Blackrock

Blackrock isn't black. It's quartzite, the hardest beds in its formation, and the place got its name from what's growing on it. You went by its lot at mile eighty-four point eight. Blackrock's boulders are a slow-motion colony. Dark lichens crust the rock. A lichen is a fungus and an alga living together, the first thing to settle on bare rock, and it can grow as little as a tenth of a millimeter a year. So when you put your eye close to one of those crusts, you may be looking at something older than the road. Two hundred and seventy-nine kinds are known in Shenandoah, and they're so sensitive to the air that they double as a check on pollution. That same hard rock is behind the big talus fields on the slopes of Trayfoot Mountain, which you can see in the distance from the top. This is timber rattlesnake country. They come in two colors, black and yellow, and the yellow one is a handsome animal. Poachers still take them. There are eighteen kinds of snake in Shenandoah and two are venomous, the rattler and the copperhead. They won't go out of their way to attack you, so watch your step on warm rock, leave any snake alone, and give it room. Ticks wait on leaf tips of tall grass and shrubs until you brush past, so check yourself at the end of the day and again the next morning. Poison ivy grows at the edges of lots along this road, as a vine or a low shrub. If it gets on you, wash with soap and water soon, because the sap goes in within minutes. On pale rock slides in Shenandoah, a naturalist found small pale spiders that match the stone. On the dark lichen-covered boulders at Blackrock, the spiders are black. He wasn't sure whether they were a different species or the same ones changing color, like chameleons. Somebody ought to go up and look.