File:The continent we live on (1961) (20658351926).jpg

Title: The continent we live on
Identifier: continentweliveo00sandrich (find matches)
Year: 1961 (1960s)
Authors: Sanderson, Ivan Terence, 1911-1973
Subjects: Physical geography; Natural history
Publisher: New York : Random House
Contributing Library: New College of California
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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One of many fungi in the woods of Appalachia, Urnula craterius is sooty black and leathery in texture. It appears in spring in secluded places. with a defunct tube and some of which then proceed to perform miracles therein. This is not to suggest that such creatures do not exist elsewhere—they live in almost every country in the world—but in Appalachia with its furious spring, fairly long summer, and prolonged fall, one seems to notice their activity more intimately. If you trouble to open up their works you may find, in certain cases, the most marvelous series of thimble-shaped structures, one above the other, made from perfect oblongs or circles cut from rose leaves, each containing an egg and a supply of food for the hatching larva. However, in this land you need not resort to the labor of sawing up fence posts to disclose miracles of insect life. All you have to do is sit on the front porch and rock, while the wasps labor back and forth from some mud patch with loads of clay with which they will build wondrous upside-down skyscrapers on your ceilings and walls, in which they will stash away a larder of spiders, in a state of suspended animation, for their young. FOOTPRINTS ON THE SNOW But these are all wild things of the warmer months. What of the colder months? During this season of the year, Appalachia for the most part looks as if it had been seared by a passing comet and would never grow another green thing. Only in the north and at higher elevations where the conifers predominate does the land seem to maintain any virility, and this is a somber dark green indeed. Strangely, conditions appear to be even more depressing the farther south one goes along the narrow ridge of true Appalachia. South of the thirty-sixth parallel of latitude, which is in northern North Carolina, the foothill forests of the coastal area or of the northeast are a little greener, but those of the western flank leading down to the Ohio Plateau are even more lifeless in appearance. Apart from the pine forests, what appears to be a luxuriant land in summer and early fall becomes in winter a thin and rather scrawny brown stand of paltry trees and shrubs. Looking through these stunted woods one wonders where on earth the deer can find enough cover to get out of the wind, let alone out of sight of hunters and their other foes. Of course there are endless hidden places of the utmost charm to be wandered through during this northern winter, but, despite all the claims made about this land at that season, it is really for the most part a dreary-looking place. Nevertheless it is a fine time for geologists and rock-hunters because the bold features of topography are then laid bare and not a little of the ground itself is more than just accessible—it is positively naked. But then, after the first snows, which start early on the uplands in the north and last long into the spring, all manner 106

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