard plants will outcompete the entire understory. Even the trees cannot bring saplings forth from the ancient mountain soil.
Against this threat for years and years Mom and Dad have returned to Sandy Springs's rocky, limb-snagged woods to pull out stalk after stalk after stalk of Devil Weed. It takes five consecutive years of eradication missions to clear an infected woodland patch and these two blessed saints have been at it for decades. Great swaths of the forest have been freed from the curse. But now, in their elder years, they no longer climb the high places. Unchecked, the weed reproduces. A plague spreading in dark margins.
I wonder how to sustain my parent's rich legacy at High Springs. May its forests ever sing with birds rejoicing their migratory return from organic, shade-grown, rain forest coffee plantations in Central America. May High Springs ever blossom with turk cap lilies and its streams forever slither with salamanders.
I would love to spend a solid year in the cabin killing garlic mustard. Twelve months with no electricity, running water, and the web's soul-killing clamor would be quite refreshing. But Indow and Lensbaby anchor me to the west coast. What to do?
One option my parents discussed was giving Sandy Springs to the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy (SAHC). But SAHC, a wonderful organization saving spectacular and historic spaces from North Carolina's tragic 100% lack of zoning laws, does not have the resources to eradicate invasive species in the many thousands of acres under it's protection. SAHC can't fight the garlic mustard. Men and elves are spread too thin to stave off an enemy breeding in the mountain's desolate spaces.
Are there any mountain hermits out there who want a year of solitude in one of the loveliest high Appalachian valleys? Free rent in a one room cabin in return for the heads of one hundred thousand little green devils.
