"Farther up the two-lane road, there’s a section of river channel that widens, revealing a sizable portion of the underlying bedrock: near vertical layers of alternating argillite and metagraywacke, two metamorphic rocks created by heat and pressure deep underground. Water has worn these exposed layers smooth and rounded, suggesting an organic life within like sleeping whales or reclining nudes. It’s difficult not being anthropomorphic in describing these forms, for they resemble the eroded human shapes created by English sculptor Henry Moore. The rock also has the most marvelous rusty-orange patina, a stain that’s created by the constant bath of iron and pyrite that flows down the mountain.
"It’s at this spot, in a river bend, that the Ocoee Whitewater Center is located. It’s also where after several hours of searching, on the back stone terrace below a sandstone bench that I found Tennessee’s forgotten State Wildflower blooming alone and inconspicuous a mere fifteen feet from the water, its roaring namesake. My journey had come, as perhaps it should, to a quiet and inauspicious end."
Excerpt from Natural Histories published by the University of Tennessee Press
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