First the bad news: FloydFest 12 is sold out. The good news is that you’ve got your tickets. Right?

I don’t think I had any Fragments readers on my several hikes at FloydFest last year, but you never know, so I thought I’d let you consider putting that on your list for things to do-see-hear this year.

Frankly, I have pretty low threshold for crowds, noise and heat–which is pretty much a description of the biggest event on the Blue Ridge Parkway called FloydFest. Of course for the price of a ticket and the suffering (or enjoyment) of these ambient conditions, you do get a massive dose of people watching and a wide and constant spectrum of high-decibel music. It is, indeed, a happening.

So this year, I opted to lead just one hike–on Saturday the 27th–at 1030a departure. It begins at the Outdoor Adventure Tent (click to enlarge), whose peripheral location you can see on the map. (There will be, I think, a total of four hikes. Sorry I cannot send you to that information online.

It promises to be warm, maybe wet. Wear the right clothes, bring water and sunscreen.

The trail traverses the festival site to its eastern edge, crosses a broken-down boundary fence, and rambles through the rambling rose, greenbrier, and blowdown from an ice storm of some years ago (a great example of disturbed habitat with all its alien colonizers). The trail then moves up out of the gap onto the flanks of an extensive meadow grazed by cattle (which helps keep it from returning to forest).

While it is not a great time of year for wildflowers and not the most rich and diverse of locations to typify Appalachian summer botany, I think the 50 or so folks who joined me last year felt it was worthwhile.

I can wax eloquent for 45 minutes about the biology of a mud puddle, expound for an hour about the wonder of a lichen covered boulder. Everything is interesting if you hold your eyes and your brain-heart-soul just right.

See you there.

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