View from Crowders Mountain

5/16/2011

Monadnocks

If you travel southwest out of Charlotte on I85, you cross the Catawba River, and then work your way on the 6-lane freeway through the urban sprawl. As you approach within a few miles of the South Carolina state line, you might look over to your left and spot a solitary mountain formation. On the flat plain of the piedmont region, there stand two isolated peaks, Crowders Mountain and King’s Pinnacle. They are kind of short as mountains go, only 1600 feet or so high, and they are covered with forest, except for the very summit of Crowders Mountain where there is a protruding rock top with a shear cliff face that drops several hundred feet. Due to its height and proximity, of course, someone decided it would be the ideal spot for a communications tower. And sure enough, it’s there in orange prominence. Nevertheless, these mountains are a bit of an oddity standing by themselves, and you cannot help wonder how they got there.

Now, unusual geological formations are commonplace in the western US, especially in Utah and Arizona, but in the east, the mountains usually come in large ranges, with long ridges that connect them. If you drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway, you see this phenomenon, and all appears as it should be. A standalone mountain is rarer, and they usually form due to volcanic activity, like Mt. Fuji, or Mount Vesuvius. Volcanoes are born from the dynamic forces of lava escaping from the earth’s mantle. Mountains like the Appalachian range are formed from plate tectonics, large sections of the earth’s crust that bear against each other and cause an upheaval. At least that is the common scientific theory in vogue today. Then, if there are no volcanoes in this part of the continent, and the main ridge of NC mountains is 100 miles to the west, how did these solitary mountains get here? The geologists tell us that they are remnants of a range even more ancient than the Appalachians. At some 450 million years old, these mountains were already ancient when the dinosaurs ruled. They were thought to be thousands of feet in height at one time and were already severely eroded even before the super continent of Pangaea broke apart about 250 million years ago to form the present continents. They claim that this mountain range has all been weathered away now, eroded into an almost flat and rolling “piedmont”. All of them are now gone except for these two standalone mountains, or monadnocks, as they are called, Crowders Mountain and King’s Pinnacle. And so you ask, how did these mountains resist over eons the relentless forces of erosion, the wind, rain, and ice? The geologists claim that they are made of an especially hard mineral called kyanite-quartzite. Long ago, when the mass of molten magma that formed them cooled in the deep heart of the earth, conditions were right to form this unusually strong crystalline structure which is especially resistant to erosion.

It was the shear audacity of these mountains that intrigued me on that Friday. I already had two cups of coffee at home that morning, and was planning a quiet day of work interspersed with a lot of gardening. And then the idea came to me in a flash that I needed to climb a mountain that day. It was nothing more significant than that. I just needed some altitude in my life. I put away the rake and hoe and then backed the Z out of the garage. The tank was full, which meant there was no need to buy any $4.00 plus high octane that day. This was going to be a very short ride, no more than an hour, but when you drive a car like the Z, you can pack an amazing amount of satisfaction into a small timeframe. The car was immaculate. I had washed and waxed it the previous week before putting it under its covering in the garage. Ten days had passed since she had been driven last. I use this car sparingly, savoring each trip taken as if she were brand new, and when combined with a purpose like “I am going to climb a mountain today”, your life becomes especially sweet.

The 350Z maneuvered through early morning traffic easily and competently. I find that this car commands respect from all the other drivers, even the ones driving Mercedes, Lexus, and the like. They give it extra space, and I don’t really understand why. But when the road is crowded, I take advantage of this extra cushion, and drive with added courtesy. Working my way down through the city, I emerged onto the west side and elected to use surface roads out to Gaston county. It’s not just that I dread the extra traffic of the freeways at rush hour, it’s more that I prefer to travel with a bit more calm and dignity than most of those tailgating commuters seem able to muster.

Within an hour I pulled into the parking lot of the visitor center in the state park, and sat for a few moments to evaluate the weather. It was overcast, with some low hanging gray clouds in the west. Most weather systems move in from that direction, so I decided to go prepared for rain. I put a poncho and a towel in my day pack. With only three other cars in the parking lot, I anticipated a great, solo hike up to the summit with few human impediments. The total distance is not long, only about four miles. I strolled along in a quiet tempo through an occasional light shower, stopping only once to have a cup of coffee from my trusty thermos. It’s a nice trail with a gradual uptrend most of the way. The last mile is the kicker, being very steep, you climb the service road for a few hundred yards, then the last assault on the summit comes on about 300 vertical wooden steps. They wind through the forest, and provide wonderful vistas through the branches and leaves. You could see the clouds at eye level across the plain below, raining on the roads and houses. I took my time on this last segment wishing to delay my arrival at the top by a few minutes. A descending hiker told me that the rain was pretty intense up there, so I took this as a good excuse to stop several time to catch my breath. It was about 11:30 when I emerged onto the barren rock of the summit just as the clouds cleared away, the craggy surfaces had almost completely dried and sol was burning through the remaining haze. I had arrived at the top of my world.

Vantage Point

Have you ever been eye-to-eye with a hawk in free flight? Have you ever been fortunate enough to be high in the sky with them as they soar, slowly circling, catching the thermals, in effortless grace and majesty? I have. I have sat upon a mountain top on an outcrop of ancient quartzite, near the edge of a great bare rock face and watched as these creatures survey their realm, from a magnificent vista I looked out twenty miles at the flat land below with its villages and roads. I wondered what the hawks thought of us. How does a hawk view mankind? We look pretty small way down there. They can simply spread their wings and rise to this height any time they want almost effortlessly, easily covering space and distance to arrive here while we must trudge up narrow paths, fighting gravity all the way. They can exist here in perfect natural harmony with their world, while we must modify ours in order to get here. We must cut down trees and shrubs, put in steps, carve out footholds in rocks, digging and plowing, and leveling. She looks over at me as she sails past only a few feet out from the edge. She knows that I am an aberration, not something that should be here. I wonder how she feels about that? Does my encroachment into her realm worry her? I hear her call. To her mate? To herself? She reaches out, perhaps to me. The rocks spread out in layers over the top of this mountain. Some of the rocks are split with gaping fissures gouged right out of the 450 million year old rock. Huge slabs are piled on top of others, and a few tower up into the sky. In the crevasses some scrub pines managed to find a foothold, and wild flowers filled in the spaces. The hawks nest up here. They carry on their lives and live for today. I gave thanks, and asked for the strength to emulate their example. Looking out at the panorama below, I wondered if this mountain was lonely.

Longevity

“Please don’t die before me”, she quietly implored. I looked at my mother as she sat beside me in the front pew of the little chapel. I took her hand and silently nodded. Before us in the coffin was the body of my grandmother, Ethyl Earles. Grandma Earles was my father’s mother. She had remarried some years before and took the name of her new husband. Prior to that, she had been Grandma Malicoat. She had lost her first husband, my grandfather Wylie, in 1950 and had taken almost 20 years before she remarried. I had assumed that she was lonely, and had finally found a god-fearing man to be her companion as she grew older. But that was before her children slowly began to leave her. Ethyl had given birth to five children starting in 1920. She had reared them through the great depression, seen the four boys go off to war. Three had served in World War II. She was sure that her prayers helped them all return safely home. She had wept when her youngest, Gene, had been killed in Korea a few years later. Then in the mid 1960s, her only daughter Edna had died of cancer, followed by eldest son, Earl, who also succumbed to cancer in 1971. And then later that decade she was widowed again. In 1984 her favorite son and my father, Wendell, had died of heart disease. At that point, I saw the spirit of life ebb in this strong and vibrant woman. And shortly after, her last son, Donald also died. By 1986, Ethyl had witnessed two husbands and all five of her children precede her into heaven. And now it was 1992. She had spent the last four years of her life in a nursing home before she passed away peacefully in her sleep. My mother had sworn her duty to care for Ethyl in her last years, as my father would have wanted. And now she was to be buried beside Earl at Maple Hill. To the end, Ethyl was like quartzite, resiliently hanging on even after her reasons for living had weathered away one by one. I knew that she had been ready to leave long before her final breath.

As I sat beside my mother in that small chapel at Maple Hill, I said a prayer that she would get her wish. I thought about the seeming imperative of us humans to live long lives. The medical profession is dedicated to making us immortal. They want to wipe out all disease and the effects of old age. Our government is dedicated to eliminating all accidents and environmental hazards from our lives. The scientists are busy genetically engineering away all of our physical flaws, making it possible to swap out new body parts like fixing a car. We already live in a world where attaining the age of 100 is commonplace. Is that really a worthy goal? Or do we end up like Crowder Mountain as just another anomalous monadnock in the stream of existence? And even if we attain it, what is the price of old age? If we are without peers or even descendents to share our memories and our values, is longevity a blessing or a sentence? Perhaps at some great and advanced age, those who attain it can only hope to provide for future generations a high vantage point to behold the folly of our time.