When you're in Asheville, you never forget that you are in the heart of the mountains -- not when three mountain ranges and two rivers converge in the city. However, Asheville is an old (by American standards) city, and even though it's small, it's most definitely a very urban sort of place. It's had time to settle itself and build itself up, and that can lead to a disconnection between your life in town and the nature that surrounds it.
This is why it's so important to get out of town now and again, and there are few places better than Asheville that offer such great opportunities to get out and enjoy the scenery so close to town and all its amenities.
Dupont State Forest is such a place. Just forty minutes away from my front door, here's a wonderland of waterfalls, trails, woods, lakes, and a river, all of it preserved by the state of North Carolina for the enjoyment of all. It almost wasn't that way, though. In fact, Dupont Forest almost became yet another gated community but public outrage over the developer's plans prompted the state to step in. The developer has since gone bankrupt thanks to the grinding Great Recession, and it could not have happened to a nicer guy. I hope he burns in hell.
But let us talk of more pleasant things. Welcome to Dupont State Forest.
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Dupont Forest is so named because the land belonged to the Dupont Corporation, originally. Dupont operated a facility, since leveled, at the heart of their property and when they pulled up stakes and departed, that was what opened the door for their property to become what it is today.
The Little River runs through Dupont Forest, giving rise to its most noteworthy attractions... six waterfalls.
This is Hooker Falls.
Every year -- and I do mean
every year -- tourists die from falling off the waterfalls here and elsewhere in the region. We who live here don't know how to make it any plainer: respect the waterfalls. Respect them, look at them, enjoy them, love them, but do not do anything stupid in them or near them because they are as dangerous as they are beautiful. If you slip and fall, over the edge you will go. Hooker falls is perhaps the only one you would survive a fall over -- and if the water is especially high, not even then.
This plant is called "turkey paw." It's a traditional Southern Appalachian Christmas plant.
To acquire its property, the Dupont Corporation purchased dozens of farmsteads and homesteads. This meant that occasionally, someone's heritage got left behind. In the forest now and again you'll see a chimney to mark where a house once stood, and there is also a large fireplace and chimney still standing to mark the spot where there was once a large hotel. Also, deep in the forest a handful of cemeteries remain, remnants of the communities that once thrived here. This is Moore Cemetery.
As beautiful as it is, something terrible is going on in Dupont Forest, as well as all across Western North Carolina. Our trees are dying -- particularly the hemlocks that provide so much shade to mountain streams. This kind of thing has happened before, with the chestnut blight that wiped out the "redwoods of the East," and it took decades for other trees to take the chestnut's place. It will take decades for something to replace the hemlocks and in the meantime the ecosystem will be thrown into turmoil. Throughout the forest, you'll see the ghosts of the hemlocks.
Triple Falls.
Would you care to guess how many steps there are to take you down from the trail to the falls themselves? 101. I counted.
For a little perspective, note the size of the people there -- including that lady with her baby -- against the waterfall behind them.
Here's the river above Triple Falls. Deceptively calm and peaceful... and yet another reason to remember to respect the mountains should you find yourself out in them.
High Falls.
Oh yes, I forgot to mention there are two parts to High Falls. Silly me.