Big Meadows

Gas. The only gas in the park is at the first entrance to Big Meadows, on your left, and you'll see the pumps from the turn. The next entrance goes to Byrd Visitor Center, with flush restrooms and free Wi-Fi. This is about halfway. Going on, Upper Hawksbill parking, mile forty-six point seven, on your left, is the gentle way up the park's highest peak. Hawksbill Gap, mile forty-five point six, is the short, steep way. Crescent Rock Overlook, mile forty-four point four, shows you the mountain from the road. Skyland is next for food, in season, at mile forty-two point five, on your left, with the only electric car charging on the Drive. Across the Drive from Byrd Visitor Center is the thing itself, a treeless island on top of a mountain. After all those miles of forest, the sky finally has some room. The meadow's broad and nearly flat because it sits on the surface of one of those lava flows. It stays open because the park burns parts of it on purpose, to hold back the small trees and shrubs, so if you see black ground, that's why. Stop doing that, and the forest walks back in. What the forest would swallow is rare. Two wetlands here called mafic fens hold plant communities believed to grow nowhere but this park. Early each spring, soon after the ice melts, wood frogs and two kinds of salamander travel to one pool in the swamp to mate. The frogs quack, the salamanders dance, and then all three are gone. Go down far enough and it gets stranger. The Geological Survey cored this meadow, and in the coldest stretches of the past, this ridgetop may have been open alpine tundra, with snow lying into the summer. Lava, fire, ice, and people. It all comes to the surface right here. Stopping here? Shut the car off and I may cut out, so tap play and stay close. Boone's tale is about the last ones out, two or three minutes. Then cross the Drive and stand in it.