Headwaters

In April 2008, I made a couple trips to the headwaters. The spring is below the crest of the mountain within a thicket of mountain laurel and trees. Mountain laurel usually blooms in June, so I am a couple months early. Right now, Spring is happening around the Shenandoah Valley floor, flowers are out. The redbud blossoms are here but are not peaking. The dogwoods will begin to blossom. On top of the mountain, the Spring season is just beginning to arrive.

Downstream from the spring and the mountain laurel is a dead forest of eastern hemlock trees. They died a few years ago and are still in the process of falling down. The hemlock is being devastated by the an insect called the woolly adelgid. The insect first arrived on the North American west coast in the 1920s and made it to the east coast in 30 years, destroying forests along the way. This forest is one of its latest victims.