No man steps in the same river twice

The ancient Persian philosopher, Heraclitus, said that no man steps in the same river twice. Traveling back to Morrow Mountain with my soil scientist friend, Caroline, made it a whole new park. We had a lovely time camping and paddling from the park across Lake Tillery and up the Uwharrie River as I have done often before. We saw the new fishing platform constructed in the National Forest section of river, visited the waterfall/dam Sydney showed us on our last trip, hiked the loop trail at the mountain's top. Caroline's soils interest took us on a new trail through the

quarry that the CCC used to build the beautiful rock buildings for the park. And we explored the nature museum full of the area's natural history.

In addition to the great natural beauty and fine companionship I always find here, there were a couple of events that made this trip special. The first was meeting a fisherman using hand paddles in this wonderful handmade boat designed by his uncle just for river fishing and scooting into areas otherwise inaccessible. He had a wet well under the seat, a place for his poles and a cooler for lunch. And lots of happy

family memories, a few of which he shared.

Paddling back we saw a heron perched on a boat house, clearly feeling at home.

But the highlight of the trip was Caroline's conversation with the ranger about the two kinds of rock left from the earliest volcanic activity. The Uwharries are left from the splitting of

continents. They were originally 20,000' high. Now they top out at less than 1000, they are really that ancient. Standing in the quarry with shale leaning at every angle, you could imagine the rock buckling at cooling after enormous geological force. But a different, equally fractious rock tops the mountain. Caroline kept commenting on the shards that covered the mountain and littered the mountain top path. She wondered if it had been trucked in to prevent erosion, there was so much of it. The ranger told us the early Native Americans came from all over the east coast for this rock to make arrowheads and spears. The litter we saw was the remnants chipped away from tool-making over thousands of years of human activity. Did I say "humbling"?

Ben and Sydney joined us Sunday for lunch before paddling Falls Lake nearby. We opted for home and rest before the work week with a promise to explore Falls Lake our next trip.