The 22nd Annual Wilderness Wildlife Week is scheduled for Jan. 7-14 in Pigeon Forge, Tenn. This year’s Wildlife Week boasts 288 programs and activities. Likely due to the time of year (winter in the Smokies), the bulk of Wildlife Week’s program (240) are indoors. But these programs run the gamut from educational – Learn to use Map and Compass; Rock Formations of the Smokies; Geological Past of Smoky Mountains; Civil War in the Mountains; You & Me: Coexisting with Bears; Predator Paradox: Conflict & Conflict Resolution in Modern America; Saving the Endangered Whooping Crane: The Tennessee Connection and Current Status; to cultural - CADES COVE HERITAGE! Cades Cove Teachers! War within the Family: Civil War Gregorys; Marking Time: A Guide to the Historical Markers in East Tennessee; HERITAGE! Basket Making; Echoes of the Smokies: Epic of Elkmont; to entertaining - Straight from the Horse’s Mouth: A Hysterical History of Words; A Tennessee Music Sampler: Stories & Songs: Hills-N-Hollows; Old Time Music Concert: Boogertown Gap; Ballads of the Great Smoky Mountains and the Vicinity: Boogertown Gap; APPALACHIAFEST!

A Free Musical Celebration of Our Heritage.

But not to worry, 48 expert-led hikes provide ample opportunity to go walking in a winter wonderland. Some of the hikes scheduled include Metcalf Bottoms, Albright Grove, Old Sugarlands Trail, Ramsey Cascade, Owl Prowl, Elkmont Historic District, Llama Trek - Big Creek and birding Cades Cove.

This year’s event touts 120 new programs plus 20 programs aimed at kids. Some of the “Kids’ Track” programs include, “Whoo Did This?” (all about owls), “The Smoky Mountain Adventures of Bubba Jones” (hiking and camping for kids and adults), “Batteries NOT Included” (Appalachian toys and games) and “Photography for Kids and Parents.” “Kids’ Tracks” programs are available throughout the week, with multiple programs scheduled for Thursday Jan. 12 and Saturday Jan. 14.

Nature photography is also highlighted in this year’s Wildlife Week. The annual Wilderness Wildlife Week Photography Contest has been expanded this year to include seven divisions; amateur, professional, wildlife, landscapes/seascapes, youth & young adult (17 and under), Great Smoky Mountain Landmarks and Nature’s Wonders in Black & White.

Peggy Callahan, founder and executive director of the Wildlife Science Center in Forest Lake, Minnesota will be this year’s keynote speaker. Callahan began her biology career in Forest Lake in 1985 working with the (then) “Wolf Project.” Federal funding for the “Wolf Project” dried up and the program ended but Callahan’s passion and work didn’t as she created the non-profit Wildlife Science Center at the same site and went to work providing wildlife education and research, with an emphasis on wolves. Besides greeting more than 25,000 visitors annually, the center also trains wildlife biologists from around the world. Their trainees included the Yellowstone Wolf Recovery Team prior to the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park.

Callahan will present two programs, along with her keynote address. The first will be “Update on Ecology and Politics in the Upper Midwest” at 7:45 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 7, in the Dobro/Harp Rooms and the second will be “Conflict & Conflict Resolution in Modern America at 6:45 p.m. Jan. 8 in the same venue.

Wilderness Wildlife Week is a free event. All workshops, programs and lectures are held at Music Road Hotel & Convention Center, 303 Henderson Chapel Road Pigeon Forge, Tenn. All hike and field trip sign-ups will be at the Holiday Inn Express right across the street from the convention center.

For information regarding Wilderness Wildlife Week visit http://www.mypigeonforge.com/events_winterfest_wilderness.aspx or call 1.800.251.9100.

(Don Hendershot is a writer and naturalist. He can be reached a This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), Wild South, the Western North Carolina Alliance (WNCA) and the Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition (SAFC) announced last week that they had reached an agreement with the U.S. Forest Service to protect nearly 50 acres of old growth forest that had been included in a timber sale known as the Haystack project, in the Nantahala National Forest, near Franklin.

The Nantahala Ranger District has agreed to abandon two sections of the sale that included trees 100 to 200 years old. Parts of the Haystack project are near some of the same area that old growth researcher Rob Messick had delineated as the Topton Cluster back in 2000, while working with WNCA. According to Messick, old growth forest types in the Topton Cluster include dry oak, submesic oak, rich cove (mixed mesophytic), acidic cove, high elevation northern red oak, northern hardwood, and dry oak-pine.

Only about 7.5 percent of the million or so acres of forest in the Nantahala and Pisgah National forests are old growth. These old growth forests (from 100 foot-plus lush canopies, to the one to three acre forest gaps created when one of these behemoth falls, to standing dead snags and to the rich organic topsoil and woody debris created by hundreds of years of decomposition) create a unique and diverse ecosystem that can never be mimicked by younger forests.

Bob Gale, ecologist with the Western North Carolina Alliance noted, “We are really pleased that the Forest Service is continuing to recognize old growth forests in the Nantahala National Forest as important ecosystems in need of protection. The remnant primary forest stands left virtually untouched for centuries and the recovering areas that are in a mature — to — old growth condition make up a tiny percentage of public lands and merit such protection. We praise the Nantahala District for this agreement.”

According to the press release, the Forest Service also scaled back the length of one of the planned logging roads due to concerns about road building on steep terrain. Amelia Burnette, staff attorney for SELC said, “Old-growth forests in the mountains of North Carolina provide important habitat for a variety of wildlife and plant life, but they are rare. We commend the Forest Service for working with us to protect this significant resource.”

For those who follow the Naturalist’s Corner you know that I have been extolling the Forest Service for its move toward stewardship contracting, but have also warned that stewardship contracts must still be scrutinized. The best I can tell from Forest Service websites is that the Haystack project is a stewardship contract, although I haven’t been able to determine who the partners are. And at a glance of the project there appears to be a lot of good restoration work planned for the project.

Thanks to Wild South, SELC, WNCA and SAFC for not allowing the baby to get lost in the bath water. I don’t think any amount of restoration could ameliorate the wanton destruction of old growth forest. I concur wholeheartedly with Wild South’s associate executive director Ben Prater, “Our commitment to protect our last remaining old-growth forests is unwavering, and while we applaud this agreement, Wild South believes all old-growth should remain wild and never be threatened by logging.”

(Don Hendershot is a writer and naturalist. He can be reached a This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

A North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission (NCWRC) press release from Dec. 9 announced that work was underway, “… to restore habitat by promoting new forest growth for wildlife,” on the Catpen project. The Catpen area is on the south side of Bluff Mountain in the Appalachian Ranger District of the Pisgah National Forest near the Tennessee-North Carolina border, just north of Max Patch in Madison County.

The Catpen project is unique. It’s the first project to be implemented via the master stewardship agreement between the USDA Forest Service and the NCWRC, which is the first master stewardship agreement in the country between the USDA Forest Service and a state agency.

Smoky Mountain News (SMN) first reported on these innovative stewardship contracts in the Jan. 19 edition in the article “Logging for cash versus long-range forest health.” That article can be seen online at www.smokymountainnews.com/advertise/item/3072.

Some of the differences between conventional timber bids and stewardship contracting pointed out in that article include:

“The new approach means the forest service can award bids based on the ‘best contract’ rather than the most money, Remington [Dale Remington, sales forester for the National Forests in North Carolina] said. The contract could go to a timber company, but could likewise be awarded to an environmental group or hunting club.

“Under stewardship contracts, the Forest Service could lay out the goals and objectives and let the contractor tell them how they planned to achieve those goals, he said. And unlike the traditional timber sale, those goals could even include wildlife diversity and protecting old growth stands.

“Stewardship contracts can also be spread over a larger area than conventional timber sales. Most conventional timber sales are confined to only the specific area the logging will be done. Most of them impact around 150 to 250 acres. Under stewardship contracts, the Forest Service designates the stewardship area and it can range from a simple stream corridor to an entire basin encompassing 2,000 or more acres.”

Another difference between conventional timber sales and stewardship contracting was pointed out in SMN’s Feb. 16 Naturalist’s Corner, “Time to shift gears” -www.smokymountainnews.com/news/item/3268-time-to-shift-gears - ; “… most of the money stays in the region rather than going to the U.S. Treasury and can be used for other restoration projects across the forest.”

The first phase of the Catpen project affects about 15 acres and according to NCWRC’s Gordon Warburton, will “…benefit deer, turkey, grouse, bears, neotropical songbirds and other species.” The second phase of the project is designed to enhance Max Patch Pond.

I commend NCWRC for capitalizing on this new tool for forest management. I spoke with Dale Remington back in February when I did the Naturalist’s Corner column and he assured me then that he and the Forest Service were open to stewardship contracts with organizations like The Nature Conservancy, Wild South and others and that the focus of such contracts was the overall health of the forests of North Carolina and beyond.

I hope to have the opportunity to write about such a project soon.

(Don Hendershot is a writer and naturalist. He can be reached a This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

As too often happens, in this whirlwind life, I lost my roundtoit. I received an email from the Western North Carolina Alliance at the end of November announcing public information meetings that would be held across the region regarding the settlement between the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the state of North Carolina over air pollution from TVA’s coal-fired power plants in neighboring states. These meetings were scheduled for this week. The closest one was last evening (Dec. 6) at Haywood Community College. There will also be one this evening at 5:00 p.m. in the Broyhill Conference Center at Appalachian State University in Boone. There was one Monday (Dec. 5) in Murphy, and while I regret not getting this information out in advance of these meetings, I still think this settlement is (in today’s political climate) important to note.

The settlement announced earlier this year was finalized in late June when U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Varlan of the Eastern District of Tennessee signed a consent decree. The decree ends a round robin of lawsuits initiated by North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper in 2006 claiming that pollution from TVA’s coal-fired plants in neighboring states created a public nuisance because of their detrimental impacts on the health of North Carolina citizens, its natural environment and the state’s $12 billion tourism industry.

In 2009, Federal Judge Lacy Thornburg ruled that the TVA should clean up four of its coal-fired plants situated closest to North Carolina’s border. Thornburg found there was insufficient evidence to prove seven other TVA plants located farther from the state were a nuisance.

However, TVA appealed and in 2010 the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Thornburg’s ruling. Cooper was petitioning the Supreme Court to hear the case when TVA agreed to the settlement. The settlement is actually more comprehensive than Judge Thornburg’s initial ruling, impacting 11 TVA plants in Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama. The settlement calls for TVA to invest between $3 billion and $5 billion in new pollution controls plus invest $350 million in clean energy and efficiency projects.

The impetus for the original lawsuit was North Carolina’s Clean Smokestacks Act, which was signed into law in 2001. This act required utilities operating in the state of North Carolina to reduce emissions. The problem, especially for Western North Carolina (WNC) was that the largest polluters were not in state but rather those coal-fired plants just to our west. Prevailing winds and weather patterns made WNC a toxic dumping ground for these plants, whose emission standards did not come close to those required by N.C.’s Clean Smokestacks Act.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) believes this settlement could prevent as many 3,000 premature deaths, 2,000 heart attacks and more than 20,000 asthma cases annually. The total savings in annual health costs would be more than $25 billion.

The impact on tourism dollars is hard to quantify, but imagine the Smokies where you could see peaks from horizon to horizon rather than silhouettes shrouded in brown haze, and when you decided to hit the Mt. LeConte trail in July there wouldn’t be “ozone alerts” posted at the trailhead.

I believe it’s important to note this settlement in this political climate when national, state and local leaders cite onerous environmental regulations and call for the dissolution of the EPA and exalt free market capitalism as the solution for any/all environmental, economical and socio-political dilemmas. The truth is that free market capitalism doesn’t care one whit about your health, about your children’s health, about your grandchildren’s health, or about the environmental health of the planet. Free market capitalism cares about the bottom line. And as it is practiced today, capitalism cares only about today’s bottom line, not the bottom line 100 years from now.

So I salute the North Carolina General Assembly that passed the Clean Smokestacks Act and N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper for fighting the good fight, and I hope that my little girls feel the magic of these mountains in their bones the way I do. And that when their children hit the trail to Mt. LeConte, they can breathe in draughts of clean mountain air as they climb.

(Don Hendershot is a writer and naturalist. He can be reached a This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

That’s bird-Friday of course. And bird-Friday got off to a pretty chilly start.

It was 26 degrees Fahrenheit when I got to Lake Junaluska at around 8:45 a.m. Not much has changed species-wise at the lake for the past couple of weeks or so except the red-heads were gone. At least I didn’t see any Friday. There still were plenty of ring-necked ducks, ruddy ducks, pied-billed grebes and coots. There were a couple of lesser scaup and I also saw one bufflehead, four hooded mergansers, one great blue heron, three horned grebes and one double-crested cormorant. I also found a Cooper’s hawk keeping a close watch on the coots in the little channel between the wetlands and the narrow island. Counting a few passerines, I wound up with 27 species for the hour I spent around Lake J.

Next I headed for Kituwah to get my sparrow fix and see what else I might find. I got to Kituwah around 11 a.m. and it was still cool, mid-30s, but warming nicely. I was greeted at the entrance to Kituwah by an immature red-tailed hawk perched in a small tree. I recorded three red-tails for the morning but suspect there were five. It’s hard to tell after an hour or so if you’re seeing a different hawk or the same one. But I know I saw two adults and at least one immature. I also had one immature red-shouldered hawk near the wetlands.

The railroad track at the entrance also provided one of my target sparrow species as I found three adult white-crowned sparrows. Next, I was treated to a splash of late autumn color when I found four brightly plumaged eastern meadowlarks – their lemon-yellow breasts shining in the morning sun against the short green grass they were foraging in.

Song sparrows were everywhere and field sparrows were fairly common but after nearly an hour I still hadn’t found any white-throated sparrows. When I finally found some white-throateds, I found two groups in proximity that probably had at least 50 birds between them. I didn’t investigate too long because a flash of rufous leaving the cornfields for a nearby woody tangle alerted me to the possibility of another target sparrow. Sure enough, I approached the tangle and pished and up popped three dapper fox sparrows. These large handsome sparrows are one of my favorite winter birds and Kituwah almost always provides a few. There was one other sparrow that I expected to find at Kituwah so I headed to the wetlands and slogged around, much to the chagrin of a great blue heron looking for a meal, in search of swamp sparrows. It was there I stumbled upon the rarest bird of the day. I saw a lot of sparrow activity in a brushy clump at the edge of the soggy area. As I approached to investigate I heard the distinctive, dry double chit or chat call of a sedge wren. I circled the clump about three times from as close as 10 feet, flushing at least a half-dozen song sparrows but never getting a look at the chatterer. I left it chattering and slogged on around the wetlands finally flushing three swamp sparrows.

I wound up with six species of sparrows – song, field, white-throated, white-crowned, fox and swamp and good looks at another one of my favorite winter birds the hermit thrush. The total count for a couple of hours at Kituwah was 36 species. Not a bad B-Friday and I didn’t have to stand in a single line.

(Don Hendershot is a writer and naturalist. He can be reached a This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

Friends of Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge just finished waving goodbye to the Navy, its fighters and their outlying landing field only to turn around and see seeds planted that would sprout 500-foot tall wind turbines, each with a blade sweep of about one acre, in almost the same location as the proposed landing field.

The Friends of Pocosin was created in 2008 from the outpouring of grassroots support garnered by North Carolinians Opposing the Outlying Landing Field. One would think it would be simple to rekindle the passions of those myriad and diverse supporters that included individuals, elected officials, town and county governments, hunt clubs, businesses, civic organizations and environmental organizations that faced down the Navy. But there are some wild cards to consider.

One is timing. This industrial wind project dubbed the Pantego Wind Facility is apparently on the fast track. If things click the way corporate interests would like, 49 acres of cuisinart blades could be churning in the skies next to Pocosin Lakes when hundreds of thousands of waterfowl, including about 60 percent of the entire population of tundra swans, return to the area in 2012.

Another factor is marketing. The NAVY is the NAVY, and the Navy is an integral part of the nefarious government and there’s little difficulty in stirring up opposition to almost anything government-related. However, for many in rural eastern North Carolina, Pantego has a nice ring to it. After all Pantego is a small, rural community in Beaufort County with a population of around 170, according to the 2000 census. But what is Pantego Wind Energy LLC? It is a subsidiary of Invenergy, a Chicago-based energy corporation that is one of the five largest (and the No. 1 one independent) owners of wind generation plants in the U.S. This corporation with more than $130 million in assets wants you (and me) to subsidize their Pantego Wind Facility. This might be a good time to interject that there are at least 14,000 abandoned wind projects across the U.S. It seems that after subsidies were exhausted and profits didn’t materialize, these farms were simply abandoned.

So in these money-strapped times Invenergy (AKA Pantego Wind Energy LLC) is intimating that Beaufort County government could see $1 million annually in tax revenue. Plus there would be lease agreements with a few local farmers and after 100 jobs during construction, Invenergy is promising a whopping 5 full-time jobs to tend the turbines. But money is money and according to local news reports Tom Thompson of the Beaufort County Economic Development Commission is already endorsing the plan and Invenergy reports already having signed at least 20 leases with area farmers.

And about all that energy, it’s a drum I intend to keep beating until wind developers and their supporters decide to come clean and be honest with the public. The Pantego projects calls for 49 1.6 MW (megawatts) turbines to be built. They are touting 80 MW of electricity — enough, they say to power 15,000 homes. The fact is, the actual generating capacity will be much closer to 26 MW and perhaps the ability to power 5,000 homes.

Some that helped de-wing the Navy are still on alert. Derb Carter of the North Carolina Office of the Southern Environmental Law Center and Robert Scull of the Cypress Group of the North Carolina Sierra Club spoke out against the proposal at a Nov. 17 meeting of the Utilities Commission in Washington, D.C.

From my point of view, however, we are missing one of the strongest players that took the lead in aborting the Navy’s plans to infringe upon what many biologists and environmentalists call North Carolina’s Serengeti — that part of eastern North Carolina that rivals the majestic migrations of Africa’s Serengeti. Audubon North Carolina (ANC) was at the forefront in protecting Pocosin Lakes and its environs. To date, I have found one mention of ANC’s stance regarding the Pantego facility. It was a very thoughtful and clear pronouncement from ANC’s, Curtis Smalling, Important Bird Areas (IBA) Coordinator (39 of the 49 planned turbines are sited on ANC IBAs). in a brochure from Friends of Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. The brochure can be seen at www.pocosinlakesfriends.org.

In a kind of summation, Smalling writes: “Area is highly sensitive and if permitting moves forward, the bar must be very high on showing that impacts are minimal, mitigated, and that adaptive management is in place to correct any problems that arise (if the facility makes it to construction).” Searches of ANC’s website and blog site, however, (as of early Nov. 21) made no mention of the Pantego Wind facility.

National Audubon appears to be quite fervent in their support of wind power. But the caveat has been responsible siting. Pocosin Lakes is the perfect place for Audubon to step forward and show unequivocally that their support of wind power does not supersede their support of wildlife, wildlife habitat and wild places.

To find out how you can make your voice heard regarding the Pantego wind project contact Larry Hodges at 252.944.6389 or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

(Don Hendershot is a writer and naturalist. He can be reached a This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

Last Saturday afternoon was a gorgeous autumn afternoon across Western North Carolina. Last Saturday morning, however, when Bob Olthoff and I had a play date to do some birding at Tessentee Bottomland Preserve, it was socked in, cold and damp. Birds were hunkered down and quiet, except for the crows. We still managed a respectable 32 species for the two-and-a-half to three hours we spent there, including great close-up views of an American woodcock and a red-shouldered hawk.

The Tessentee Bottomland Preserve, in southern Macon County along the confluence of Tessentee Creek and the Little Tennessee River is owned and managed by The Land Trust for the Little Tennessee. A recent purchase has expanded Tessentee to 70 acres. Tessentee offers a mixture of habitat including canebrake, wetlands, red cedar savannah, mixed oak/pine forest, brambles, a small area of old oaks and an old homestead. The Preserve is site number 53 in the North Carolina Birding Trail’s Mountain Guide. It offers excellent birding, especially during spring and fall migration and is a great place to go sparrowing in the winter.

We stumbled upon a partially leucistic dark-eyed junco in the woods along the entrance road, just before the old homestead. The plumage was standard junco – gray back and tail with white outer tail coverts – except for the head, which was mostly white with a dark crown and dark smudges on the sides. Dark-eyed juncos are known to hybridize with sparrows like song sparrows and white-throated sparrows and the fact that this bird was alone except for some nearby sparrow companions definitely piques the curiosity. But the fact the rest of the plumage, except for the head, was so typically junco points to leucism. At any rate, the bird didn’t hang around for lengthy observation and from what I saw I’m ticking it off as a leucistic junco.

As we approached the old homestead, some raptor-like movement caught my eye. After scanning the woods near the old home we finally found an immature red-shouldered hawk perched a few feet from the ground, focused intently on a small brush pile. We didn’t want to disturb the bird’s breakfast so we headed down a different trail towards the river.

As I noted earlier, birds were hunkered down and quiet, but if you found a little activity you could generally find and/or entice a mixed flock. After we left the red-shouldered we first heard a towhee, then heard and saw a few Carolina chickadees foraging. We soon realized there were kinglets mixed in – a little pishing and voila, the brambles erupted with white-crowned and song sparrows. A couple of hermit thrushes were also discovered.

And that’s the way the morning went. We would walk along in the fog till a chip note or some movement would alert us and then some investigation and pishing would usually result in flushing a group of birds. At one point on the trail alongside the river we were investigating some movement in a woodpile when a woodcock flushed from next to the trail. It hovered over the trail less than 20 feet from us, giving great views.

We got all the usual sparrows – song, white-throated, white-crowned, junco, field and swamp – except for fox sparrow. I feel sure they were there, they generally are we just didn’t bump into the right group of birds.

By the time we had to leave, almost noon, the sun began to burn away the fog and blue skies began to shine through. At the car we had flyovers by killdeer and common grackles, trying to entice us to stay but commitments beckoned. We will be back, however, and if you’re looking for some good winter birding you should put Tessentee on your list.

To get to Tessentee Bottomland Preserve take Riverside Road off US 23/441, 5.2 miles south of Franklin. Follow Riverside for 0.5 miles to its end. Turn right on Hickory Knoll Road and follow it for 1.8 miles. Turn right at 2249 Hickory Knoll Road. There is a sign on Hickory Knoll Road indicating Tessentee Bottomland Preserve on your right; the red farm gate to the left, as you enter, is the entrance to the property.

(Don Hendershot is a writer and naturalist. He can be reached a This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

The annual fall hike in the Town of Waynesville’s 9,000-acre watershed took place on Saturday Oct. 29. Around 25 stalwart hikers showed up despite the cold, wet and windy Friday overnight and socked-in, iffy-looking conditions Saturday morning, to see and learn a little about this marvelous resource that the town has preserved through conservation easements.

Dr. Peter Bates, natural resources professor from Western Carolina University, and I led the hike. Bates has been involved with the watershed easements from the beginning and has helped lead a team of biologists and scientists in creating the town’s watershed management plan. I highly recommend that anyone interested in learning about the past and present condition of the watershed landscape and/or the philosophy and science regarding the town’s management plan join one of Bates’ hikes.

For my part, I’m there to try and help people see and appreciate the native flora and fauna of the watershed. My trips are “ambles,” not hikes. We may stop to track down a warbler that sang from the treetops or to examine a wildflower or turn a stone alongside a stream bank to see what we can see.

My group, last Saturday, was shuttled in to where Allen’s Creek empties into the reservoir and hiked back out to the treatment plant. It was a relatively easy, mostly flat (for the mountains) hike of between two to three miles. We were greeted by a few snowflakes at the beginning of the hike, but it was short-lived and the clouds gave way to sunshine. The wind, however, buffeted us most of the day, filling the air with colored leaves. There were a few places during the hike, where we could see the mountaintops, covered in hoar frost and gleaming in the sunlight.

We saw some outstanding fall color up close and were able to gain a little appreciation for the subtle differences that can create dramatic red on one maple and golden yellow on another almost side by side. Most wildflowers were spent but it was easy to identify goldenrod, ladies’ tresses and others by the spent flowers and remaining stems. A few asters were still blooming. We saw heart-leaved aster, white wood aster and one large purple (lavender) aster that I immediately thought was New England aster because of its size but in retrospect could have easily been late purple aster, Aster patens. We also found one lingering gentian.

While there were no binocular-toting birders on the trip, aside from yours truly, there was a general interest. I was surprised at some of the lingering migrants we encountered, including Swainson’s thrush, pine warbler and palm warbler. There was also a group of about a dozen blue-winged teal on the reservoir and the juncos and golden-crowned kinglets had already found their way down to the lower elevations.

Despite the cool temperatures, a little stone turning near one of the creeks in the watershed turned up a two-lined salamander. It’s one that I call Eurycea wilderae, the Blue Ridge two-lined salamander, although, I think the whole group (northern two-lined, southern two-lined and blue ridge two-lined) is still in flux as to what may be species, sub-species, races etc. Another amphibian we encountered was a small (this year’s) American toad.

These watershed hikes are always a wonderful way to get outside. And getting outside in these mountains is always an enjoyable experience. If you are a Waynesville resident, these hikes allow you an up close look at this outstanding resource the town (you) owns. The town is charged with protecting its outstanding water quality and that will always be its focus. The town is also cautiously and carefully exploring the future of this watershed and as an informed and engaged resident of the town of Waynesville you owe it to yourself and future generations to learn about the watershed and be a part of shaping its future.

Now to start rumors, I understand that next spring’s hike may offer a brand new option, but the cat’s still in the bag for now.

(Don Hendershot is a writer and naturalist. He can be reached a This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

Ten years later and one hurdle leapt — there will be more. Last week the 10th U.S. Circuit court of Appeals upheld the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule after the state of Wyoming and the Colorado Mining Association brought suit claiming the rule was in violation of the law.

The Roadless Rule, which imposed restrictions on logging, mining and road building in roadless areas within our national forests was one of the last hurrahs of the Clinton administration — published in the Federal Register on Jan. 12, 2001. However, soon after George W. Bush was sworn into office Jan. 20, 2001, new White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card issued a memo instructing all cabinet secretaries to delay all last-minute rules and regulations put into place by the Clinton administration.

On May 10, 2001, Federal Judge Edward Lodge issued a preliminary injunction barring the rule from taking affect. Then in a strange turn of events, the Bush administration actually defended the Roadless Rule in August 2002, and in December 2002 a federal appeals court reinstated the rule.

But the ping-pong ball didn’t stop there. In 2004 the Bush administration proposed a new rule to replace the old Roadless Rule, offering governors a petitioning process allowing them to manage roadless areas within their state. Since that time the ping-pong game has raged with various, seemingly conflicting federal court rulings, at times upholding and at times overturning the new Roadless Rule.

In August 2009, the Obama administration, in support of the national roadless rule, appealed a Wyoming Federal District Court ruling. That appeal went to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver and on Oct. 21, the 10th Circuit Court reversed the Wyoming decision.

This decision is certainly great news for wildlands, wild ecosystems, wildlife and the people who support and revere all of the above. And while it is surely a decision to celebrate, it is not the be all, end all. Both the governor of Wyoming and the Colorado Mining Association are mumbling about an appeal.

There are two things certain. The original Roadless Rule of 2001 was one of the most publicly vetted policy initiatives of all time. There were over 600 public meetings and 1.6 million comments received by the forest service. The next greatest number of public comments for any type of policy initiative was 275,000 in 1998 regarding organic food standards. And of the 1.6 million comments, more than 90 percent favored the rule. So there is little doubt about how the public feels regarding the protection of our wildlands.

The second thing that’s sure is there are plenty of deep pockets that see those wildlands as profit-producing commodities, and deep pockets always seem to have a prominent place at the table when it comes to public policy.

This one is going to the Supreme Court.

(Don Hendershot is a writer and naturalist. He can be reached a This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

“Mariah blows the stars around

And sends the clouds a’flyin’

Mariah makes the mountains sound

Like folks were up there dying”

We recently spent a weekend on Isle of Palms. When we hit the bridge over Cooper River on the Isle of Palms connector, the wind hit us in the face and it blew every second of every day we were there. And it blew hard and steady, probably 15 to 20 mph on the marsh side of the island and 20 mph plus on the beach. The sand on the beach peppered you like a sand blaster; even kids gave up after 45 minutes or so.

On the marsh side, where we were staying, things weren’t so bad. We didn’t turn the air-conditioning on the whole time we were there — a couple of open windows and/or sliding doors and it was quite comfortable and the sound was soothing. The tall marsh grass waved and bowed before the determined zephyr and birds either spirited past riding the aiding tailwind or rowed vigorously into the crushing headwind.

We went out on the long dock to let the girls do some crabbing — a kind of blue crab catch and release program. At first the blustery embrace was refreshing and welcoming — the warm air pressing against your skin.

But it just never stopped, and it made anything you were doing just a bit more difficult. You couldn’t simply lay the bag of crab bait on the dock — you had to be sure it was anchored down. Almost anything and everything had to be secured if you weren’t holding on to it. One bag got away, but luckily it stuck in the marsh grass not too far out. We sent Izzy out in the kayak to retrieve it. The ebbing tide and constant wind gave her a bit of a workout.

It’s easy to see why humans are so intent on finding effective efficient ways to harness the power of the wind. It is, indeed, a force to be reckoned with.

When I worked offshore it wasn’t uncommon, especially in winter, to see lines of tugs with empty barges lashed together and tied to moorings in the Intracoastal Waterway. They were “wind bound” — meaning the wind made it too difficult for the tugs to maneuver the empty barges. I saw something quite similar on a trip to California in the early 90s — the gale force Santa Annas had miles of 18-wheelers parked (wind bound) along the interstate.

In the simplest sense, wind is air moving from high pressure to lower pressure. In the case of small, strong short-lived systems like thunderstorms the flow of air can be direct from high to low pressure. However, for most large-scale weather patterns the flow is not direct. The rotation of the earth deflects the flow of air to the right in the Northern Hemisphere and to the left in the Southern Hemisphere, so the wind gets caught up in a circular motion, rotating around the high and/or low pressure areas. The closer the high and low-pressure systems are to each other the stronger the wind.

Like so much in nature, a little bit is a good thing, a light breeze to cool a sweltering summer afternoon or the rustle in the trees outside the bedroom window, but too much of a good thing — like tornadic winds, hurricanes, etc. — can be devastating. And like most impressive aspects of nature, wind can be inspiring:

“Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear!”

—Percy Bysshe Shelley – “Ode to the West Wind”

But the constant wind-blown second by wind-blown second from the other weekend left me thinking more along the lines of Catherine the Great: “A great wind is blowing, and that gives you either imagination or a headache.”

(Don Hendershot is a writer and naturaist. He can be reached This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)