Naturally, part of life in the mountains is rocks. Here rocks so dominate the area of the trail, that it is hard to see where the trail is located. Good thing we had white blazes to follow (right side of picture), so we didn't get lost; we were really dependent on them.

Evidently nature has a sense of humor, having created a "man tree." This may have occurred because the tree was cut down at some point in its early life, and then two new trunks sprang from the stump to make a "clump-tree," and the two trunks later rubbed against one another, eventually joining. "Man trees" are rare, but "clump-trees" in the mountains are very common in this region, because of over cutting of forests to make charcoal in the nineteenth century.

Not everything in the mountains is big. Here a little millipede (Ptyoiulus impressus) crawls the Appalachian Trail.