Article September 15, 2003 Issue

The joy of walking the land again

By William Overlease

My wife, Edith, and I are biologists, and we do a lot of fieldwork. About three years ago, we were near Huntsville, Alabama, looking for Fern Cave and a rare plant that we thought grew there, the Hart's tongue fern.

The cave's entrance is a sinkhole that is located on the side of Nat Mountain. There were no specific directions to the cave, so several times we hiked all over the mountain looking for sinkholes.

Edie and I eventually made three trips from our home in Indiana, and on the last trip down to Alabama, we agreed that we weren't going to leave until we found the cave. After considerable hiking up and down the mountain, we did eventually find it, and we were very happy about that—although the rare fern wasn't there.