{"id":3508,"date":"2022-08-30T12:11:29","date_gmt":"2022-08-30T12:11:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/southernhighlanders.com\/new\/?p=3508"},"modified":"2022-08-30T12:12:57","modified_gmt":"2022-08-30T12:12:57","slug":"land-of-giants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/southernhighlanders.com\/new\/2022\/08\/30\/land-of-giants\/","title":{"rendered":"Land of Giants"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"jRPHclBjIa\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/cityviewmag.com\/home-of-giants\/\">Home of Giants<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><iframe class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);\" src=\"https:\/\/cityviewmag.com\/home-of-giants\/embed\/#?secret=nttLUbBXRE#?secret=jRPHclBjIa\" data-secret=\"jRPHclBjIa\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" title=\"&#8220;Home of Giants&#8221; &#8212; Cityview\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><em>Visiting the mighty before they make their final\u2014and unplanned\u2014departure<\/em><\/h2>\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">In the 1800s, naturalist William Bartram once remarked that you could swing from limb to limb from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River without ever touching the ground. He didn\u2019t know at the time, but were anyone to take on his challenge, they would cross over the oldest mountains on the planet\u2014so old, in fact, that they once rivaled the present heights of the Himalayan Mountains. Hard to imagine that Clingman\u2019s Dome just over the Tennessee border in North Carolina could have been Kanchenjunga and Mt. Mitchell to its east once an Everest.<\/p>\n<p>However, nestled in a basin called Poplar Cove near Little Santeetlah Creek is a vestigial sliver that will make you a believer. Joyce Kilmer National Forest is the home of giants; a real-life land of lost time. It is a fold in the universe that lets you walk 500 years through a hidden doorway to the real America. One hundred species of trees thrive in this primeval canopy. Buxom ferns, the envy of any florist, nudge rattlesnake plantain so tall I thought it had to be another plant.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m between twin poplars that tower 150 feet above me with a girth that defies three big human hugs. My neck is straining to catch errant rays of sun filtering through their crown. Alongside me is the biggest beech tree I have ever touched, its smooth bark irresistible for me and vandals. The Cherokee used to say that the beeches resist lightning, but that immunity sadly does not extend to graffiti. Moving on we weave between hemlock totems\u2014soldiers who have fallen in battle with the invasive hemlock woolly adelgid. Despite their misfortune, their hollowed trunks still reach 60 feet or more, a testament to their former glory.<\/p>\n<p>Joyce Kilmer\u2019s words inspired a wilderness. \u201cI think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree.\u201d Like these mighty hemlock, Kilmer fell in a battle not of his choosing in World War One, never to rise again. Two decades back, I saw quite a different forest here, but you can never climb the same mountain twice.\u00a0An ecologist told me back then that all I can do is go see them while they\u2019re still here. I would advise you to do the same.<\/p>\n<div id=\"bsa-block-2400--600\" class=\"apPluginContainer bsaProContainer-2 bsa-block-2400--600 bsa-pro-col-1\">\n<div class=\"bsaProItems bsaGridGutter \">\n<div class=\"bsaProItem bsaHidden bsaReset\" data-item-id=\"17\" data-animation=\"none\">\n<div class=\"bsaProItemInner\">\n<div class=\"bsaProItemInner__thumb\">\n<div class=\"bsaProAnimateThumb\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Home of Giants &nbsp; &nbsp; Visiting the mighty before they make their final\u2014and unplanned\u2014departure In the 1800s, naturalist William Bartram once remarked that you could swing from limb to limb from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River without ever &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/southernhighlanders.com\/new\/2022\/08\/30\/land-of-giants\/\">Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/southernhighlanders.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3508"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/southernhighlanders.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/southernhighlanders.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/southernhighlanders.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/southernhighlanders.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3508"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/southernhighlanders.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3509,"href":"http:\/\/southernhighlanders.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3508\/revisions\/3509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/southernhighlanders.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/southernhighlanders.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/southernhighlanders.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}