above photo credit: vtfishandwildlfe.com

by Linda Martinson                  
  Blue Ridge Naturalist

The West Fork of the French Broad River runs along the lowest part of Richland Ridge for about a mile, along the site of a former farm, in an area of about 100 acres. The lowest section along the West Fork is bottomland, basically a floodplain. There are three sections of West Fork bottomland in the lowland area of Richland Ridge, all of critical ecological importance because there are so few wetland areas left along the river: 

October 2020

By: Linda Martinson

It is mid-October, and there is still a pandemic and a contentious election coming up. When I need to get a grip, I contemplate the mountains which gives me a soothing, this-too-shall-pass feeling. Here in Western North Carolina, we live in one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world: the Blue Ridge Mountains. They are 1.2 billion plus years old, but they are not very high because although they have been uplifted repeatedly, they also have been persistently eroding for millions of years.