A Thousand Words

I'm taking Anja's slot today while she grieves the loss of a beloved animal companion.

Welcome back to "A Thousand Words," my new OT in which I post a picture of something I'd like to see more of in the world, because, well, you know what a picture's worth. Smile

So far, I've been posting pictures of what I might call the intersection of place and people--Laurel Canyon and Maxwell St-- probably because that's what I'm most lacking, after forty years of reactionary government and dictatorial industry: the truly local. I'd prefer, of course, that the local be inhabited by simpatico people, but even in its less-than-ideal incarnations, the truly local is preferable to the corporate "culture" ascendant now.

Which is why this is such fun to watch, though of course it, in its turn, has been slain by an even less local form of industry. I wish it had been slain by the Blues Brothers instead.

So anyway, today I'm going to focus on place.

Here is one of my favorite places in the world. It is rare and precious, like many unregarded things. Its name is the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest.

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For those of you who don't know, Joyce Kilmer was the guy who wrote the poem "Trees:"


I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.


A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;


A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;


Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.


Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

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It is also one of the fairly rare old-growth mixed Appalachian hardwood forests. I'll just say that being there is remarkable. If you've never been in an old-growth mixed-hardwood forest, you should do so before you die. It's not like anything else.

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Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest near Robbinsville is a living memorial to writer/poet Joyce Kilmer, best known for the poem, “Trees.” Located by Lake Santeetlah in the Nantahala National Forest, it is about 100 miles west of Asheville (a two hour drive). The Forest is a rare example of an old growth cove hardwood forest, an extremely diverse forest type unique to the Appalachian Mountains. Take a two-mile easy hike to see poplar, hemlock, red and white oak, basswood, beech and sycamore.

https://www.romanticasheville.com/joyce_kilmer_forest.htm

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Legend has it that when the first loggers got to this cove, they spared it because they were so moved by its incredible beauty. They went around. (Apparently, what the market crash of '29 did to the value of lumber also played a part. I prefer to think that the market crash allowed the lumberjacks to do what they wanted--spare the trees--rather than having to choose between voraciously taking down every tree in sight or else losing their jobs).

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I know this is many pictures, rather than one, but I couldn't help myself. It's that lovely.

What would all of you like to see more of? Show me your pictures!

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Comments

Thanks for the great images. I love trees. I imagine them as being the lungs of earth. As a kid I used to eat broccoli florets pretending they were trees being eaten by a giant. Wink

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Foggy Valley by Fiorenzo Carozzi

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@QMS

Trees are the best things since (before) sliced bread.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

wendy davis's picture

i wish there were more wilderness/roadless areas in the continental US. this photo is from the john muir wilderness area :

there are of course, folks whose job is to block them; one such we did battle with here locally was anne gorsuch (neil's sister) of the mountain states legal foundation. she won.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@wendy davis

He clearly had a connection with the natural world most of us lack, or at least aren't aware of as fully as he was. Awesome guy.

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8 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

wendy davis's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

right. he was the first multi-discipilinary expert explorer of the pristine wilds i'd ever heard about. apparently his writings were so evocative they were published widely in magazines and had eventually caused teddy roosevelt to designate whole swathes of land as national parks, although back in the day, i dunno that 'wilderness areas' was even a designation, but that's what he'd preferred. untouched, not multiply-abused, like the BLM promotes.

was it too early that his writings would have contained photographs? guess i've never heard. wasn't ansel adams the king of wild photography back in muir's day, or was he later? i'm sure there were others of his equal.

i'd really come back to say that of course anne gorsuch is SC justice neil's mother, not sister. and that i wish we could see more butterflies and bees; both were nearly absent in our garden and fruit trees this year. exactly two butterflies, both swallotails. no monarchs.

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wendy davis's picture

@wendy davis

‘John Muir's Photograph Collection’, sierraclub.org, (Reprinted from The John Muir Newsletter , v.4, no.4, Fall 1994)

It is said a picture is worth a thousand words. John Muir could easily turn out a thousand words, but as far as we know he seldom, if ever, used a camera.

However, it is evident that Muir recognized and respected the value of visual images. During his lifetime he amassed a collection of nearly 3,000 photographs, many of which were taken by acquaintances and friends such as William Keith, Charles Lummis, Theodore Lukens, Marion Delany, George Fiske, Herbert W. Gleason, William Herrin, Marion Hooker, Helen L. Jones, C. Hart Merriam, Edward Parsons, and his daughter Helen Muir. Some photographs were retained for personal enjoyment and others for use as illustrations for his writings.’

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Lookout's picture

It is about a 3 hour drive from here. Sadly the hemlocks are largely gone, and the forest was threatened by fire in 2017...

The towering old growth hemlocks have all but succumbed to the invasive and deadly hemlock wooly adelgid, much as the chestnut trees were wiped out by blight in the 1930s.

https://www.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2017/02/11/wildfires-take...

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“The fire slowed down and moved over the trail a little bit but didn’t get into the old growth,” he said.

It was one victory for the trees.

So the giant poplars grow on.

There is also an old growth forests in Alabama. The first wilderness area east of the Mississippi, The Sipsey Wilderness Area in the Bankhead National Forest.

Full of waterfalls...
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And giant poplars
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Both places, JK forest and Sipsey, feel like a church to me.

Wishing us all the peace of wild natural places!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Lookout

I didn't know about that. Of course, the tulip poplars are my favorites, but it's always awful to lose a whole section of forest. It's a giant interlocking dance; who knows what the loss of the hemlocks will do?

Still, I'm glad there's still a forest there. Would love to see the one in Alabama.

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7 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Lookout

It was an invasive SE Asian insect that took them down.

I get really hot under the collar about invasive insects and plants. I know sometimes, in a global economy, it can't be helped, but it seems like it ought to be able to be helped more often than it is. One of the many ways the things I love get treated as throwaways.

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8 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

magiamma's picture

thanks for this

this is the sustenance of our planet. May she live long and prosper. Peace. Take good care, all.

falling leaf
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five doves
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More Pogonip bark.jpg

I stopped at three. So many more.

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Stop Climate Change Silence - Start the Conversation

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@magiamma

I know she can rebuild it all--likely, with some differences--in a few million years, which is probably not a lot to her. As someone I once knew said, "The earth will shrug us off like a bad cold." But I would really rather not have to put her to that trouble. I *like* the biosphere I came from.

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10 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

enhydra lutris's picture

that I have almost no experience with hardwood forests, having spent my life out here in coniferville where the few mixed oak and hardwood forests are severely depleted. I then remembered that I have spent a lot of time in hardwood forests, maybe some were even old growth, but not in the US. Australia, Belize, Costa Rica, Panama and Ecuador come to mind, but none of those pictures are on flickr, or any other such service from which I may easily post them, nor are they organized. Kenya too, but I'm not sure when/where savanna becomes forest.

Anyway, these come from a forest, not remotely old growth; the first one has an osprey perched in the distance and the second is its nest (an active nest at the time taken).

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clearly not hardwood forest, however.

Hardwoods, but not really a forest, though I think it may be a "national forest" (Tsaavo, Kenya)

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Also hardwood, but not really forest, though it is on the edge of one, as I recall

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be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@enhydra lutris

and goodness knows, conifers can be awe-inspiring; I've seen some of them out your way (and in Colorado when I was a little girl). Hardwoods just have a different vibe to me, and are my particular love.

Good to "see" you; thanks for dropping by.

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7 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@enhydra lutris

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5 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Dawn's Meta's picture

Orange Butterfly on flower in our yard.jpg

Sorry to hear about Anja's loss. Over the Rainbow bridge.

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A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.

Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Dawn's Meta

As a Floridian, I tend to think of them as less watery marshes, LOL.

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5 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Dawn's Meta's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal fresh air/thoughts. We are not used to mineral rich soils and mixed hardwood, deciduous forests as we come from the acid soils of the Pacific Northwest. But here in South/Central France there are Limestones, Granites, and so much more. We mow and our little meadow blooms inside of a couple of weeks. We are trying to keep grasses under control so they don't form a thatch which stifles wildflowers and other plants and grasses. It is amazing in its diversity and the number of animals we see and hear. We thought Europe was largely settled, and are surprised to see so much land with little disturbance and abundance. So very encouraging. It is possible to restore, regenerate and re-live the land even tiny patches.
Teddy by the Mussy.jpg

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5 users have voted.

A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.

Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.

Dawn's Meta's picture

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A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.

Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.