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Trail Talk

Soon we'll get the chance to see the lovely colors of fall and to walk through seas of fallen leaves. But for the rest of the year, I'm more worried about falling trees and clearing them off the trails.

I've given up trying to guess which trees are going to fall down and when. After a few days of wind or storms, you can walk up the trails and find only small branches on the ground. Then after a week of nice weather, you can head up and find a few limbs three or four inches in diameter in the middle of the path. You can look at the same tree for months, expecting that dead, bug-eaten limb to fall at any moment, and then go up one day to see a branch from the seemingly healthy tree twenty feet away lying at your feet.

I suspect that there's probably a way - given enough data and analysis over time - to predict when trees will fall; if not which trees, exactly, then what types of weather are most likely to make it happen somewhere over 8 miles of trails. But that seems like a rather silly way to take the enjoyment out of nature's unpredictability. The best prediction I've been able to make is this: there are some trees that, when they do fall, I don't want to be under them. At the moment, awaiting chainsaw attention, there is a massive trunk lying across Dawson's Trail, near the split with Catlett's Branch Trail. I'm glad I didn't have to try to get out of the way of that one.

But the one I have my eye on is near the top of Mountain Road. This one is unique in that you can see several trees that have both fallen and that are in the process of falling. Basically, the tops of three trees of nearly identical, monumental height, have fallen together to form something that looks like either the frame of a teepee or the spire of a Gothic cathedral, depending on which you'd rather see. The heavy vines that covered at least one tree have sort of roped the trees together, with another batch of vines dangling below the peak like a cooking pot suspended from a tripod.

It's been this way for some time now - four or five months. And when it does fall, I'll get some help and go cut up the pieces and move them off the trail. Every time I come in sight of that spot, I'm curious to see whether the steeple is still there - it's incredible when you think of it. But if it wants to fall when no one's around, I won't ask for any further explanation.