Arabia Mountain, mid September

 We went to Arabia Mountain and took a 4-mile walk, moving slowly. On the way out, we went mostly through the woods, past a spot the Wise Woman calls the Cathedral, a lovely stand of tall trees in a creek bottom. We then went on to the little falls at Arabia Lake to see if water was coming over the dam. It wasn’t. Mitchell Creek was almost dry, with water only in the holes.

You can see leaf fall now. The leaves would come down with each gust of wind. But the canopy is still thick and mostly green.

A week ago, I mentioned the changing colors. The early changers include sourwood, sycamore, sweetgum and tulip trees, along with muscadine vines. I don’t know how I could have left off black tupelo, Nyssa sylvatica. I see it less often, but its colors are the neon of these woods.

We came back across one of the outcroppings of the mountain, where we saw pineweed, Hypericum gentianoides, in impossible places. I think it looks like a Mediterranean herb — all wiry stems. But most people think it looks like a batch of pine needles on the ground, hence the common name. We saw it all over the rock, wherever a tiny bit of soil had collected in a crevice. It has tiny yellow flowers with five petals: five-pointed stars.