This morning we hiked a loop up ("up" meaning almost literally up, typical of West Virginia) Alligator Rock trail and down Teaberry Rock trail in Kanawha State Forest.
Teaberry Rock is a pleasant outcropping with a view across a narrow forested valley, a good place to sit for a rest for a few minutes to enjoy the view.
The rock itself is sandstone, which predominates in the area, but with a twist. Generally, sandstone is pretty dull - mud turned into rock. It was laid down millions of years ago as the sediment of strange seas, and has moved with the earth's crust, eventually buckling to form the Appalachian Mountains, one of the oldest ranges in the world.
Teaberry Rock is sandstone, but it contains many small, smooth, oval pebbles of quartz, about the size of large beans. This means that our ancient sandstone contains rocks which in turn are are so much older that they had time to erode into little pebbles before they were incorporated in the sediment.
In mid-August, the forest is beginning to show the approach of fall - goldenrod is budding, mushrooms are everywhere, and the robins are beginning to flock. In some ways it seems that nature is always in a hurry - in some ways it is slow beyond the mind's ability to grasp.
