The first day of the eleventh month of the year of Emergence

CAN YOU IMAGINE?

Shortly after 1529, you are tasked with exploring what is now western North Carolina in search for that elusive route to the treasure of the far east.  You probably had only a canoe and your feet for transportation and that was complicated by a native people who thought you looked pretty strange and were hence assumed to be hostile.

Furthermore, you were faced with this as your GPS!

In winter this job became not only cold but downright slippery.

Spotty rime ice covered sections of the mountains you had to claw over.  Snow, wind, fog and rain were commonplace depending upon the time of the year.  Just the thought of getting from point A in a vista to point B had to be daunting.  Furthermore, those folks did not have the clothing we modern hikers enjoy.  And who knew? Were those incredibly bright red Mountain Ash berries edible, even with the available refrigeration?

Or if you were lucky enough to have bartered a canoe, what were the perils of the unknown mountain rivers and streams. 

Portages into the unknown could be undertaken easily, but not at ease because the next turn may have held utter disaster

All of a sudden you could find yourself in the shoot at Linville Falls.

In a flash, in a canoe, the result would not have been pretty.  You have to look closely, but those are people on the rocks under the upper pool and below the two smaller falls.

What a chore being an explorer was way back when!  I fear, left up to our current devices, that today it never would have happened.  Couch potatoes, video games and an overweight population would have made it difficult to get much further west of Pamlico Sound.  But then the beach is nice too.