Elements of the North
Ensconced in my sleeping bag in a small clearing on
top of Hawksbill, I contemplated the night. Overhead, a myriad stars
speckled the black sky. Far down the mountainside, a barred owl uttered
doglike hoots. Although it was June 22, the breeze coming in from the
west across the mountaintop chilled my feet. Feeling the cool air and
catching the faint scent of nearby fir trees, I returned in thought to
the many nights I had camped in the Adirondacks, summers before. It was
a natural association, because here on Hawksbill, at 4,049 feet the
park's highest peak, lower temperatures and abundant moisture make a
home for numerous forms of northern plant and animal life. I had come
here to see what some of those might be.
The next morning, after a fitful sleep (made so by
cold feet, the rustling of a raccoonor was it a bear?and
deer mice scurrying everywhere, including across me), I relished
breakfast and the scene about me. A few yards off, the mountaintop fell
away in cliffs, making an open view far out into the Shenandoah Valley.
Around the clearing, short, twisted oaks and scattered dark firs gave a
secure feeling, while juncos fed unafraid on the ground nearby. A rabbit
(possibly a New England cottontail rather than the more widely
distributed eastern cottontail) nibbled quietly on grass at the edge of
the clearing. Back in the woods a veery sang, while from a brushy
opening nearby came songs of chestnut-sided warblers. When I walked out
to the cliff edge to get a better view, I found the little three-toothed
cinquefoil, which grows in rocky, sterile places from Greenland
southeven, on high mountains, to Georgia. Springing from crevices
below me were mountain-ashes, with their fronds of narrow leaflets.
Mingled with these plants and animals were many others of more temperate
range, but the place did have a northern flavor.
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Big Meadows is the southernmost outpost of the gray
birch, a northern species. (Photo by Hugh Crandall)
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Most indicative of all were the firs and spruces.
Scattered among the red oaks, yellow birches, and other trees on the
upper few hundred feet of Hawksbill, balsam firs and red spruces up to a
foot thick survive here on a climatic island that is similar to climates
of New England and the high peaks farther south, where firs and spruces
also live. Presumably, they were more widespread in the Blue Ridge
during the last ice age, and now with warmer climate have retreated to a
few high-altitude spots. In southwestern Virginia and on down into the
Smokies, there are lofty peaks that support sizeable forests of spruce
and fir, which harbor animal life typical of this forest type. But
Hawksbill is not high enough to have more than a sprinkling of these
trees and thus lacks typical spruce-fir animals.
The transitional nature of the Hawksbill environment
poses a problem for its northern conifers. Living as they do at the
limit of their tolerance, could they withstand a series of warm, dry
years? And does their precarious position make them more susceptible to
disease and insect attack? One sign of health in a plant or animal
population is vigorous reproduction, and in this respect Hawksbill's
firs are doing well. You don't have to search long to find many
seedlings beneath the parent trees. But look closely at the older trees
and you will see a sign that may mean defeat. Toward the tips of many
branches are bulbous swellings that mark the presence of the balsam
woolly aphid, a tiny insect that sucks sap. Many other firs are dead,
presumably killed by aphids. The spruces, though scarcer and less
productive of seedlings, appear healthier. Perhaps in the long run,
they will fit this environment better than their coniferous cousins.
My explorations that June day took me finally to the
stretch of the Appalachian Trail that cuts across the steep north side
of Hawksbill. This is a delightful, interesting, even spectacular walk
that features all phases of the struggle of plants and animals
(including our friend the Shenandoah salamander) to colonize and cover
rocks. Along the way, on these cool, moist slopes, I found other species
more typical of the north. There were Canada, blackburian, and
black-throated blue warblers, veeries, juncos (one with a nest beside
the trail), rose-breasted grosbeaks, and red squirrels. Beneath a canopy
of rugged old yellow and black birches, ashes, red oaks, sugar maples
and basswoods was a thick growth of shrubs, among which striped and
mountain maple and ninebark were prominent. Along the path I found
trailing monkshood, not actually a northerner but restricted, from
Virginia and West Virginia south, to the mountains. In that wild jumble
of rocks and vegetation, I concluded, many "cool" things wait to be
found.
Seekers of northern life, of course, do not have to
climb Hawksbill to find it. Many places above 2,000 feet have typical
New England plants and animals, and some cool hollows carry such life
almost to the foot of the mountains. But the higher places are better
hunting grounds. Stony Man, at 4,010 feet a close second to Hawksbill,
has much the same life. In addition, a few Canada yews grow here. Many
of its spruces and firs, however, appear to have been planted, since
these species are found mostly near trails between Skyland and the
summit. Perhaps men of the Civilian Conservation Corps planted them back
in the early days of the park, as they did the firs and spruces around
Big Meadows.
Another "northern" environment is the Limberlost, a
boggy area at the head of White Oak Canyon that is shaded by giant
hemlocks and white oaks several centuries old. Hidden among the hemlocks
a few large red spruces and a number of small ones attest to the
elevation (3,300 feet) and the dampness. In the dark, acid world under
these tall conifers few plants grow. But here and there among the
scattered ferns you may find blooming such northerners as Canada
mayflower, bluebead-lily, and wood sorrel. The bird population has its
cool-zone representatives, too: blackburnian warblers, with fiery-orange
breasts and weak, sibilant songs; and veeries, juncos, solitary vireos,
and black-throated blue warblers. Among more secretive forms of life,
the red-backed vole, a mouselike rodent that ranges north to Hudson Bay,
undoubtedly lives here.
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Scattered firs tower over a stunted oak forest on
Hawksbill Mountain. (Photo by Hugh Crandall)
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Visitors to the southern section of the park can see
a smaller edition of the Limberlost on the east side of Skyline Drive
just north of the turn-off to Loft Mountain. Here, where a number of
northern plants grow on a mossy floor under hemlocks, one can expect the
same species of birds found in the Limberlost.
A very unexpected northerner grows in and around the
swamp at Big Meadows. This is the gray birch, best known as a reclaimer
of old fields in New England. The colony at Big Meadows is near the
species' southern limit and is its only known occurrence in Virginia.
Perhaps its presence here can be laid to long-ago fires, which created
the sort of opening it needs. Big Meadows Swamp, though now sucked
partly dry by wells and drainage ditches, still harbors other plants
that range mainly northward. One of the most conspicuous of these is
Canadian burnet, which produces showy white flower spikes in late
summer. Another is marsh marigold, blooming yellow in April and May.
Although the higher elevations and greenstone
underpinnings in the central section of the park have a large share of
Shenandoah's northern life, medium elevations and sedimentary rock in
the southern and northern sections claim most of the park's paper birch,
another hanger-on at the southern limit of its range. Most of the
50-or-so clumps of birch are hard to find, but several are easily seen
on the north side of the ridge trail leading out to The Neighbor, in the
north section. Charles (Mo) Stevens, who has roamed the ridges and
hollows of the Blue Ridge for years, found under one stand of paper
birch a colony of bunchberry, the first record for Virginia of this
primarily Canadian plant.
Ranging at all elevations but most often seen flying
over high ridges, ravens impart a feeling of the Canadian wilderness.
For in eastern North America ravens are found primarily north of our
border in vast coniferous forests and Arctic tundra. The southern
Appalachians, however, harbor a sizeable population of these big, black
birds. Distinguished from their cousin, the common crow, by much greater
size, heavier bill, and wedge-shaped tail, ravens also identify
themselves from afar with hoarse croaks rather than caws. Subsisting to
a large extent on carrion, they patrol Skyline Drive seeking road kills;
but they take food wherever they can find it, whether this be on a berry
bush, in a bird's nest, or crawling across the forest floor. In March
they lay their eggs in nests on sheltered cliff ledges, and by April
they are feeding young. All summer the adult ravens tend their airborne
though still-dependent offspring. In winter, ravens seem to range more
widely, sometimes appearing in the nearby lowlands and occasionally even
on the coastal plain. Throughout the year, Shenandoah would hardly be
Shenandoah without the soaring and aerobatics, the raucous sounds, and
the clever ways of this wilderness bird.
All the forms of northern life persisting in
Shenandoah are of secondary importance here, ecologically speaking; but
they do represent one environmental extreme in the park, and they have a
special attraction for naturalists from the warmer lowlands. What better
way, indeed, to spend a June day than to climb Hawksbill seeking bits of
New England?
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