Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Wilderness- Day 2

Field Notes ed XIX: backpacking and photographing the Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Wilderness Area of North Carolina: Stratton Bald to The Hangover.

Sep 10, 2023

Welcome to Field Notes!

In this edition we will take a brief look at the background of the Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Wilderness Area of North Carolina.
We will follow along on day 2 of the backpacking trip on 8/23/23, which proceeds from Stratton Bald along the Haoe Lead Trail to The Hangover.
I’ve included a couple of videos and photos from this day, with more at my portfolio site!

Did you know that Substack has an app? It has recently come to my attention that many of you are unfamiliar with Substack and all that it has to offer, so let me give you a quick run down. First, it is essentially an email newsletter. When you subscribe, every new post is sent to your email. However, the posts also show up on a writer’s homepage, which is the writer’s blog, laid out however the writer sees fit. Substack’s goal is to foster relationships between writers and their audience (you can reply to and comment on every emailed edition of Field Notes). To further this they also offer a Twitteresque ‘Notes’ for sharing short posts or ideas and a ‘Chat’ function. You can access these by going to the writer’s homepage or through the app. I just recently turned on the Notes on the Field Notes homepage, if you are interested.

The app allows you to search Substack for other authors and publications. Every new post from your subscriptions gets stored in your inbox in the app. It is, in my opinion, a much better place for reading posts than an email inbox. The app also allows you to go directly to the ‘Notes’ where you can ‘follow’ writers you may be interested in without committing to subscribing.

Substack is a very exciting organization to be a part of. They are developing very quickly and constantly offering new and better features. They’ve recently upgraded some podcasting features, for publications that offer them. I highly recommend looking into the app!

Now, on to Field Notes-

Joyce Kilmer

Alfred Joyce Kilmer was born in New Jersey in 1886. He attended Rutgers College (now University) and later Columbia University in New York City. He began his career as a Latin teacher, but after 1908 he moved to New York City to pursue writing. He wrote many poems, among other things. His most recognized of these is the poem “Trees.”

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Trees
(For Mrs. Henry Mills Alden)
 
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
 
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
 
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
 
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
 
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
 
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

In 1917 The United States entered into World War I. Kilmer almost immediately enlisted in the New York National Guard and was deployed to France. Volumes can be written about his service there. Suffice it to say, Kilmer was a stud and a badass. He rose to the rank of Sergeant, opting not to pursue a commission as an officer, and transferred to Military Intelligence in order to seek more hazardous duty. He became well known for his calmness and presence on the battlefield and on frequent scouting patrols.

On July 30, 1918, during the Second Battle of Marne, Joyce Kilmer was killed by a sniper.

In the 1930’s the US Veterans of Foreign Wars made a request with the US Forest Service to create a memorial forest for Kilmer. Ultimately, the Forest Service chose a 3,800 acre area along Little Santeetlah Creek in western North Carolina. This area escaped intense logging efforts of the early 1900’s and contains a significant area of old growth forest, with trees more than 400 years old. Although never stated explicitly, I can only think that the area was chosen because of his poem “Trees.”

This land was designated the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest in 1936. In 1975 it was expanded to include 17,394 rugged and remote acres of mountain wilderness in North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. This is the Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Wilderness Area.

Day 2

The act of waking up is like being underwater and struggling to ascend to the surface. The exertion and pain of yesterday’s dehydration and muscle spasms left me sunken in a sea of exhaustion. I break from the dark waters of sleep and open my eyes.

A stiffness lingers in my joints, but I have no soreness and the chafing has eased. The rest has re-built me in preparation of what is next. I unzip the vestibule of my Lunar Solo tent and step out into the pre-dawn darkness. The sky is cloudless and still. Conditions would have been perfect for Milky Way photography, but my level of fatigue made getting up in the night out of the question. Now, I start the sacred ritual of preparing coffee.

Yesterday evening I followed a side trail to the north which led to a secondary opening in the trees. I did not have a direct view of sunset, but had a vista of mountains stretching away in the evening light. Now, I march through the tall grasses searching for any perspective to the east. Dawn comes with a graceful softness, caressing the meadow around my tent, but I do not have a composition here.

I pack up camp. From here my destination is a trail junction known as Naked Ground. My hand written notes tell me there is another potential spring there. I carry plenty of water, just in case, but not my full load. I look forward to possible views to the south from that location.

I am no longer climbing mountains, but following an elevated spine of ridges. I re-trace my path to the Haoe Lead Trail and follow it eastward. This trail is also exceedingly overgrown in many places, causing me to force my way through underbrush with my trekking poles.

Slow and steady progress brings me to Naked Ground at 8 am. This is a nice spot to drop my pack and rest. It is not the Bacchanalian utopia that the name implies. More humbly, it is a rare small, but wide and flat landing of trails intersecting in a saddle between peaks. There is a gap in the trees as the Naked Ground Trail plummets downward to the south. It provides me a vista for photographing distant peaks in the very hazy late morning light.

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A modest, free flowing spring lies tucked away, just off trail to the north. A segment of PVC pipe has been left here by previous hikers to assist with water collection efforts. I fill all of my containers and move on.

As the heat of the day grows there are a few tough scrambles around some knobs along the ridge. There are trees all around and, especially in the gaps, the undergrowth is thick. Fueled by sporadic handfuls of blackberries, I arrive at Hangover Lead and drop downhill northward to Saddle Tree Gap. Just past here there are several nice camping locations. The trail then slices through dense rhododendron before emerging onto The Hangover.

The Hangover is a small rock prominence on top of a 5130 ft peak just north of the Haoe Lead Ridge. The peak stands alone and its crown of angled boulders erupts from the impenetrable rhododendron all around. I stand on top of the rocks, with unhindered views of rippled green waves of mountain tops rolling in every direction. I am alone; a castaway in the wilderness.

The afternoon heat settles in thickly, so I retreat to my camp in the shade where I read and write and wait out the hours of daylight. Flies are my ever present companions in the sun. They swarm my cut legs, licking my wounds. The do not bite, so I only occasionally swipe them away. With no wind, this small clearing amongst the thickets, at the edge of a stunted forest, is oppressively hot. Loneliness intensifies, along with a feeling of guilt over my absence from home. These trips satisfy a sense of something glaringly missing in daily life and are a wellspring of creativity for art and writing. But, I begin to wonder if this is a self-soothing cover story for glorified self-indulgence.

I lose patience amid my thoughts at camp and move to The Hangover in the late afternoon. The unsheltered hazy sun here is even more intense, and I hide in patches of shade close to the ground.

Evening evolves slowly. The mountains are shrouded in an almost smoky air, possibly from wildfires in Canada. It mutes the light, but I revel in the bounty of compositions all around. Some clouds encroach and when the sun drops below them, the sunset ensues with sudden finality on the day. My dilemma now is what to do about the Milky Way. The moon is up and the skies are covered with clouds and haze. I would need to wait here until past midnight for the moon to set and the Milky Way’s core to be at its peak. The sky does not look like it will clear up. Reluctantly, I opt not to gamble on it and let the chance of stars fade into the night.

To be continued…