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NatureScene Program Open (music and sound of waterfall over shots of the falls)
JW: Hello, and welcome to NatureScene. I'm Jim Welch with naturalist Rudy Mancke. We're at
DeSoto State Park on Lookout Mountain near Fort Payne, Alabama. And it's-it's a beautiful
mountain, but worn down, I guess, somewhat through the years.
RM: Yeah, Lookout Mountain has always been a, an interesting place. I usually think of
the State
of Tennessee when you say Lookout Mountain, but really there's not much of this mountain
there.
There's a lot in Georgia, and a good bit in Northern Alabama. And this is kind of the
tail-end of the
Appalachians, so that gives us a great deal of diversity, plant and animal-wise here.
I think it'll be
a lot of fun!
JW: Of course we've got DeSoto Falls right in back of us. (RM: Oh yeah.) A beautiful
area -
DeSoto and his men passed nearby in a splinter group, I think, saw the Falls, made note in
DeSoto's diary.
RM: And you can see the way water - in this instance, the, uh, West fork of Little River
- is really
rearranging the rocks. That's basically sedimentary rock there, you can see the, the layering:
sandstones, limestones, and such. The water slowly wears it away through time, tremendous
energy in that falling water. And look on the top where someone has built a dam and
harnessed
that energy, I'm sure, in the past, creating a lake there. And when you think of interesting
geological stories, rich soils, you, of course, think of great diversity of plants, as we've
mentioned,
and, I'm sure, some interesting animals on the way.
JW: And th-th-these falls are just one of fifteen on the mountain, but the most spectacular.
RM: We're gonna have a lot of fun today. Let's just head off in this direction and get started.