Little slips of azure blue play peek-a-boo in the high white cloud cover behind a wide variety of lower dark gray patches of rain clouds that flip-flop over and around the mountain tops and in the valleys. They are sprinkled with rain here and there and now and then cleansing and brightening to nourish the earth.
A distant view of November's tree cover is a rich mixture of bare-limb grays and clinging oak-leaf maroon. Water drops off the branches as from a heavy sweat while near the ground the little lashes of underbrush are dripping with twig drop tears.
Clouds play around the
hill tops, along the slopes and through the valleys as foggy elves and misty fairies.
It is their playground for all seasons.
Bird nests are clearly visible clinging tightly to the grasp of enveloping little tree limbs in plain announcement that the occupants have gone south for the Winter.
Mountain laurel and rhododendron show the left-over clusters of summer's floral blossom beauty and bouquets of buds for next year.
Occasional wet banks with a southern exposure are bright light-green with a cover of late growth, hay-scented fern dropping over each other and onto the ground like feathers on the wings of a mother bird protecting and comforting the earth underneath.
Water fills stream beds in the steep, narrow valleys full to the brim. It cascades downward in wild leaps and bounds over rocks and ground in rushing torrents and wild little water falls. It is a surprise and a delight to find ourselves on a large, flat rock island in a deep steep ravine surrounded on all sides by this wild and wonderful white water.
Every draw, large and small, has its own personal stream. Each one contributes its own sound to the mountains mighty music.
Some distant away a flock of turkeys call out of the forest background with a continuous chatter of social intercourse with each other.
A ruffed grouse leaves its roost in the white pines with just a hint of the thunder when flushed suddenly from cover by a closely approaching intruder.
This day's afternoon has become the antithesis of morning. The cloud cover rolled itself away to open the curtain on a full sky of the most beautiful azure blue. Little wisps and sniffs of thin white clouds move rapidly across the sky and just as magically change their configurations as they go.
The late afternoon sun shines brightly over the mountain tops and into the woodlands. The leaves of rhododendron glisten brightly in the slanting beams. They are stirred by a brisk breeze to flutter like a myriad of wood fairly eye lashes.
The seasons and the days of Appalachian Mountain Country are many and varied and beautiful and none more so than this.
Copyright © 1988, 1999 Barbara A. Smith and John G. Hipps. All rights reserved.
This essay was first published November 9, 1988 in the Free-Press Courier, Westfield, Pennsylvania.