Over this semester, each of the Highlands IE students has had the distinct pleasure of working on an individual project in addition to our capstone. At the beginning of the semester, we were presented with six options to choose from for these individual projects: studying wetlands, microplastics in shrews and earthworms, bats and mines, small mammals, sky islands, or a carbon capture research project. We were told to put our top three choices in order of what we wanted most to least for our program directors to know what to assign us. Being in the first week of knowing the other 14 people in my program, I can’t lie in saying that I was incredibly nervous about picking a project. They all sounded incredible and offered such unique research opportunities that it was incredibly hard to pick a project already, but also somewhat nerve-racking to not know who you would be working with.
About a week after we had given Rada and Jason our submissions, they gathered us all together to give us their decisions for us. I remember my heart racing, hoping that I would get the sky islands project. I had put it first on my list, largely because I wanted to travel around western NC. As the only out-of-state student in the program this year, I felt as though getting to explore such a unique and new place was too good of an opportunity to pass up. And so, as I sat there crossing my fingers hoping that I would get my choice, I was beyond excited when it was announced that I had gotten it with two of my other cohort members.
When we initially met to start planning our project timeline, all three of us were giddy with the places we were going to get to explore. We had five mountains with monitors on them which we would need to go and check to make sure that they were up and running. I hadn’t been to four of the five of them, so I was incredibly excited to get to go and see these unique places and study them on a deeper level. None of us, however, knew what we had just signed ourselves up for.
Our first outing to the Balsam sites went rather smoothly, as we went with Rada to learn the ropes of taking the necessary vegetation surveys and how to locate each monitor. Coming off of this, I remember feeling excited for us to get out there on our own and get to hike through these wilderness spaces. Even our second outing was great, hitting the last Balsam site and going to do all three of the sites on Kuwohi. It was the third excursion, however, that proved to be the most challenging. Our little trio, with the addition of our resident tree expert (a former IE student now working with the Forest Service), had decided to knock out the last three mountains over three days. We planned to hit Roan Mountain first, then go to Grandfather Mountain, and Mount Mitchell, camping overnight along the way. We packed up my car on a Thursday in September and began driving to Tennessee for our first stop.
We arrived in the rain, and it took us a little while to get our tents set up before hitting the hay for the night. As always happens to me when I camp, I tossed and turned for that first night, not only somewhat uncomfortable on my slowly deflating sleeping pad but also somewhat stressed for the day ahead of us. I knew that we had three monitor locations to find on Roan Mountain and that each would be a pretty decent hike as the road was closed after a certain point, and all three of our sites were above the closure. By the time I finally fell asleep, it felt like mere minutes before my alarm was blaring in my ear telling me that it was time to get up and go.
The day started as a picturesque, bluebird day with not a cloud in sight. It was cold, but not freezing, so as we got to hiking the two-mile trek up to the first monitor, spirits were high. The forest around us had a light mist settled around us, making the morning light trickling through the trees look like golden beams stretching down from the sky above. In a word, it was stunning.
Our first site was a breeze, and the second even easier, but as we walked down the road to our final stop, the mist began to thicken, changing the appearance of the forest from magical to somewhat eerie.
As we began setting up our plot for the vegetation survey, Hannah realized that we had forgotten to reset the first monitor after we had changed the batteries. She, being the trooper that she is, volunteered to run up and turn it back on as the rest of us conquered the veg survey at our last site. Little did she know that she had forgotten to grab the keys to unlock the monitor. Not 30 minutes later, as Ken, Katie, and I were cleaning up the site, Hannah called me letting me know the situation, so I offered to run up with the keys. My walk/jog up was rather treacherous, as the fog that had settled had become even thicker, blocking much of my surroundings from my immediate vision. I ended up running most of the way, gangling the keys in my hand loudly while playing music from my phone speaker. When I finally reached the monitor, I found Hannah lying in the middle of the road waiting for me.
After we finally got back to my car and began the drive to the campsite we had found at Grandfather Mountain, it had begun to pour. My heart sank further with every mile that we drove knowing that we would likely have to set up camp in the rain. As we got closer, it hit me that I have an aunt who has a cabin in Boone, which would be a much better alternative to sleeping on the ground in the rain. We made the quick decision to change our plans and sleep there instead as it was only about 30 minutes from the state park and about an hour and a half from Mount Mitchell, our last site.
After getting a great night’s sleep and getting a warm shower, we headed to Grandfather Mountain. This was probably the easiest day that we had, save for the mild wind and fog. When we got to our first location for the day, we could barely see anything around us. We blew through all three of our sites for the day, only having to deal with one huge upward trek, and headed back to Boone for another night of great sleep.
Mount Mitchell was probably the most challenging experience that I have had since being in Highlands, including Hurricane Helene. At this point, we had already done two pretty intensive days of bushwacking in the rain, so our little group was positively exhausted regardless of how much sleep we got. The spruce-fir site was dense, with spruce and fir trees packed together, causing us to have to squeeze through some pretty tight spaces.
In addition, we were met with some park rangers once we got back to the overlook who did not like that, we had just hopped the fence to get back to my car. We spent maybe 45 minutes trying to explain to them that we had permits allowing us to reach our monitors. When they finally let us go, the rain and wind had gotten so bad that we could angle our bodies into the wind and not fall.
The ecotone for Mitchell was also brutal, as we had to do a pretty big hike out to the site from the observation deck. It ended up being close to four miles, including the bushwack out to the monitor itself, and at this point, we were all spent. But we had no clue what the northern hardwood site would have in store for us. When we got there, spirits were high, knowing that it was our last site for the entire weekend, so all four of us were ready to get er done. We pulled off to the side of the road and prepared ourselves to do the final trek for at least a few months. The hike down was long and filled with dog hobble, but even worse, when we got to where the point on our map showed the monitor should be, there was no monitor in sight. We ended up searching for upwards of two hours, unsure of how we were missing this monitor so thoroughly. When we finally accepted defeat and did our vegetation survey, we realized that we had to hike back up the treacherous tangle of bushes back to the car.
Eventually, we decided to try and take a service road back to the pavement, hiking another 3 miles back to the road. All of us were so exhausted that when we saw the glimmering promise of asphalt shining in the distance, we thought that we were home free. Psych! We had to hike another mile back up to the car.
By the time we got back to HBS, dropping off Ken on our way, Hannah, Katie, and I collapsed into our beds immediately. I didn’t bother with unpacking anything, save for the food from my car and hanging up my rain jacket, and let me tell you, I slept like a log that night (quite honestly it was probably the longest uninterrupted sleep I’d had at the station up until that point). When the three of us finally rolled out of bed the next morning, all we could do was laugh at our crazy adventure.
To sum up a long story made longer, this difficult weekend set the tone for the rest of my semester. Throughout the challenges we faced after including (but not limited to) Hurricane Helene, a tree falling on our house, not being able to reach two of our mountains due to road closures, homework, tests, and papers due, I have been able to reflect on that weekend and know that if I can come out of our crazy in one piece (mostly), I’m pretty convinced that I can do anything.
ES
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