Yesterday, while attending a workshop on self-guided interpretive trail design, I had some time to take a walk in the rain (time is something one has in abundance when one misreads the starting time for one's class and arrives two hours early). Walking in wet woods holds a special appeal for me. There is something about the quality of the light, the muted sounds and the deep fragrance of the duff that touches me in a way I can't quite describe.
The park where the class was held is in North Carolina's fall zone, an area of transition between our coastal plain and piedmont regions. Although it is only about 80 miles to my west southwest, it is an area quite different from the coastal plain. I enjoyed having the opportunity to walk up an actual hill and see those most intriguing of objects, rocks. We don't have rocks in the swamp and our highest "hill" in the home swamp reaches the staggering elevation of 40 feet. All of my adult life I have lived in the northeastern coastal plain of NC and I love it here, but deep inside I guess there lurks a child of the piedmont and I sometimes miss the hills, rocks, and yes, even the red clay that I grew up with.
