The backcountry

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of my first look at Hazel Creek. The trail was huge and people sign was everywhere. Remote? I was starting to harbor serious doubts. The first couple campsites up from the lake had “tarp people” in them. Non-backpackers who had also came across the lake on boats and used aluminum carts to wheel vast hordes of gear up the creek.
But way up the creek, near the last campsite, miles from the lake and near the start of real brookie water we found nirvana. The creek, still good sized, with eight inch brookies and foot long rainbows. Dark woods that made early afternoon seem like evening, rhododendron and mountain laurel blooming everywhere.

With a hard rain falling, the next day we trekked up and over the mountain to Eagle Creek. A gradual assent at first followed by a hard climb up and over the pass. The trail followed the course of Pinnacle Creek down to the larger Eagle Creek. Maybe followed is the wrong word, shared might be more descriptive as we forded Pinnacle Creek fifteen times on the way down.
The campsite at the mouth of Eagle Creek was empty except for us. We built a huge bonfire to dry everything out. Frogs in the lake and the rushing noise of Eagle Creek combined to sing us to sleep.

The next morning back up Pinnacle Creek (all 15 fords) to spend the night. The creek, a lovely tunnel thru the rhododendron. Bow and arrow casts, dapping, sneaking, taking advantage of the open fords, fishing was delightful and exasperating. Every really good float brought up an eager rainbow, each probably never having seen a fly or someone crazy enough to fish there before.
That night, rainbows wrapped in tinfoil baked on fireside stones made a feast. In the morning we followed bobcat tracks on the trail out most of the way.

My poor knees. From Clingman’s Dome down Forney Ridge then left to Noland Creek, all downhill, a hard 3000 foot loss. But what a sight awaits you, the creek framed in blooming Rhodos like we’d never seen. Thousands glowing in the last light of evening.

The same of Forney Creek two days later. Forney Creek! Pretty close to heaven for a small stream fisherman like myself. One plunge pool after another stair stepping up the mountain for miles. Dozens upon dozens of head high waterfalls. And the trout, I think the creek must have more twelve or fourteen inch rainbows than anywhere in these mountains. When you catch twenty nice fish on a hot summer day wading wet you can grow quite fond of a place. When later
that evening you’re tending trout on the fire and look up to see a doe twenty feet away you can fall in love. When someone mentions mountain trout I picture Forney Creek and smile inside.

At least in the mountains there is no one to look you right in the face and lie and pretend they are your friend. In the mountains all is honesty, everything else fades. Fades to just the mountain and the trout. The smell of the wet woods. A Canada Warbler feeding its young or the lonely mist blowing in stark beauty thru the azalea’s atop Andrews bald. A high mystery world filled completely with cloud and wind. What captures my imagination most is the idea that here things are exactly as they are supposed to be. From the seeds of Salamanders under seemingly every stone, to the way the size of the trout fit just right the size of each pool.
Each plant in just the right spot. The bee balm in the damp seep at the back of a cove when you haven’t seen any for an hour. In the old woods the feeling is of a puzzle with each piece exactly where it should be, connected to all the other pieces, by virtue of having the time. Not the little time kept by watches but the big time kept by poplars dying of old age and giving way to hemlocks. Time kept by water wearing away at stone, mountain time.