Per the ancient lore, part 9

small runoff shower across cave opening from within
Let’s take a trip to the Mountains folder, shall we? Though to be honest, if I was doing these in true chronological order this wouldn’t appear for quite a while; this was actually taken with the first digital camera that I owned, a Canon Pro 90 IS, on the first trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina – somehow, while living in this state from 1990 to 2001, I never made it out there, so I finally did a trip once I’d returned, this one being in May 2005. My timing was off – the spring foliage and colors were still a little ways away, arriving much later in the higher altitudes than I’d guessed.

I was partially chasing waterfalls, and partially in search of scenic compositions, which the just-budding trees weren’t contributing to very well. But I can’t really remember where this was taken – I just know that I’d been on a short trail seeking something specific, and happened across this small cascade over the mouth of a shallow cave. It was easy enough to duck inside without getting wet, but not the most photogenic of actions; if I got the outside foliage exposed properly, the water would nigh have disappeared and nothing inside the cave would have shown, even with firing off the flash as I did here. It would have been much worse trying for a long exposure to get more of a milky look from the water, because the region outside the cave was in bright sunlight, very easy to over-expose. Ah well.

Here’s a curious thought, however: I would have believed that, over the centuries, this cave would have been cleared out by natives, whether Native Americans or even some earlier cultures. So was it just not as good as something else not too far away, or is it newer than I imagine? Perhaps it had been cleared long ago, but rockfalls had re-cluttered the floor?