Kentucky - Whitley City

Ywahoo Creek is the source for Ywahoo Falls near Whitley City, Kentucky.  A trail goes to Ywahoo Creek where a ford can be made by foot travel.  A huge rock shelter is present at the Falls area.  The scenic Ywahoo Falls area is in the Big South Fork National River and Recreation area.  The narrow road that must be used to access the Falls Area begins at a local fueling station called Becky’s.  Adjacent to the Big South Fork property is the Daniel Boone National Forest.  The Ywahoo Falls area is a dramatically scenic natural area. 

Being destroyed today

Wilbur McCauley - Untamed Mountain, Alabama

The great wilds of our country once held to be boundless and inexhaustible are being rapidly invaded and overrun in every direction, and everything destructible in them is
being destroyed. 

John Muir


Though much work has been done for the wilds it seems to be falling short.
This is Wilbur McCauley of the Untamed Mountain facility.  The facility is operated for native and exotic animals in need of secure permanent homes. As a wild animal preserve and rescue site the location is open to the community as an environmental education learning center and recreational destination for visitors.

He tells of the destruction of natural systems.  What he says lines up with the reports in reputable scientific publications.  The extractive industries are destroying nature.  The relative minority that defend what the extractive industries are doing are standing in the way of keeping nature working for the future of people and animals.

The things they carried with them (Things you might consider)

Forest along Big South Fork Railroad, Southeastern, KY

The blogs in the list in the column on the right give suggestions on health and safety in the wild.

This is intended to supplement the very good information that can be found there.

Comfort and safety can be made better by learning from one’s mistakes. 

1.                    Do not take “light” bars into the wilderness.  Know your bars.  About half of the granola bars have enough food in them to keep you going.  Many are bad; do not carry them.  The good ones don’t weigh any more to speak of.  Take bars that will attenuate your hunger.  The “V-8” bar is one of many suggested that will help you feel satisfied.

2.                   Bring a panel.  You are going to need to sit in the wilderness.  There are ample seats if you have a piece of waterproof material to go between your body and the spot you have chosen to sit on.  Know your panels.   The wind in the wilderness will snatch your panel away from you before you can retrieve your panel.  You must know how to use your panel and keep it with you in the wind.

3.                   Leave your jeans for the city.  People with wilderness experience call jeans “dead man’s clothes.”  A storm comes and jeans are heavy with water.  You slip on a creek bank and immediately jeans are heavy with water. Know your pants; do not wear jeans in the wilderness. 

4.                   The more you get to know the wilderness the more you learn the appeal of wool.  You become less and less concerned about wool feeling scratchy.  Wool socks are your friend.

5.                   The ticks may get in almost every seam in your clothing.  Separating them from the knit of the fabric of your socks can be difficult. Forceps (tweezers) are very helpful even before a tick begins feeding.

6.                   Consider duct tape; it can bind a fractured extremity.  Consider office desk transparent tape. Office transparent tape weighs almost nothing and helps you immobilize ticks.

7.                     If you have taken the first aid class you know the triangular bandage and a lot of other small things that have many useful applications.  A package of these things weighs practically nothing.  The individual first aid kit can be ordered from an industrial first aid supply store.  The water resistant box is 5 ½ inches tall; a nylon case goes around the box and keeps the box secure.  The nylon case gives a way to attach the kit to a field pack or field bag.   

8.                 Bring a map, topographic map, compass, or portable GPS receiver.  Don’t cut corners on this concept; it could save you hours to say the least.

9.                  Bring a walking cane, stick or trekking poles.

10.              Consider acquiring an emergency locator beacon.

11.               Pay attention.  There is hearing and then there is hearing.  Learn to turn up your hearing.  You can’t do that in the city.  If you are aware you will know about people or animals far ahead of seeing them.

 

What direction

Overlook view Park Road east of Big Oak Flat Station, Yosemite NP

"Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer." 

John Muir

Their brave beauty work

Yosemite Plants - Road from Arch Rock Station

Having read John Muir and learned John Muir one hears Muir's descriptions when walking the trails of Yosemite.

The radiance in some places is so great as to be fairly dazzling, keen lance-rays of every color flashing, sparkling in glorious abundance, joining the plants in their fine, brave beauty-work, every flower, every crystal, a window opening into heaven, a mirror reflecting the Creator.

 

 

 

John Muir

Much of the forest, perhaps the majority of the forest is old growth forest.  To visit Yosemite is to visit a Xanadu of protected old growth forest.  Though the trees are protected from cutting they still may be damaged by drought, insects, and blights. Though the sequoias get the attention the sugar pines grow in many more parts of the mountains and valleys of the Sierra Nevada mountains.   The sugar pines are so appealing you want to look at them. 


 

What I saw - The Range of Light



Yosemite NP - Highway 41- From Tunnel View Overlook



Light...
I know not a singular word fine enough for Light.
Holy beamless, bodiless, inaudible floods of Light.

- John Muir

What I saw - Bridge over Sugar Creek, Indiana

The red siding is the side of the covered bridge.  The bridge abutment is
fashioned from Mansfield sandstone.

A stream in the area near Crawfordsville, Indiana is called Turkey Run.  But a much broader area than the immediate area of the stream is known as Turkey Run.

Layers of sand at the bottom of the sea were compressed to become sandstone.  This is the local   Mansfield sandstone.

There is a metal plaque on the door of the house where John Lusk lived. The house is near the Narrows point in Sugar Creek.  The 1883 covered bridge crosses the creek here at the Narrows. The plaque reads “To the memory of John Lusk who saved the trees of Turkey Run.”  The plaque is labeled “The Nature Study Club of Indiana.”

What better thing can be said of a person than he "saved the trees."  In so many cases irreplaceable trees have been lost.  Thanks to John Lusk the trees of Turkey Run are living to this day.

"These forests were composed of about five hundred species of trees, all of them in some way useful to man, ranging in size from twenty-five feet in height and less than one foot in diameter at the ground to four hundred feet in height and more than twenty feet in diameter,—lordly monarchs proclaiming the gospel of beauty like apostles. For many a century after the ice-ploughs were melted, nature fed them and dressed them every day; working like a man, a loving, devoted, painstaking gardener; fingering every leaf and flower and mossy furrowed bole; bending, trimming, modeling, balancing, painting them with the loveliest colors; bringing over them now clouds with cooling shadows and showers, now sunshine; fanning them with gentle winds and rustling their leaves; exercising them in every fibre with storms, and pruning them; loading them with flowers and fruit, loading them with snow, and ever making them more beautiful as the years rolled by. Wide-branching oak and elm in endless variety, walnut and maple, chestnut and beech, ilex and locust, touching limb to limb, spread a leafy translucent canopy along the coast of the Atlantic over the wrinkled folds and ridges of the Alleghanies,—a green billowy sea in summer, golden and purple in autumn, pearly gray like a steadfast frozen mist of interlacing branches and sprays in leafless, restful winter."  John Muir

What I saw - Indiana scenic places

Wedge Rock - This huge rock fell into the ravine from the top of the ravine. The
 trees give help with the size of the rock and the time that the rock has been
resting at its current location.

Punch Bowl - This place shows the work of the erosion of the rock

In Western Indiana the Sugar Creek area near Crawfordsville was once under a sea.  Layers of sand at the bottom of the sea were compressed to become sandstone.  This is now named the Mansfield sandstone. The coal that is found in the area was laid down during the time that the sea was gone but marshes covered the area.  After that time the area was covered with ice.  Rock brought with the ice is called glacial drift.  This material lodged in waterways and changed the flow of surface water.

New surface water streams developed in the area.  The stream that that is now known as Sugar Creek changed the look of the area. Sugar Creek and its tributaries eroded into the Mansfield sandstone.  In places the deep ravine is wider than the upper reaches of the ravine.  The eroded canyons have dramatic shapes.  The cool shady areas provide habitat for rare plants.

When one walks in a Northerly direction the path comes an area of bare rock that looks something like a sloped stack of oatmeal cookies.  A cascade of water noisily falls down this stack of rocks.  The wet rock surfaces are slippery.  After climbing that sloped area the sides of the ravine narrow until one finds almost no places to step without stepping into the high velocity water rushing toward the walker.

A dramatic passageway that goes on for dozens of feet must be negotiated with the churning water constantly flowing through the sandstone.  It is possible to make it through without stepping into the rushing water but it takes some doing.

It is a place of becoming very close to the rock cliff faces.

What I saw - Bernheim Forest

Kentucky native vine

Art Installation - Bernheim Arboretum

The Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest is a located in the Knobs section of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.  The Arboretum was the gift of Isaac W. Bernheim.  Mr. Bernheim immigrated to the United States from Germany.  He and his younger brother established a beverage distillery in Paducah in 1872.  Later they moved their operation to Louisville.  The statue of Thomas Jefferson at the Jefferson County Courthouse is a gift of Isaac Bernheim.

Though his works in Kentucky have been appreciated in the Commonwealth he also was associated with Colorado.  In the 1920s he moved to Denver, Colorado.

The Arboretum site was reclaimed from a heavily cut over area.  That area had salt production and iron production during the 1800s.  Both of these products used wood for fuel in their production.  Most of the trees were cut to accumulate wood for the industries. Many different trees live at the Arboretum. The site is privately owned and is open for visitors to see the trees of the Arboretum.