Barry's 9 year old calls this page "way cool". It is indeed. Barry tells me that the picture itself was taken at Richland Balsam, the highest point (6053 feet above sea level) on the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. The balsam trees for which the area is named are apparently being wiped out by a sap-sucking wooly aphid insect introduced into the U.S. from Europe in the last century. Barry hopes this image will endure after the trees are, alas, all gone.