Yearly Archives: 2015

The South Carolina Botanical Garden, located just south of Clemson University’s campus, is nearly 300 acres. There are 5 miles of trails meandering through everything from formal gardens to wild forests and streams. Deep in the garden it is easy to believe you are in a wilderness. I arrived just […]

In 1948 Dr. Curran, then curator of insects at New York City’s American Museum of Natural History, began a tradition of traveling north along the Hudson River to Bear Mountain State Park to observe the fall foliage, which I know from experience is very nice there. With friends and family […]

The highway between Tennessee and North Carolina winds between several mountain passes, including Sam’s Gap at the border between the two, named for James Sams and his family who had a wagon malfunction and settled in this area back in 1832. Of course the road then was quite a bit […]

A tree with a very appropriate name, the red maple is red all year long. Depending on the season, they have their red displayed in buds, twigs, flowers and seeds. But they are best known for their dramatic scarlet fall colors. It is the most common tree species in America, […]

The French Broad River flows from North Carolina, just west of the Continental Divide, into Tennessee. The headwaters are located in the very wet Appalachian temperate rainforest. Warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico is funneled between mountain ranges until the air grows too cold to hold the moisture […]

Quilting was a way of life in much of America, but today the southern Appalachians are one of the few places where it is still done. Beyond providing warmth on cold nights, patterns are passed down through families and stitched together in quilting bees that are an amazing example of […]

When I was young I spent summers in Lake Placid, where my mom played in the Sinfonietta. Sometimes we would go back in the fall for a weekend to enjoy what was known in the Adirondacks as the month of flaming leaves, from mid September to mid October. It was […]

I’m spending spare moments lately exploring the Blue Ridge Parkway. Since there is so much elevation gain within just a few miles of Asheville, it is possible to find some colors by adjusting my altitude, and also my attitude since it takes slowing down and really looking to find the […]

Today was another cloudy and rainy day, so it seemed appropriate to chase waterfalls. Just last month I visited Looking Glass Falls, near Brevard in western North Carolina. At that time there were still some summer flowers, but in little more than a month it had been transformed by fall. […]