#cheat canyon

Some of the fall color in Cheat River Canyon yesterday.

From top: great rhododendron, also known as great laurel and rosebay rhododendron; American black elderberry, also known a American black elder (Sambucus canadensis), whose purple-blue berries will soon be used by locals to make wine, jam, jellies, and pies; common milkweed, which draws insects, including the banded longhorn beetle (Typocerus velutinus), in droves; butterfly milkweed, also known as butterfly weed; poke milkweed; eastern teaberry (Gaultheria procumbens), whose edible berries and leaves are used to flavor everything from tea to ice cream; and the adorable shinleaf (Pyrola elliptica), also known as waxflower, a shade-tolerant perennial of moist woods.

A short hike on the Rattlesnake Trail from the main overlook to Rock City is a great way to get up close and personal with the ancient geology of Coopers Rock State Forest and the Cheat River Canyon. The bedrock of the canyon is part of the Pottsville Formation and consists of sandstone, limestone, shale, and bituminous coal. The most prominent feature along the Rattlesnake Trail is upper Connoquenessing sandstone, a fine to moderate-grained sandstone that is resistant to erosion. This rock group formed during the Pennsylvanian Period about 300 million years ago when the current area was a swampy river delta located south of the equator. When you touch these rock faces, you’re literally connecting with earth’s primeval past. The great boulder fields and rock channels of Cheat River Canyon are endlessly fascinating to me, not only for their geological significance, but also for the animal and plants uniquely adapted to live in the rocky habitat, such as mountain spleenwort (Asplenium montanum).

You descend into the canyon on an old logging road long ago forgotten by the rest of the world, into rich, damp woods that suddenly grow quiet and still, except for an occasional junco flitting through the dripping underbrush. You stop to get your bearings. A tree near you has been shredded into a million soft, wet splinters by a bear. Closer, a racoon has left its delicate prints in the sediment at the edge of a pooling stream, where it came searching for crayfish last night. You stoop under a branch and step to your left onto a moss-covered rock. You catch your balance. The stream falls away below your feet in a cascade of foamy whitewater, churning through boulders and rhododendron thickets to its final destination. You recognize something familiar in a place that you have never been to before - the ancient, connective energy that resonates through all wild places. You are home. 

Sweet birch catkins are yet another gift of early spring in Appalachia’s mountains. Sweet birch (Betula lenta) is very similar in appearance to yellow birch, which also lives in the local woods. The leaves of both trees give off a wintergreen scent when crushed. Old timers made a thick syrup from birch tree sap, which flows later than maple tree sap. The bark of the sweet birch tree was also once used to make birch beer, a popular soft drink in Eastern Pennsylvania where my dad grew up.  An essential oil extracted from the sap is now used to flavor the drink. I prefer birch beer to root beer, when I can find it - it brings back many fond memories of trips to my grandparents’ farm in York, Pennsylvania.

If ever there was poster child for the environmental devastation wrought on Appalachia’s streams and rivers by rapid industrialization at the turn of the last century, it would be Muddy Creek. One of the most beautiful tributaries of the Cheat River, the lower section of this wild and rambunctious stream had the life choked out of it by acid mine drainage over the course of the last century. In 1995, an enormous mine blowout sent tens of thousands of gallons of mining effluent flowing down Muddy Creek and into the Cheat River, a surging poison that killed off aquatic life in the river and very nearly brought an end to the whitewater rafting industry in the Cheat River Canyon. That man-made catastrophe set off a remarkable, decades’ long campaign by the Friends of the Cheat and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection to restore the watershed. About a year ago, the DEP completed the installation of  a state-of-the-art treatment facility along Muddy Creek with the promise of bringing the lower section of the stream back to life and creating a healthy trout fishery along its entire length. Although the stream will require decades to scour the yellow boy from its boulders, life will return much sooner and the entire watershed will be richer and more vibrant for it.

Above are a few photos from a late summer hike around the Cheat River Canyon. The fungi are dominant in the woods this time of year, including the gorgeous crown-tipped coral fungus (Artomyces pyxidatus), sulphur shelf fungus (Laetiporus sulphureus), and various boletes. Late summer wildflowers, including white wood aster (Eurybia divaricata) and white turtlehead (Chelone glabra), are also appearing in force.