Blue Yonder
How are mountains named? Why are chigger bites so irritating? Naturalist and historian William Cocke scratches your itch to know.
EXPLORING NATURAL WONDERS
May 2008From its headwaters in the Blue Ridge Mountains through the Virginias, the New River is indeed one of the oldest rivers on the continent—if not the oldest.
Why is the Blue Ridge blue?
August 2006
You might as well ask me why the sky is blue, Irene Soderquist. Actually, you are, in a way. The two questions are not as far apart as you might think. The famous blue haze suffusing the Blue Ridge Mountains is not an actual mist but rather a combination of physics, chemistry, and biology. It’s all a matter of perception when you get right down to it.
Are coyotes filling the wolf's niche as one of the dominant predators of the Appalachians? -Elaine Early, Barnardsville, N.C.
June 2006
Driving east on I-64 into Charlottesville early one morning, I glimpsed what looked like a medium-sized dog dart across the highway. Straight and fast and focused, it shot across four lanes of traffic, up the right hand embankment and away. It took me a few seconds to register what I’d seen. This was no confused and starving wild dog—this was a full-grown, healthy coyote.
Are bats dangerous? Don't they carry rabies? -Naomi Matzner, Charleston, W.Va.
May 2006
Sheesh, and I thought snakes got a bad rap. Bats are second only to our serpent friends in inducing a state of unreasoning fear and panic in otherwise reasonable people. These winged mammals are long overdue for an image makeover.
What are those high-pitched peeping noises I hear coming from the woods? -Nicolas Wylie, Marion, N.C.
March 2006
A harbinger of spring can arrive in many forms. Sometimes it’s a flock of robins out on the front lawn. Sometimes it’s a row of crocuses along a fence line. Sometimes it’s the first warm breeze to break through the cold March murk. And sometimes it’s the love song at sunset of a thousand tiny amphibians calling from a ditch along the railroad tracks.
I keep hearing that the loss of wetlands contributed to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina. Can a swamp really save a city? -Aileen Perkinson, Asheville, N.C.
January 2006
On December 8, 2004, more than eight months before Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, The Washington Post ran an editorial by Lousiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, titled “Saving America’s Wetlands.” Referring to a recent near miss from Hurricane Ivan, she wrote, with disconcerting prescience:
Why are there so many squirrels scurrying about this time of year? -Hailee Jackson, Asheville, N.C.
September 2005
With shortening days presaging the coming of winter, Hailee, what you’re probably seeing is an increase in activity by our most common arboreal rodent, the eastern gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis).
I saw a snake in the trail on my last hike. I don’t like snakes. Should I be afraid of being bitten? - Betty Westrich, Wilminton, N.C.
August 2005
Your fear of snakes puts you in the company of about half the world’s population, Betty. For many, the terror is absolute, all-consuming, and entirely unreasoning. It wells up from some ancient recess of instinct and is the compounded product of millennia of cultural conditioning—after all, the serpent tempted Eve, initiated the Fall, and caused our expulsion from Eden.
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