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Sugar Hill: A Microcosm of Central Appalachian Ecology

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Living close to nature

You know your husband hasn't been toeing the party line and peeing on the compost pile when you see clusters of swallowtails like this.  I don't mind foregoing the garden fertility for such a dose of beauty.


We live remarkably close to nature despite all of our mowing and weeding and manipulating the environment around our trailer.  For example, a chorus frog moved into the drainage ditch beside the East Wing last week and yesterday a toad joined him.  Blobby clusters of chorus frog eggs and long strands of toad eggs now grace the puddle, and I can't decide whether to hope this spring's relentless rain eases up so that we no longer have to wade through ankle-deep mud, or whether I want it to keep raining so the tadpoles-to-be will turn into insect-eaters.

At night, a spider comes to spin her web outside our kitchen window.  I watch as she teases long strands of silk out of her abdomen and ponder how much we change the natural world just by turning on a light to read by.  In the end, I decide that I'm heartened by knowing that our disturbances don't just help the invasives, but also give our frogs and spiders a spot to thrive.

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