Manmade Grasslands

Traveling south on Skyline Drive through mile after mile of forest, one dips into Fishers Gap, climbs a few hundred feet, and then breaks out into a startling expanse of open meadow. Like a pioneer coming out of long dark forests into a settled place with fields, a hiker feels delight bordering on relief upon reaching Big Meadows. And the delight lingers and deepens if you wander out into it, for Big Meadows is a place to dream, and a place to watch an ever-changing kaleidoscope of life. This opening in the forest is the largest of the few remaining in the park. Since the 1930's, when about a third of Shenandoah was pasture, the forest has reclaimed nearly all of these grassy expanses. The extent of the change in habitats is well illustrated by the status of the song sparrow, a bird of open brushy places. As recently as 1950, Alexander Wetmore (ornithologist and then Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution) reported it as fairly common in the park. Today, I know only one place where song sparrows nest—in the bushy center of Big Meadows. In farmlands at the foot of the Blue Ridge, song sparrows are numerous; in the park the returning forest has forced them out.

(Photo by Ross Chapple)

Big Meadows, then, is a man-made island of grass in a sea of forest. Probably first formed by Indian fires, it later served as pasture and cropland for settlers. Today, some 300 acres south of Skyline Drive are maintained in an open condition by fall mowing, so visitors can see how a large part of the park once looked. This is only a fraction of the original Big Meadows, which extended from Milam Gap to Fishers Gap, and north of the Drive to the present campground site.

Plants and animals are not particular about how their environment was made—whether by man or climate—so some of the inhabitants of Big Meadows are the same ones you might find on an Illinois prairie. Meadowlarks and vesper sparrows sing from low perches. A few smooth green snakes, slender little creatures with beautiful bright green backs, hunt insects and spiders in the camouflaging grass. The deer mouse, a species which has occupied both woods and prairies, follows runways through the herbaceous jungle. And the plants that make a home for these animals are mostly sun-loving types, among which grasses, sedges and composites (the daisy family) are prominent. A humming, flitting swarm of bees, flies and butterflies feeds on the nectar of the meadow flowers and ensures their pollination.

In addition to these typical grassland species, many plants and animals more characteristic of other habitats are also found here. Hay-scented, swamp and bracken fern form clumps about the meadow, as do blackberries, and the white spikes of fly-poison punctuate the summer scene. In spring, the short vegetation reveals woodchucks, newly returned from winter dens in the woods; but as the plants shoot up they hide these rotund brown rodents. Chipmunks, more typical of forest, can sometimes be found in the meadow. Deer often venture from the woods in the dim hours to graze. And a host of birds that nest elsewhere come here to feed. You may see robins, flickers, starlings, and cowbirds feeding on the ground; ruby-throated hummingbirds sipping nectar from milkweed blossoms; and a variety of swallows picking insects from the air. Though only knee- or waist-high at its late-summer peak, the meadow vegetation obviously supports a lot of animal life.

But nature does not want a meadow here. The climate is suited for forest, and forest keeps trying to exploit the potential of the site. The blackberries that may scratch your legs on a meadow walk are one vanguard of woodland. Without mowing, they would crowd out much more of the herbaceous vegetation. Down in the grass you may notice the sliced-off stems of black locust, a pioneer tree that invades open places and adds quantities of nitrogen to the soil. And scattered about the meadow are small pine seedlings, which also do well in open sunlight. The wet center of this grassy bowl is marked by thick clumps of gray dogwood and hawthorn, still other forerunners of forest. If given a chance, all these woody species would eventually take over much of the meadow and in time create an environment too shady even for their own offspring. They would finally give way to some of the shade-tolerant trees of Shenandoah—oaks, hickories, ash and others—with perhaps a few hemlocks and white pines. In 75 years this transformation to forest would probably be complete.

Along with invading plants come animals of the brushland. Around the edges of Big Meadows, where small clumps of woody plants have succeeded, field sparrows sing and bobwhites call. Woodcocks, which like open spots among shrubs for landing pads during their courtship flights, can be heard "beeping" here on spring evenings. At least one pair of gray foxes has had a den at the edge of the meadow, well situated to exploit a variety of habitats. Skunks, too, like edge situations; they are often seen in the Big Meadows area at night, investigating roadsides, campsites, and the Park Service residential area, as well as more natural settings. Among reptiles, the garter snake is probably the most common in habitant of such halfway stages between grassland and forest, though it may be found almost anywhere.

The smooth green snake normally feeds on insects and spiders, but this 2-foot specimen at Big Meadows appears to have dined on larger prey (left). (Photo by Henry Heatwole) The rufous-sided towhee favors brushy fields and forest edges (right).

A similar army of invaders is closing in on Patterson's Field, the long grassy saddle between Loft and Big Flat mountains in the southern section, and the only other sizeable opening in the Shenandoah forest except for Skyline Drive itself. Sumac, black locust, and pine creep up the sides of the saddle out of older forest of oak, maple, and hemlock. Towhees, catbirds, brown thrashers, field sparrows, bobwhites, and that crazy songster the yellow-breasted chat sing from the shrubbery. Chipmunks and cottontails feed and watch warily for the broad-winged and red-tailed hawks that often soar over this opening. Deer forage through the fringing brush. On one visit, a beautiful, red blotched milk snake wound through the grass ahead of me, and on another I chanced upon a garter snake which had captured a toad by its hind end and was slowly working it down its throat. Here, too, bees, wasps, flies, and butterflies feed and hunt among the summer flowers.

This happy hunting ground, now only a narrow strip between encroaching forests, is the legacy of generations of mountain people who pastured livestock here. This was, in fact, the most recently pastured place in the park, and that explains its openness. In the early 1930's Herbert Patterson and his son Allen grazed several hundred Hereford cattle and about 30 horses on 2,200 acres here. They drove the stock up from the Shenandoah Valley in spring and drove them down in fall, two drives each way. The mountain was obviously good to the Pattersons. The greenstone that caps the ridge here made good soil that nourished good grass for the Pattersons' Herefords. Today this soil produces good forage for wild livestock.

Butterfly in Big Meadows Swamp (left). (Photo by Henry Heatwole) The deer mouse may be the most abundant mammal in the park (right).

The roadsides along Skyline Drive can hardly be called grassland or meadow, since they are vegetated mostly with closely mown grass and scattered trees and shrubs—a linear suburban yardscape, as it were, created along the Blue Ridge crest. But many animals of brushland or forest like to feed in this open strip through the woods. Woodchucks, rabbits, and deer nibble the grass. Robins and chipping sparrows feed along the ground. Ruffed grouse stand frozen by the roadside while cars pass. At night your headlights may pick out a skunk or gray fox searching the grass, and you may flush a barred owl or woodcock from the pavement itself (do these last two find food here, or do they just enjoy the stored warmth of the day?). And summer and fall the Drive has an ever-changing display of flowers that rivals Big Meadows'. All this assortment of life shows again the attraction of forest openings for plants and animals.

A Profile of Big Meadows (click on image for an enlargement in a new window)

Within a generation, Patterson's Field will probably disappear under forest or a lodging development. That will leave Big Meadows as the only reminder in the park that man made some grasslands in these mountains, and only here will be found some animals of the open places. Gradually, in the rest of the park, the locusts, pines, sassafras, sumac, and apple trees that now mark the locations of a hundred old fields will be shaded out, and finally the forests of Shenandoah will return to the primeval condition of pre-Indian days, perhaps to be opened up only by an occasional wildfire. This is the dictate of nature, and in national parks, nature rules.