Sheryl White
Cool things happen when you meet fellow naturalists. So often on our tours, most everyone who comes out with us has some interest in nature and the beauty of this place. However, once in a while you get a chance to briefly connect with kindred spirits. This past week, I met just such a…
Kay Wade
A Long Road Ahead Bare-branch winter does little to hide chaos left behind on one fateful day in the autumn of 2024, beyond those terrible, terrible floods. Road trips reveal how much of the southeast was victim to a storm like no other. Healthy trees, ripped violently from earth, lay fallen across entire hillsides, fanned…
Brooks Wade
FLUTTERVILLE. That’s what we have named our front porch this year, all 30 feet of it. Along its length are 4 bird feeders, proof positive that we have learned nothing from prior visits by neighborhood bears. We live in the woods, so speciation is limited (red-bellied woodpeckers, nuthatches, chickadees, cardinals, house finches, goldfinches and tufted…
Kay Wade
More Winter! What does it take to get twelve people in a boat, on a lake, on a day that won’t reach 48 degrees? An invitation. That, and the chance to see Jocassee’s famous waterfalls in a rare frozen state. It is cold, but the sun is shining, and the company is warm and lively….
Sheryl White
Brrr…January! As this Canadian cold air mass sinks in on top of us, we’re busy prepping for the coming year. January is typically our coldest month and the wildlife around the lake are not much different than us when it comes to this cold. They seek shelter and food to ride it out. Rock outcrops,…
Kay Wade
More Winter This spring, a female mud dauber wasp will chew her way out of the dirt chamber that’s protected her through this long, cold winter. She’s grown from egg to larvae to pupa to adult in that dirt catacomb. Soon it’ll be time for her to leave the nest and fly away with…
Sheryl White
Meet the belted kingfisher: one of our year-round residents. It would be unusual not to see one of these graceful birds anytime you’re out on the lake. Most often, you’ll hear one long before you catch sight of it. These agile fish eaters are amazing acrobats. Their wedge-shaped heads, waterproof feathers and powerful flight muscles…
Kay Wade
More Winter Snow, sleet, freezing rain, just as predicted. Crunchy slush, freezing soon to treacherous slickness on secondary roads, as predicted. We’ll go not further than Lake Jocassee, where wispy gray water vapor rises mysteriously into snow falling from equally gray sky. The puffs of snow in trees are so light they barely bend…
Brooks Wade
There is such peace at Jocassee this time of year. The silence of the lake is penetrating. And yet there is a certain unavoidable sadness to this time of year as well. Most any drive through the mountains makes evident the uniform youth of the forest throughout the Gorges, which was clearcut in the early…
Kay Wade
Winter 2025 begins, brittle cold. Wind blows through bare branches in fierce, gusty attempts to knock them loose from trees. This night is incrementally shorter than the one before, the night to follow will be clear, and dark, with stars that sear bright white pinpoints through frigid air. Dawns are golden, afternoons are crisp and…
Sheryl White
This time of year, we share this amazing place with an incredible number of winter birds. On Christmas Eve, we counted 59 ring-billed gulls and 13 loons scattered across the main basin and floating on or flying around the buoy at the hydro intakes. Exploring the lower lake, we headed up the Thompson River channel….
Kay Wade
Christmas Cruise On a day when so many celebrate the birth of a savior, we navigate a boat around the rocky shoreline of Lake Jocassee. Time and erosion have weathered long, deep seams into the rock; freeze and thaw cycles have wedged into seams until large chunks of rock loosen and fall into this clear…