In certain highland places the mountain forest gives way abruptly to lengthy fields of tall grasses and sporadic, gnarled thickets of laurel on the very top of the mountain. Quietly scattered on sparse mountaintops throughout the lower Appalachians these areas are referred to as “balds.”
It is uncertain as to the natural origin of a bald. Some say that it is a combination of ecological functions – fungi somehow at work or the thick grasses preventing tree seedlings from taking hold in the thin soil. It is certain though that the balds were here in the days of the Cherokee, perhaps kept clear with fire to create feeding grounds for game.
The balds were here when the whites came; mountaintop pastures waiting as cattle and livestock were herded up steep, twisting mountain trails to the cool altitudes for summer grazing.
The balds are here still and I explore them. Days and nights and days can be spent among the grasses huddled in a cramped bivy with nothing but torrential wind pulsing a powerful rhythm.
Some say that they’re growing up now, that the trees are starting to finally get those footholds. I look but don’t see – my father has said that he sees, that it is slightly different on many balds since when he was young.
Evolving or static, the mountains maintain their perpetual silence.
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