Western Pennsylvania’s Laurel Summit, high elevation site of the 9/11 Flight 93 aerial terrorist attack and, in places, a disorganized heap of bituminous coal as a result of coal miners stripping off its 2,900+-foot summit contour, has been defined anew by altitude.

In a model of social progression, this summit environment that warmed and brightened homes with its coal deposits has rejoined with Pennsylvanians in offering a second element: wind.  In autumn of 2009, the winds will turn 35 turbines anchored in the coal refuse by German-based E.O.N. Climate and Renewables.  The Stoneycreek Wind Farm will brighten up to 16,000 homes.

A lush debris field remains from a tornado that ravaged the high mountaintop that surrounds the Camp David presidential compound in Maryland’s Catoctin National Park.

The passage of several years has converted what initially resembled a linear bulldozer path of wind damage into a dense thicket of berries and hardwood saplings — food for the park’s whitetailed deer herd, as well as nesting habitat for songbirds.

The tornado scar intersects Maryland Route 77 at the National Park entrance sign and continues through a high ground forest of sugar maple, oak and beech.

The Lighthouse Trail, an 0.25-mile path through the pinewoods of the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge, recently received new signage explaining its natural features.  A complementary forest cutting has opened up a clearer view of the Chincoteague Lighthouse itself.

The Lighthouse Trail leads to an oak-and-sassafras-crowned sand ridge constituting an extinct dune that, in the early days of the lighthouse, overlooked breaking surf.  Movement of ocean sand subsequently sealed off the ancient dune from the surf, stranding the lighthouse in its present forest location.

A very public stand of the reclusive pink ladyslipper orchid (Cypripedium acaule) began blooming in early May along a fire lane only feet away from the main road running through West Virginia’s Coopers Rock State Park.

The pink ladyslipper, with the historic nickname moccasin flower given for its resemblance to an indian moccasin, colonizes Coopers Rock because of the plant’s preference for high altitude.  The orchid’s habitat there exceeds 2,000 feet in elevation.

Officials at California’s Mendocino Headlands State Park have given top priority to an historic reclamation project atop high tableland overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  According to Jenny Hecheroth, manager of Mendocino’s Ford House Interpretive Center, the focus is a 19th century apron chute employed by redwood loggers and now reduced to iron remnants.  At an elevation of over 50 feet above the surf, where a “blowhole” blasted out by wave action pierces the grassland above Mendocino’s Portuguese Beach, immigrant loggers slid redwood logs through the opening to ships waiting below.

The 19th century immigrant population of Mendocino was so dominant that Mediterranean and Asian plants comprise a large proportion of the grassland flora overlooking Portuguese Beach, according to Teresa Sholars, biologist with nearby College of the Redwoods.  A favorite photographic perspective of the Mendocino townsite still features in the foreground yellow-flowering kale introduced by early Chinese laborers. 

Recent development plans imperil the Mt. Mitchill viewshed, highest elevation ocean view on the mid-Atlantic seaboard.  Noted today for a 9/11 memorial in its foreground, which faces the visible Manhattan skyline; and centuries ago as high ground over which the welcoming Lenape tribe hunted hilltop sweet fern, the viewshed’s aesthetics are altered by periodic slump blocking, during which fragile soils fall away, carrying away forests and the tree branches framing the famous view.

According to Paul Boyd, chair of the Environmental Commission of Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, developers propose three 20-story apartment towers between the central Mt. Mitchill viewpoint and the Atlantic.  The resulting environmental disturbance makes the viewshed susceptible to further slump blocking, which would effectively substitute newly built balconies and rails for the tree branches through which the Lenape viewed the sea.

Harpers Ferry, WV – Dale Nisbet, director of the wildlife management program at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, reports a promising appearance of a young peregrine falcon near the Potomac River cliffs directly across from the town, at the site of a peregrine reintroduction effort. The peregrine frequented the photogenic cliffs during the late winter-early spring period associated with nesting area selection. Radio transmission data indicate that the bird originated in West Virginia’s rugged New River Gorge. This marks the second year in a row that researchers sighted the bird, a female which will be ready to nest in her third year, given a suitable male in the vicinity. Peregrines historically nested on the town’s precipitous rock faces but abandoned the area 56 years ago.

Frederick, MD – Frederick County, Maryland now boasts a long-distance path through the northern Blue Ridge Mountains on the border of the Washington, DC. metropolis. New signage marks the high ground hike-bike-horseback path, which outdoor enthusiasts give steadily increasing usage. With the understated name Blue Trail, the path extends 16 miles. It connects two state parks, Cunningham Falls and Gambrill, and runs through the extensive Frederick Watershed. From the city of Frederick, Route 40 west approaches the trail at Gambrill State Park.

Sperryville, VA – Hemlock Springs Overlook, popular scenic view at milepost 39.7 in Shenandoah National Park, recently lost its namesake eastern hemlocks ( Tsuga canadensis ) to the global-reaching hemlock wooly adelgid aphid.

Since hemlock represents a climax forest that typically takes hundreds of years to develop, these Shenandoah hemlocks constituted a final botanical link to the pre-Shenandoah National Park era.

Efforts to combat the Asian-born wooly adelgid with Asian adelgid parasites are underway in Pennsylvania, at the Division of Forest Pest Management within the Pennsylvania Department of Forestry.  The Virginia attacks recently moved northward to compromise a northern Pennsylvania stand of that state’s State Tree.  Sam Cooke, a forester within the Department, notes that the Shenandoah hemlocks are isolated stands more vulnerable to insect infestation than trees in the heart of hemlock range, but that officials are monitoring closely the parasite’s northward movement.

The Shenandoah attack further debilitates a nationally known viewshed already rendered a brown streak in places by gypsy moth and acid rain. Charred treetrunks from a government evergreen restoration project which degenerated into wildfire further degrade the ridgeline aesthetics.

Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge recently enhanced its bicycling facilities with an oceanside bike corral constructed to accommodate cycling beachgoers. The Refuge built the parking rack at the Atlantic Ocean terminus of the surviving remnant of the Swan Cove Trail, which branches off of popular Wildlife Drive and formerly ran behind the dunes for approximately 1 mile before storm overwash breached the high ground of the dune line and buried it.