Streams, Salamanders, and a Celebration of Childhood
It was a hot, humid summer afternoon, and I was out for some fun with my 11-year-old buddy Emily. And for some reason, I’d chosen one of the steepest hikes Western North Carolina has to offer as the day’s adventure.
To her credit, Emily didn’t say much to point out the ridiculousness of this choice besides stating the obvious—that it was hot—and asking how much longer the hike would be. She’s usually up to try out whatever oddball thing I come up with for our hangout sessions, which is one of the things I love about her. However, it didn’t take an immense amount of intuition to see that she was less then enthusiastic about the plan as proposed.
I thought for a minute and quickly landed on an alternative. A short nature loop originating from the same lot where we’d parked might not offer the same length or level of exercise as our current trek, but it featured plenty of water crossings and streamside views. Emily likes pretty much anything to do with water. I figured we’d try it.
Emily was more than on board with this suggestion, and I thought of another one to add on top of it. For a while, I’d been wanting to try out this app called iNaturalist, and now seemed like the perfect time. It’s a citizen science tool that lets anybody upload photos of plants and animals they’ve found in their backyards or anywhere else, and it has a tool to help you identify them. If enough experts using the app verify the identification, it becomes a scientifically valid observation. In her typical game-for-anything manner, Emily agreed to this as well, which made me pretty happy.
The fact that something like this would get me so excited probably paints me as a nerd, and I guess that’s valid. The natural world has always fascinated me, and I’ve always had a thirst to learn more. When I was Emily’s age, I was infuriatingly slow to hike with because I would have to stop and turn over every rock I came across in search of salamanders, and examine every chewed-on leaf in search of caterpillars. A find would keep me charged up all day long.
The truth is, that kid still lives inside of me, though these days she’s too often overpowered by an adult incarnation that’s more interested in marking miles than in pausing to take in everything there is to find along the way. But hanging with an 11-year-old tends to change that balance.
The nature trail itself didn’t actually require any rock hopping or stream wading—bridges spanned all the water crossings. But before I knew it, Emily was in the stream, searching for the biggest rocks to turn over and insisting that, no, her mom wouldn’t mind if her shoes were soaked and muddy when she returned home. What was there to do but join in? Soon I was there too, turning over rocks with an equal level of excited anticipation and expressing an equivalent amount of glee whenever we spotted a new salamander, gushing pure elation whenever we managed to catch one.
That happened more often than you’d think. The Great Smoky Mountains are known as the Salamander Capital of the World, home to more than 30 species of the slimy, bug-eyed, inexplicably cute amphibians. While we were poking around in a stream that fell outside the Smokies proper, we weren’t far away. The area still held an impressive diversity of species.
In fact, we managed to snap pictures of at least three different species of salamanders, along with a millipede, various insects, some kind of green caterpillar and a plethora of plants. At some point—OK, at the beginning—of our exploration, Emily got hold of my phone so that she could document all of her observations for iNaturalist. When I got home, there were no fewer than 34 uploads on my account, with the photos varying in quality from sharp and beautifully framed to basically unintelligible. However, many of them were good enough to draw interaction from other users of the app, and when I saw Emily the next weekend she was beyond ecstatic to hear that real people had looked at her pictures and given their expert opinion on the treasures we’d found.
When I thought about how the day would have ended had I pushed ahead with our originally scheduled hike, it didn’t take long to conclude that Plan B turned out way better. But really, is it any surprise that 11-year-old Emily had more fun hanging out with my 11-year-old inner child than she would have had toughing it out on the uphill slog that my 31-year-old self had planned out?
Not really. Even I have to admit that 11-year-old Holly really is a lot of fun. I should invite her out more often.