View Doubletop Mountain

Blue Ridge Parkway milepost 430.7 - elevation: 5950 feet... Cowee Bald is only 4944 feet, which means I'm standing quite a bit higher than this cascading mountain range. That might have a lot to do with the fact this is right around the bend from the highest point on the Blue Ridge Parkway (Richland Balsam Overlook, at milepost 431.4, is the highest along the parkway at 6047 feet). This vantage point allows a peek down into the wilderness that encompasses 166 square miles from here to the setting sun.

As are the names of many places throughout this region of North Carolina, the origin of Cowee (pronounced Co-Wee) is Cherokee. It is a derivative of the word Ka-wi, which is an abbreviated form meaning “place of the Deer Clan.” It was the name of a Cherokee settlement that existed near here some 300 years ago... one of the few "images" of that settlement comes nearly 200 years ago in the words of botanist William Bartram, as he looked out across the town of some one hundred dwellings, "The settlement is esteemed the capital town of the Cherokee and is situated on the bases of the hills on both sides of the river, near to its bank." From this location I can certainly understand their fascination with the place, though all that remains is pastureland along the Little Tennessee River. It is good to know that so many beautiful places still bear the influence of so noble a culture.

This overlook is likely as good a sunset spot on the Blue Ridge Parkway as any... and there are quite a few people figuring that out lately. This was the first evening of many while I was in the area with decent cloud coverage. It settled low over the range after it came over the ridge behind me, however, leaving a lot of blue sky overhead. The Sun settled into a narrow band where its light seemed to concentrate as it was squeezed between mountains and clouds... a few photons traveling at twice the speed of sound nearly knocked my camera off the tripod! They went by me so fast without so much as an "Excuse me." And if you believe that...

... you might need a refresher in physics. Twice the speed of sound at that altitude and temperature of that day is roughly 0.415 miles/second. Photons travel at the speed of light because they're, well, light... which makes them roughly 4.48 times 10 to the 6th power faster (Flickr has no appreciation for scientific notation). That's a big number for the math challenged. There did seem to be an awful lot of photons here at this moment, so much so that the sunbeams seemed like ladders you could climb on. Odd to consider something moving so fast could also seem so tangible. Think about it... the speed of light is 186,000 miles/second... that’s scary! Photography is the science of recording light... things moving at high speed tend to be dangerous. Y'all be careful out there.

This is a compilation of 16 vertical images panned from a leveled tripod and camera, then stitched in Photoshop CSS 2015, providing a final output of 7'x1'.