by Mark Kolinski, Alabama Program Manager

Descending into one of the canyons of the Bankhead National Forest is like passing through a portal into another world. Hemmed in by massive sandstone bluffs, a canopy of towering hemlocks filters the sunlight through blue-green foliage, creating a peaceful ambiance beyond the simply visual.

Aged and imposing sentinels of old-growth yellow-poplar, beech, and white oak, rooted among the boulders on the canyon floor, stretch high above the sandstone rims in their search for light. Along the bluffs, dense thickets of mountain laurel wall out intruders.

Water music fills the air, as a crystal clear stream vaults from a smooth sandstone chute over a seventy-foot high waterfall and dances happily through roots and rocks. A dozen different kinds of ferns fill this shadowed world with myriad textures and hues of green. The jungle-like cry of a pileated woodpecker pierces the cool, moist and oxygen-rich air.

 Due in large part to prodding from Lamar Marshall and input from Wild South through the Bankhead Liaison Panel, the 2004 Revised Land and Resource Management Plan for National Forests in Alabama included a new management prescription especially for canyon corridors.  The canyon prescription recognizes the sandstone canyons of the Bankhead National Forest as unique ecosystems supporting rare plant communities, deserving of a level of protection exceeded only by the wilderness prescription.  This area of northwest Alabama contains the southwestern-most extension of the Cumberland Plateau and the cove hardwood forest type, which thrives in the conditions present in the Bankhead’s canyons.