Dolly Sods via the West Entrance (Freeland Road)

Dolly Sods is beautiful, there's no denying it. But I'm getting more than a little bored with the place. It's extremely popular and uncomfortably crowded. I told my backpacking friend--who only ever wants to go to the Sods--that I'll only go back there on weekdays.

And so, we left after work on a Wednesday, got dinner at the excellent Purple Fiddle in Thomas, West Virginia, then parked in the dark along Forest Road 80, or "Freeland Road."  From the car, we hiked 4.2 miles to a campsite on the water along the Dobbin Grade Trail, with only our headlamps to light the way.

These photos are not in order. This is NOT the campsite where we spent Wednesday and Thursday nights.  It was here on the ridgeline--on the Rocky Ridge Trail--that we spent Friday night. And the photo just above is the sunrise as seen from that some ridgeline on Saturday morning.

It was a new experience for us to head off into the woods at night, but one we might repeat. The night was moonless and very dark. The stars shone brightly in pitch black skies. It was 11:00pm when we finally found a hidden spot to camp beneath the spruce trees and right along the narrow, upper reaches of the Left Fork of Red Creek. That first night at camp was a lot of fun. As tired as we were, we collected wood, built a huge fire, and didn't go to bed till 2:00am.

On Thursday morning, I wanted to bag a certain peak that was about 4 miles away, "Blackbird Knob." My friend spent the day at camp, and while he was there a big group of 10 guys set up very close to our camp. They were noisy, and one of them started playing music on a Bluetooth speaker.  Who comes to a wilderness area in a national forest and plays music on a speaker?

If you feel the need to play music in the woods, then just exit the forest and go back to whatever noisy place you come from. You don't understand the trees, the owls, the gurgling water, the breeze in the treetops, the howling coyotes at sunset. These things are not for you, and they can't help you, so at least refrain from ruining them for the people they can help--namely me. (The same goes for anyone who feels the need to play music at the beach. The ocean is the Mother-of-All-Life! Turn off the Bad Bunny and LISTEN TO HER!)

Here's our first campsite--for Wednesday and Thursday nights. 

When the radio started playing, less than 200 yards away, my friend said, "I'm going over there to ask them to turn it off." Away he marched. He said they were very nice about it, but I was more than a little impressed with his courage...to walk into a campsite with 10 strangers and ask them to turn off their music. 

I did indeed bag the summit of Blackbird Knob, though there is no official trail to the top, just an overgrown path. And there are no views up there either. This is not the peak of Blackbird Knob; it's just a scene along the Upper Red Creek Trail.

The fall season is well advanced up above 4,000 feet. It was hot in the sun and cold in the shade.

This is actually the summit of Blackbird Knob, for whatever it's worth. 

There were so many millions of teaberries, aka "wintergreen," all along the trails at the Sods. And the wild blueberry bushes were ablaze in this russet-crimson color. Some withered-but-edible blueberries still clung to the branches.

On Friday morning we decided to move our camp up onto the ridge, along the trail back to the car, so that the walk out on Saturday wouldn't be as long. By this time, the Sods was OVERRUN with people, including a lot of very large groups traveling together. Why do we keep going back there? It feels like Orlando with expensive gear.

On Friday, we came across a solo hiker--a fellow our age--who fell into step with us and became a companion for part of the day. I do go to the woods to be alone--or almost alone--but it's fun to make new connections, too. (The guy I backpack with, though he's far more extroverted than I am, does not like making new friends on the trail, and it kind of showed.)  The new guy had a pistol strapped to his chest! Isn't it interesting, the things people take with them to the trees...loud music, a Bluetooth speaker, a gun. 

On Wednesday night, as we were headed up into the Sods, we stopped at a store in the town of Davis to buy a few things. The checkout girl said that she'd only had 1 day off in 2 months. When I said that didn't sound legal, she looked at me and said, "I have three jobs. Everyone up here has at least two." 

Rural poverty. It's just as real and just as crushing as urban poverty. Some things about rural poverty are worse because when you live in the country, you cannot make do without a car--which means purchasing one, maintaining it, putting gas in it, and insuring it.

We had a blazing fire each of the three nights on the trail. The whole wilderness was scented with the light, mind-clearing aroma of spruce trees. Drought had done its worst, but the Dobbin Grade Trail was still a boggy mess--just not quite as bad as usual. 

So, there are several entrances to the Dolly Sods Wilderness Area. The south entrance to the Red Creek Trail is popular. There are lots of entrances from the east, along Forest Road 75. But for a less crowded experience, try the west entrance, following Freeland Road, which eventually becomes Blackbird Knob Trail.

Roaring Plains Wilderness

The Roaring Plains Wilderness is so named because the winds are forever roaring over its boulder fields, which definitely do not pass as "plains" in my world.  Come to think of it, while we were there, the wind did more murmuring than roaring.  But the only name worse than "Whispering Plains" is "Murmuring Plains," so "Roaring Plains" it is--even if both "roaring" and "plains" are misnomers.  This is the view from our first campsite, far, far off the trails in the Roaring Plains Wilderness and along the Allegheny Front.

The Allegheny Front is a long cliff or "escarpment" that divides two separate provinces of the Appalachian Mountains in this part of the country.  It is very much a sheer cliff here in West Virginia, where the topography is so much more dramatic than in Maryland or Pennsylvania.

My backpacking companion is a school teacher, and he was returning to school the day after we returned from the backpacking trip.  For that reason, he was unusually distracted and silent on this otherwise excellent trek, where we covered exactly 21 very difficult miles in three days.  

I'm not sure how many times I've been to Roaring Plains.  At least three.  In June of 2022, I came with this same guy, and we had to cut the trip short because he got shingles.  (Wimp!)  Then I came back alone in August of 2022 for a few days of misty solitude.  Then there was this trip.  But wasn't there another one?  Each time here offered a very different experience of the exact same place.  This time around, the Roaring Plains were...ominous, lonely, desiccated and more beautiful than ever.  It was very strange to see this place under a full-blown drought.

No official trails lead to the loveliest parts of this wilderness area.  I suppose the Forest Service is trying to protect this place from the same kind of traffic that Dolly Sods Wilderness experiences.  The Sods are very nearby and so overrun with visitors that I'm loath to go back.  But in three days here at the Roaring Plains, we saw not another soul.  

It is truly an odd place.  You almost never hear the birds singing here.  You see birds, but they're likely to hold their tongues.  (Birds DO have tongues, don't they?)  This time around there were clouds of black flies, which swarmed during the day.  The trees were losing their leaves from the dryness and the scorching heat.  Water was hard to come by.  Distances were hard to gauge.  And--believe this or not--Forest Road 70, which leads 3.4 miles from Forest Road 19 out to this remote wilderness, was uphill both ways.  Yeah, that's right.  I know it doesn't make sense, but it was uphill both ways.  Go walk it and tell me if I'm wrong.

The spruce trees, the gray rocks, the moody skies.  It's much like Dolly Sods except woodsier.

Don't go off-trail here without a trail app.  In fact, you might need a trail app even if you stay on the officially-designated trails, which are hard to find in places, and of which there are only two: The Roaring Plains Trail and the Flatrock Run Trail.  This pic and the one just below were taken from the boulder field along the old, unmarked and disused Rim Trail, which runs along the edge of the Allegheny Front escarpment.

Look at that view.  Scrambling over these rocks for a quarter mile or more was real work with 40 pound packs on our backs.  But you can't get these views from the officially-designated trails.  You've got to look for the old paths to this place--which I originally discovered years ago on an outdated website that called the abandoned trail system the "Jonathan Jessup Hidden Passage."

Occasional rock cairns mark the way as the neglected trail runs along the cliff's edge.  In many places, there's no other way to know if you're anywhere near the trail, which is invisible to the eye.

I took a photo from this spot back in June of 2022, which is how I knew that we were deeper into the wilderness area than either of us expected.  See how the spruce tree is "flagged" by the wind?  Winds come down so hard over these upland boulder fields that branches cannot grow on the southwest side of the trees.

The search for water became serious out here on the rim.  Water rarely springs from the ground along ridges in the Appalachians--or probably in any mountains, for that matter.  And there was a drought in full swing, to boot.  We ended up filling our water bottles from a suspicious-looking puddle that stood six tenths of a mile from our campsite.  We double-treated the water for bacteria and parasites.

It did rain hard the first night, but there was no way to capture the rain.  Wild blueberries and raspberries were ready for picking.  We came across a few apples, but they were not quite ripe, which didn't stop me.  See the rainbow with blueberries in the foreground?

On our second night, we camped at a spot where we had camped the last time we were here together.  Here's the view from that place.  It was a long trek back to the car on our last day, over five miles, during which my friend grew gloomier and gloomier.  That's probably why people don't really come to Roaring Plains.  It's just so remote.  Then?  Then it was back to the city for us, back to the lives we were trying to forget, if only briefly, back to the places we call home, back to the duties and demands of suburban, professional life.  The end of summer loomed large over this trek, suffusing it with a kind of gloom--which is too bad.  All seasons are beautiful and good--even the ones that come around too soon.  And though there's much in our lives that we did not choose and never would choose, still we do choose to keep going back to the things we were escaping.  I'm glad there are places like Roaring Plains where we can take vacations away from those other selves we become.  We carry the silence and the beauty of this place with us back to our quotidian lives, and it makes them better, slower, kinder, less callous.  It gifts them with the grace of wild things.

Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge, NC

The biennial family beach trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina has become weighted down by its own history in some respects. There are comforting traditions that go back many years, and there are other things that occur with annoying regularity. My wife’s entire family has been doing this since before we all had children, and now most of our children are grown and off to college. But the show must go on.

One thing that must ALWAYS happen each time we come to this place is this: While my spouse and in-laws are getting drunk at 10am on the beach, I escape to a place of shadeless abandon at Pea Island Wildlife Refuge. Insofar as I take refuge here once every two years, I suppose that ranks me among the wildlife, though it seems a little less wild to be here than to be day-drinking and swimming in the waves. I do find great comfort here in a place where the sand and the sun and the waves are my only companions—aside from the literal wildlife. And my new interest in birds has opened my eyes to more of the wildlife that’s on display here.

There are few places along the East Coast where you can have the ocean all to yourself. This is one of them. For miles and miles.

Rangers riding in “gators” will occasionally drive down the beach to make sure no one is disturbing the nests of plovers and other seabirds. With the enormous heatwave, it was surprising how much cooler the temps were on top of the dunes or to the west of them, away from the ocean and rising sun.

Alas, poor elegant jellyfish. How did such a lot befall you? Of course, you’re short-lived creatures, as things of great beauty must often be. Why must the beautiful perish? I ask it too often.

This elusive and equally elegant fellow was quite lanky and camera shy. My Merlin bird app could not seem to identify him, but when he takes flight, you see that he’s a beautiful mix of gray and white with a long, formal-looking tail and long wings. Very erect and proper-looking. I’ve seen these birds all along the island, but they don’t appear in any of the island’s wildlife guides.

As e.e. cummings said: 

whatever we lose

(like a you or a me)

it’s always ourselves

we find at the sea

And birds.  You find them, too. I find myself a little better among the trees, for I’m a woodland creature. But there is nothing like the ocean—its grandeur, its mystery, its smell and sound and sight. 

See the dark protuberance in the water? That’s the boiler of The Oriental, a Union supply ship that sank here in 1862. It adds just a touch of eeriness to the place.

At Pea Island, there’s a visitor center where I typically buy a T-shirt (different style each year). There’s the beach on one side and the sound—or bay—on the other. The bay walk was painfully hot, but it passes through a nice arbor of live oaks.

You can’t tell from any of these photos, but this is a red-winged blackbird—one of the common birds back home, which I did not expect to find here at the coast. He flew right at me, but I didn’t flinch because we were having a moment. Then he perched on this dead treetop and spoke for about three minutes while I listened. Then he flew directly at me again, and again I did not dart away, though his red epaulets made him look fierce as he approached in rapid flight. Then he flew off over the marshy pond. 

I wish his red patch and yellow stripe were visible in these photos.

The bay side has turtle ponds. Moss grows on the backs of some of these aged fellows.

I also saw a sea otter, but didn’t get a pic in time. 

And this fellow? Amazing creature! These sand crabs have eyes on top of their heads so that they can see in every direction at once, and they move in a scuttling walk—backwards, forwards, sideways. I’m a little jealous.

 

Otter Creek Wilderness Revisited

It was in November of 2020 that a different friend and I first visited Otter Creek, a large wilderness area inside West Virginia’s Monongahela National Forest—easily my favorite of our now-beleaguered national forests. (The Trump regime has plans to monetize all of them for private gain.) We had a good enough visit, but limited ourselves to the southeast quadrant of the forest, missing out on its vast interior. 

After an absence of 5 years, I returned to Otter Creek with another friend—the previous one having succumbed to the siren call of getting a new job and trying too hard to prove himself by NEVER taking vacation days. Ah, but bitterness aside, this was actually a better trip. The summer days are still mild and breezy. The mountain laurel was just coming into bloom. The light mountain air was scented with freshwater and the spicy smell of an Appalachian forest. And to make matters even better, it only rained at night while we were sleeping warm and dry in our various tents—his pictured on top and my hammock tent just above. We erected a clever rain shelter by the fire but never needed to use it.

We hiked 5 miles from the south entrance almost to the middle of the wilderness area. There were plenty of places to fish and swim in the freakishly frigid water—which thing we did. In our three days there, we met not another soul except a local fisherman on Thursday and another on Saturday. But really, can you imagine it? 20 miles from Dolly Sods, where cars with out-of-state plates line every dirt road for miles, here we were the only tourists in sight. It’s true that this wilderness area lacks the broad, sweeping vistas offered by the Sods. In places, it’s just dense rhododendron thickets. In other places, it’s rocky creeks, and brooks, and tributaries. It’s all very woodsy, with none of the open meadowland of the Sods, but still so beautiful. The creeks that bubble wildly over the great stones are all worth exploring. 

Otter Creek itself is the centerpiece of the wilderness area and a magnificent body of water. But my favorite was the wild Possession Camp Run, which comes tumbling down the mountainsides in a series of narrow waterfalls. The Possession Camp Trail takes you from the area where we camped on Otter Creek all the way to the top of Green Mountain, where there are no views. Now tell me, how does a brook in the deepest forest get the name “Possession Camp Run”?  What kind of possession are we talking about here? As one who takes an interest in religion and spirituality, I hope the word refers to the folk religion of Appalachia—as in possession by demons or the Holy Spirit. I hope there’s some earthy tale of camp meetings and snake-handling and sawdust trails in the waning days of the Second Great Awakening. But I’m pretty sure “possession” probably refers to something far more banal, like ownership of a piece of land. Still a great name, “Possession Camp.”

On the banks of that selfsame run, there’s evidence of the area’s industrial past—whether logging or coal mining, I don’t know.

My friend caught a few brookies in Otter Creek. The photo below is the campsite at the top of Green Mountain, at the end of Possession Camp Trail—nice spot where demonic possessions may or may not have occurred. The photo below it is one of the many waterfalls on Possession Camp Run. I was supposed to bag the as-yet-unclaimed peaks on the nearby Stuart Knob and Bickle Knob, but my friend was in a hurry to get back to Pittsburgh.