#shavers mountain

[vandaliatraveler]

A hike through the virgin red spruce forest on Gaudineer Knob brings out a certain druidic yearning in me. It’s easy to imagine a spirit life behind the small miracles that unfold here - moss budding over ancient roots, a cool seep teeming with brook lettuce, fungi pushing up through the detritus - but it’s all so fragile and easily wiped away in an instant. If not for a surveying error over a century ago, this old forest wouldn’t even be here. So I am forever thankful when I visit that it survived and acknowledge (discreetly of course) whatever invisible spirits may inhabit its mossy nooks..

[placeswordsdreams]

High Falls Trail, Shavers Mountain, West Virginia

[vandaliatraveler]

Shavers Fork of the Cheat River is the highest river in the eastern United States. For most of its nearly ninety-mile length, it meanders gently through a trough formed by the Cheat and Shavers Mountains, bordered by the most extensive red spruce forest remaining in the Central Appalachians. The river is revered by trout fisherman and naturalists alike; two-thirds of the land through which it flows is publicly-owned and readily accessible by well-maintained national forest roads. During the Civil War, the mountains here played a pivotal role in controlling access to Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike and ultimately to the Shenandoah Valley to the east. The earthworks of the Cheat Summit Fort are still visible on a bluff overlooking the river. In summer and fall, the Cheat Mountain Salamander, an excursion train named for an endemic, endangered amphibian, runs along the river into the remote heart of this beautiful, wild country. More selfishly, the banks of this river collect a treasure trove of wildflowers, including the gorgeous tassel rue (Trautvetteria caroliniensis), or Carolina bugbane, which was in bloom this past weekend.