Sunday, we took a break from cabin building to head up to the Blue Ridge Parkway. There, you can drive over Richland Balsam, its high point at 6058 feet, and park at a secret spot, from which a trail can be accessed, a trail to heaven, a path that snakes through the mysterious deep shade of high-altitude, old-growth spruce and climbs to a West-facing knob on top of which there is a dense laurel slick. Except this one isn't populated by typical mountain laurel. Instead, blueberry bushes, waist-high, stretch across and up and burst at the perimeter of an amoeba-shaped football field.
This particular spot appeals deeply because of its obsurity and the privacy made probable by a one-mile hike in. Also, it sits above and faces the Caney Fork drainage. Every drop of water that lands here, nearby to the high sky, sometimes even amidst the clouds, will eventually flow through and past my own neighborhood, only ten miles away, or closer, as the hawk might fly.
With baby Angus in my backpack and Abel scampering sometimes out-of-sight amidst the ripe bounty, we picked for less than an hour and filled a gallon milk jug with our combined take.
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