The Appalachian Highlands bisect the eastern third of the United States like a bold diagonal slash from Maine to Alabama. The twisted ridges and hogbacks bear mute witness to the ancient collision of North America, Eurasia, and Africa, the geologic event that formed them.
Vegetation is lush in the warm months, and beauty abounds in any season.
The mist obscures, but when things escape its embrace, their appearance is intensified and made more vivid, like the bright green leaves of spring. In other seasons, haggard old trees with bare limbs convey a more somber image in the mists. In early morning light, the surface of the New River is cold and slaty, and swirls of the mist play in the ridges overlooking the river. The bottoms of low-hanging clouds fringe the mountaintops like caps of snow. Roads and trails fade easily into obscurity in the mist, but in the pockets of light reaching into a laurel thicket, the wet leaves shine in luminous beauty.