Haiti is the most heart-rending place I have ever seen. Tuesday’s major earthquake, centered just 10 miles from the capital city of Port-au-Prince, means the misery, indignity, hunger and suffering that the vast majority of Haiti’s 9 million residents were already enduring will become even more acute. Which is hard to imagine. If you are already starving and living in a cardboard shack without power, clean water or proper sanitation, it would be worse to have that cardboard shack flattened. But it will be infinitely worse if the slender thread of survival you were clinging to – perhaps gathering scraps ...
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has issued a report detailing the incredible bungling at Tora Bora in Afghanistan in December of 2001. It concludes that Osama bin Laden was there, hiding in the mountains, and America’s leaders – George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld – ignored vigorous requests for reinforcements from the handful of American Special Forces operatives on the ground. Had those reinforcements been sent, bin Laden and the top al Qaeda leadership very likely would’ve been killed or captured, according to Peter Bergen, CNN’s terrorism analyst.
That, of course, is speculation, but Bergen is one of the few ...
Are you backpacking?
A lady outfitted with Bermuda shorts, white tennis shoes and wide eyes asked the question as we passed on the trail leading over Round Bald on the Tennessee/North Carolina border.
Her husband, nifty in his own Bermuda shorts, didn’t say a thing. By the sharp look and raised eyebrow he cast my way, I’m guessing he was about to ask, “What the hell are you doing out here? And why?”
I was wrestling with the same question, and I wasn’t winning. It was an octopus, harassing me with too many arms, and I was trying to fight it off ...
If you care for stunning views and spectacular landscapes, there is no better place in the South than the balds along the Tennessee-North Carolina border. Jane and Round balds, along with Grassy Ridge, all north of Roan Mountain, are fabulous expanses of open grassy highlands stretching for hundreds of acres. The views are unparalleled on clear days, with fold after fold of blue-tinged mountain ranges rolling in every direction like a storm-tossed sea. Temperatures in mid-summer can be mild, often chilly, with bracing breezes ramping up to minor gales, sometimes accompanied by wisps of fog or passing cottony clouds that ...
In a previous post I wrote about the devastation that tiny insects called hemlock woody adelgids are bringing to one of the signature trees of the Southern Appalachian Mountains.
On a recent trail-maintenance work trip in Great Smoky Mountain National Park, I saw just how bad things are. This photo, looking west-southwest from the summit of Rocky Top, a 5,400 peak located south of Clingman’s Dome, says it all. Most of the gray, dead tree skeletons carpeting the ridge are hemlocks, gone forever.
As I noted previously, the park is attempting to save some of the hemlocks by treating them with an ...
If Floridians want to see the future, they should look to California. No, not gorgeous mountains, towering redwoods or dramatic, windswept beaches. Thanks to a bill passed by Florida lawmakers this spring and signed into law by Gov. Charlie Crist on June 1, Florida’s future will be one of more rampant growth, unbridled development and ever-expanding urban sprawl.
“With the stroke of a pen, the governor removed the most powerful tools to manage growth, require road improvements and prevent overdevelopment,” the St. Petersburg Times concluded in an editorial, dubbing Crist “Governor Gridlock.”
Environmentalists had hoped that Crist would veto the bill, which ...
Visitors to the Great Smoky Mountains have been captivated by the scene for decades: gorgeous evergreen trees clustered around the rushing waters of boulder-strewn mountain streams. The trees, in most cases, are hemlocks, their roots snaking impossibly among the lichen-covered rocks and their needle-laden branches framing the streams in postcard perfection. In winter snow, with powder piled deep on both boughs and boulders, the scenes can be breath-taking.
Unfortunately, hemlocks are in very real danger of being wiped out. In the past few decades a tiny insect called the “hemlock wooly adelgid” has spread like wildfire from New England to the ...
It’s a good thing in life to be humbled now and again. I was surprised, though, when my recent come-uppance came at the hands – and feet and strong backs – of a bunch of agile, jolly sixty- and seventy-somethings.
An avid hiker, I volunteered for a week of maintenance work on the Appalachian Trail in the mountains of southwestern Virginia. My legs seasoned from running on the pancake-flat streets of my neighborhood in Florida, my confidence in my backwoods abilities too high for my own good and my backpack brimming with too much stuff, I was sure I’d be able ...
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