Monday, November 14, 2011

Arabia/Quarried Mountains

Quite a few posts here on our trips to Arabia Mountain.  Technically speaking, the mountain that we  climb is named Bradley Mountain and the one directly next to it is Arabia Mountain.  We only found that out when we were looking at maps of the area.  Yesterday, we marched down one mountain and carefully, picked our way over the rubble to the next one.  It looks as though the next mountain over was heavily, heavily quarried and it makes you wonder how much of it was taken away... Maybe it is just me, but I think that I will call that one the Quarried Mountain and I will continue to call the first one Arabia.  The whole area is called Davidson/Arabia Mountain Preserve.  Why does everything have to be so complicated?  We climbed Arabia on Sunday and we also went late this afternoon, very late...we just made it back before it got dark.  Every time we see the mountain, everything looks different, depending upon the light.  The light!  It is what the artists always talk about when they paint, isn't it?  But there is a reason, you see, if the light is just right, it makes all the difference in the world!
Perhaps in the spring, there will more life on that next mountain over but Quarried Mountain will be my name for it...




  Look at that photo above, can you see that someone has taken the rocks and built them into a wall?  I wonder who did that? You see, you really want to take all these rocks and put them into some kind of order and beauty.

   On this photo, you can just look over and see the top of Arabia Mountain.  It looks very far away, but it is only about a 15 to 20 minute walk.  It is only about a half mile, but remember, you have to be careful of all those rocks!



There, that's more like it.  Back on the mountain that we love to visit!
Who knows, perhaps we will grow to love the Quarried Mountain too?
Here is Richard looking back at that mountain that we just left...
how much was blasted away? We read that these mountains are FIVE HUNDRED
MILLION YEARS OLD.  So, correct me if I am wrong, but they made it that far and the Quarried Mountain was destroyed in the 20th century?



On a positive note,  there was a mention of my blog on someone's facebook page about my posts on Arabia Mountain! And I was informed that there is indeed a covered bridge on the walking/bike trail which is on the other side of the road from Arabia Mountain.  It was exciting to discover that the construction of it was designed to honor Horace King, who was a famous bridgebuilder during the Civil War period.  Horace King was a former slave who bought his freedom and was very well known for his covered bridges in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi.  Look him up!  I think this is fascinating!
His son, Washington King, built the covered bridge that is now at Stone Mountain.  (This bridge was from the late 1880's but was moved to Stone Mountain in the early 1960's.)  Look for the photo of the covered bridge on this trail...I WILL find it and photograph it one day, I promise!

4 comments:

  1. Stacking the bits and pieces into a wall sounds like something I'd do - and I guess everyone who passes through that area can feel themselves invited to build another little piece of the wall, add some more from the rubble to it. Doing that on every visit, I am quite sure you'd grow to like the place much better, although it will never have the serene and yet wild beauty the other mountain offers.
    Thank you for telling us about Horace and Washington King, that is indeed a fascinating story, and you WILL find that bridge one day, I am convinced of that!

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  2. Like Librarian I think I'd feel inclined to build a wall as well. In the Lake District, in my fell walking days, we used to build cairns along the paths at every opportunity. The excuse was that it helped if you got lost in mist but in reality I think everyone just likes being constructive.

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  3. Hello:
    There is something very humbling about being in the presence of a mountain which was shaped some millions of years ago. It really does make the time of human habitation seem pitifully small compared with the devastation and destruction that has been caused during that relatively short period.

    How strange that people feel the need to build a wall. Perhaps a desire to create order out of chaos, but how magnificent it all looks so wild and untamed.

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  4. The whole idea behind this Davidson/Arabia Preserve is not just to preserve the land but also to show how man has "interacted" with the land. The photos that Richard took above were really the best ones, there are others that are simply big piles of rock. Being the optimist that he is, he looked for any signs of life and said that in one hundred years perhaps, it would look a lot different! Maybe future posts will show the wall becoming longer also as others add to it.
    It is indeed humbling to be on a mountain that was formed millions of years ago. And I am grateful to all those who worked so hard to preserve this area. Wild beauty, indeed!

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