It’s the little differences

Ah that famous scene in Pulp Fiction where Vincent enumerates the little differences between the US and Amsterdam.  I had a similar experience recently and no, it didn’t involve Burger King either.

As you’ve probably gathered by now, I practically live in the woods. It started when I was a kid.  No amount of fairy tales would keep me out.  (what was it with making the woods scary or having scary things happen in the woods all the time?   Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, even the Three Pigs had a rough time of it there.)  Anyway…I love the woods and so when I tagged along on one of my husband’s most recent business trips I knew that’s where I’d go on my day alone while he went to his meeting.

I decided to go to the Long Hunter State park just outside of Nashville.  The trail I picked was called the Day Loop Trail and I thought it would be long enough to take up a few hours.  Also I thought it would be interesting enough with parts overlooking the reservoir itself and the rest in the forest.  After getting turned around a bit and taking a while to find the trailhead which isn’t in the main part of the park, I set off on my hike.

Timing couldn’t have been more perfect.  First – the foliage was at its peak, second – the temperature and humidity were ideal, and third – I was basically alone. While hiking this 5-mile loop I only saw 3 other people. Perfect!

The first thing that struck me as different was the rocks. Well, duh.  I’m used to granite.  They don’t call NH the Granite State for nothing.  The stuff is everywhere.  Most mountain trails wind through long strings of boulders. Huge granite ledges and outcrops give the land its uneven character.  In TN that granite is replaced by limestone.  It is just as ubiquitous, but looks much different.  A lot of it is carved by ancient winds and water and there are strange holes in some of it.  The way it is worn away at the surface and can sometimes run in shelves and seams was different, too.  After a while though, it was eerie not having miles and miles of stonewall accompanying me through the forest.  In New England you can’t go ten feet without tripping over one.  While our soils are fertile, the land is so strewn with boulders it has to be cleared before it can be tilled.  Rock walls not only got the stupid things out of the way, but they also helped establish boundaries for land owners. A lot of land now set aside for conservation was once farmland so the walls are everywhere.  Not so in this part of Tennessee.

The second thing that struck me was the undergrowth, or rather the lack of it (at least in this section of the park).  I don’t say that there was NO undergrowth, but sometimes it seemed that way.  I’m used to ferns by the thousands. Hobble bush.  Blueberries and raspberries.  Laurels of several varieties.  Maple leaf viburnum.  Witch hazel.  All kinds of undergrowth make up the NH forest.  So when I’d come across patches like these, it startled me –

Like I said, not all of it was bare, I found this glorious swath of vinca minor which must be amazing in the spring when it blooms –

So no ferns to photograph and weirdly, no mushrooms either.  Plenty of trees though and while most of them were yellow, some weren’t –

Speaking of trees.  Here’s the last thing that kind of freaked me out a bit.  All through this part of the woods there wasn’t a single pine tree.  Not one.  No firs.  No hemlocks.  No pines.  No spruces.  No cedars.  Well, ok, red cedar, but it’s really a mis-identified juniper so doesn’t really count.  I didn’t see a single pinecone.  Very, very strange for this northerner.  Lots of deciduous like maple, oak, shagbark hickory and sycamore, but strangely no birches, aspens, poplars or beeches.  Again, odd for this little gray duck.

Unfortunately, the light wasn’t great for views of the lake, but I did like the way some folks had tipped up these slabs of limestone –

In New England we stack up rocks along the trail (and especially on mountaintops) to make little cairns.  People just love rocks and piling them up on each other.  Funny.

Oh and here’s someone I ran into…well almost ran into on the trail.

She was so different from the orb weavers we have up here that I wished I could have photographed her closely and better, but the wind was relentless and so I had to go for a wide open, high-speed silhouette instead.  I do wicked love that her jaws are silhouetted as well.  Pure luck.

And so ends my wonderful, magical and eye-opening hike through some of Tennessee’s beautiful forests.  Oh wait, let’s take one look back –