Yellow poplar forest, Nantahala Gorge, North Carolina (#AT0003)
A small sign nailed to a tree lets you know that you are leaving Georgia and entering North Carolina. For the next seventy-five miles the trail makes steep ascents and descents as is traverses the mountains of the Nantahala National Forest. This is an awesome 600,000-acre piece of real estate in southwestern North Carolina. At one point, the Appalachian Trail descends into the spectacular Nantahala Gorge. Here, I passed through magnificent forests growing on the lower slopes of the gorge. In one grove of giant yellow poplars, I found that I could not capture the beauty and magic of this forest from either a standing or kneeling position. So I lay down on my back in the middle of the trail, and with a 24 mm wide-angle lens shot strait up into the forest canopy. Sometimes you just gotta love scientific names - Leriodendron tulipifera is the binomial for yellow poplar - just kind of rolls off the tongue.
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