Blue skies over Tennessee! It was a beautiful day in the mountains.

Unfortunately, part of the beauty is fading as the ancient hemlocks that grace the ridges and hollows of the southern mountains succumb to the hemlock adelgid. Most of the big stands in the Nantahalas and Smokies have already died out, leaving only the ghostly trunks to mark the spots where dark grovess once sheltered the forest floor. It's one hell of a loss, one of the most significant in a long line of extinctions in the eastern forests. The hemlocks provide cooling shade for the trout streams that lace our mountains, and many of the streams will grow too warm to support trout after that shade is gone.