The magic of being out in a designated Wilderness area can also serve as the curse of being out in a designated wilderness area.
This was fairly early on in the every-weekend hiking oddity that The Greatest Day Hiker Of Them All
and I have undertaken now for more than 21 years, in one of Virginia’s 24 Wilderness areas — Ramsey’s Draft.
At that point in time — Wilderness areas have endured increasing visitation over this century — there were at many points only suggestions of trails in Ramsey’s Draft’s 6,500 acres. We undertook a challenging and occasionally uncertain 11-mile loop that offered elevations above 4,000 feet, lots of river and stream crossings and then a relatively easy finish along Jerry’s Run.
 It was along the full-flowing Jerry’s Run that the combined forces of Wilderness and spring growth engendered the magic-curse pairing. The trail was rendered somewhere between non-existent and non-locatable by the rampant growth of a plant with which we were about to become intimately acquainted: stinging nettle.
We were dressed in shorts, and as the acute sting began to manifest itself, we took different approaches. The Day Hiker, amid wails, powered toward the finish. And I, amid different wails, tried to rock-hop my way down the middle of Jerry’s Run, wherein my shoes soon became soaked, I fell in repeatedly, my cap floated away and the stingies still stung.
But momentary pain is part of the stuff of which memories are made, and outdoor memories are made with every visit to a Wilderness, where things are to be left to nature and we humans are mere temporary intruders into worlds belonging to plants and to other animals.
Our Blue Ridge region states are home to nearly 75 Wilderness areas, with perhaps the most famous being West Virginia’s Dolly Sods and Cranberry, North Carolina/Tennessee’s Joyce Kilmer-Slick Rock. Cranberry is the largest in our region, at about 48,000 acres, nearly twice the size of our home city of Roanoke, Virginia.
Our time in Cranberry and Dolly Sods has also yielded a bounty of family memories. The Wilderness is out there, and is a precious gift of, from and to our nation.
The story above first appeared in our July / August 2025 issue.
