We spent almost twelve hours on the road driving the nearly 600 miles back to New York. For much of the way we were accompanied by the Applachian hills, now flush with green. Not just because outside temps were for a time in the high 80s, it felt like summer! The redbuds had given way to the cooler purple of paulownias.
Especially on the northern part of our trip, whose hills had still been wintry brownish grey though blushing maroon with maple buds, the transformation was striking. But it struck me also that every square foot of these forests had been through the same transformations I'd been witnessing on my remarkably unremarkable North Carolina walk.
