Trailstealth.com

You may have noticed the new home page for the website, a major upgrade since we were hacked last summer. All the links work, except for the ‘Trail Stories’ page, which is still in the works. Many thanks to the Web-Wizard for re-building the website, and adapting those awesome transparent templates. Now if we could only get more pictures of raccoons and groundhogs–Hairnt!

One final note about the ‘Groundhogs Day’, and then I will shut up. When I was growing up in Johnson City, there weren’t a lot of groundhogs living around us to drag out of a hole, shadow or not, but everyone in the neighborhood knew that it wasn’t truly Springtime until ‘Old Man Miller’ was spotted rooting around in his garden. He would be about 115 years old now, and I haven’t gone looking for his ghost, but I am quite sure he would have been out there last week…in his garden.

I went out to the woods during the big warm-up, and took some photos of the snow around Spivey Gap on the Appalachian Trail. I also documented some of the seldom seen cliffs and boulders that rise up out of the ridges. I detoured off the trail, taking a left through the snow-covered ‘boulder-fields’, and ended up ascending the large, yet nameless, north-eastern ridge of Bald Mountain (the one that buttes against Sugarloaf Mountain), which led me directly to the summit of ‘High Rocks’. There were foot and a half high snowdrifts in places along the ridge tops, but they were melting in the afternoon warmth. I continued on toward ‘Whistling Gap’. On the way back, the Sun was sinking fast, and the snow was re-freezing. On the descent into ‘Spivey Gap’, the trail was very slippery, and I slid a lot, as if wearing skis instead of boots.

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After all that fuss and talk about groundhogs and ‘Groundhog’s Day’ (in the previous blog), I suppose some of you are wondering ‘Well, Hey!  Why don’t the raccoons have their own holiday?’  Raccoons are rather clever, but not clever enough, apparently, and have thus far been shut out in the holiday department.  Somewhat nocturnal, but not necessarily so, raccoons like to haunt the creek banks and hunt crawdads, but will eat just about anything, which can be annoying to gardeners.  A raccoon can wipe out a tomato patch  in only one night, seemingly, taking a bite or two out of one tomato, then discarding it before taking a couple of bites out of another.

I have had a few incidents with the raccoons while I was living in the ol’ shack by the Little Cherokee Creek–more than I care to remember, actually.  The one that seems to stand out in my mind above the others was in the spring of 2003.  I was sitting sedately on the porch in the late afternoon, when a raccoon appeared, walked up on the porch beside me.  Standing about 2 1/2 feet tall on his back legs, he extended his paw for me to shake, while he (perhaps she–I wasn’t curious enough to notice) politely introduced himself.  Somewhat fascinated by the gesture, I shook the courteous raccoon’s paw.  It seemed as though he were about to try and sell me a vacuum cleaner.

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