Blue Ridge Country November/December 2023 - 13

A MEAL WITH THE VIEW
The View Grill and Restaurant in Blairsville, a short drive
from Lake Nottely, is a bit more upscale than its name
seems to imply. Sharing an appetizer of conch fritters,
Laurie and I enjoyed our dinners of Pacific flounder and flat
iron steak (menu changes occasionally) while overlooking
the fairways of Butternut Creek Golf Course and deepgreen
ridgelines of the southern Blue Ridge Mountains.
and the Union County government created a pathway
permitting access to the woodlands close to the
water's edge.
The trail, sometimes a wide dirt road and other
times coursing along a single lane track, often brought
us within a few feet of the water to gaze across the
lake's expanse reflecting the clarity of puffy white
clouds drifting across a blue summer sky.
When I turned my gaze from the lake, I found two
plants that have always intrigued me growing upon
the forest floor. Here were carpets of running cedar,
a small, evergreen clubmoss that rarely gets above six
to eight inches in height. Yet, its origins go back more
than 300 million years, to when its ancestors grew to
be more than 100 feet tall. These super-sized plants,
along with equally large ferns, covered much of
North America. For millions of years they grew, died
and decomposed. Layer upon layer then compressed
into the coal we use today. I'm fascinated by the fact
that, by reacting to the changing world around them
through evolution, these plants have shrunk in size
and are now connected by stems that stretch along
the ground or just below the surface.
The
other plant was Indian cucumber root
which, despite growing up to two feet tall, has only
two whorls of leaves,
one at
the other at
THE WALK: A moderately
easy (barely 300 feet total
vertical rise) 2.5-mile circuit
beside Lake Nottely in
northern Georgia.
GETTING THERE: Drive
US 76 eastward for 6
miles from US 76 and GA
5's intersection in Blue
Ridge. Make a left onto
Loving Road, continue 9.3
miles to another left onto
GA 325 where trailhead
parking is on the right in
.2 mile.
MORE INFORMATION:
A trail map may be found
at tva.com/Environment/
Recreation/TVA-Trails.
the base and
the top
where a small white
flower blossoms.
On the
return
loop higher above the
shoreline, we met a
couple from Charleston,
South Carolina,
that said they had
come in search of
pink lady slippers
seen on a previous visit, but " I guess we're too late in
the year this time. "
A little later, with Laurie's reinstalled crown in
...it must be Paul
Bunyan when he was
a dentist during one
of his breaks as a
lumberman.
place, we pulled out of the dentist's parking lot and
I looked in the rear view mirror. I could have sworn
Paul winked at us, but, then again, it may have been
just the shadow of a passing cloud.
Leonard has written 20 books on the outdoors and travel.
Find out more at habitualhiker.com.
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2023 13
http://www.tva.com/Environment/ http://www.habitualhiker.com
Blue Ridge Country November/December 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Blue Ridge Country November/December 2023
