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Spring moves up the Appalachian Mountains like a wave off a Caribbean storm. It is a raucous, exhilarating ride that is over before you know, and leaves everything changed.

It brings back the migrating songbirds to the giddy delight of birders who flock to their favorite vantage points along the Blue Ridge to rejoice in the return of old friends. Redstarts, warblers, grosbeaks and others ride the currents up the mountain chain to their summer breeding grounds.

A few are deposited in North Carolina, but most move along with the spring wave. Each year it warms the earth and draws the spring ephemerals from their winter dormancy -- hardly able to contain their enthusiasm for the new day.

This year, the rain and the sun and the stars aligned for the perfect storm of wildflowers. The display of trillium, showy orchid, dwarf crested iris and blue phlox was so magnificent my wife and I spent a day in Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest hardly noticing the centuries old trees. We returned two days later to a different forest -- most of the wildflowers were already past prime. Everything passes.

Each year, the spring wave shakes awake the massive old poplars and hemlocks of the virgin forest at Joyce Kilmer. The poplars leaf out anew after the wildflowers are spent.

Eastern hemlocks have their own quieter rhythms, and don't reflect the spring surge. The past few years have brought another kind of wave to the hemlocks: the resurgence of woolly adelgids.

The small cottony insects, accidentally brought to this country from Asia, have spread throughout the southern Appalachians feasting on the juice of the needles. Without an effective predator, they are devastating the native trees, and threatening their survival.

There are some dedicated people racing against the adelgids to find an effective control, but I have not talked to one forester or expert who feels optimistic about the trees' future. The tree in the eastern United States is doomed and will soon be in the same category as the American chestnut -- not officially extinct, but virtually so.

Hemlocks are not normal residents of the Piedmont, but denizens of the mountains and the north. I grew up with them, and traveling to western North Carolina and being among them is like going home.

My wife and I bought a little piece of property in Virginia largely because of the creek and its surrounding hemlocks. Because they grow along mountain streams, hemlocks are associated with crisp air, clear cold water and trout.

What effect the loss of the hemlock will have on trout streams is unclear. Without the shade, it is likely the water temperatures will rise. Trout have a limited tolerance; they must have the oxygen cold water carries.

After leaving Joyce Kilmer, Janet and I made a pilgrimage to the Cataloochee Valley in the Great Smokey's Park, where some of the biggest remaining wild hemlock trees are. Some of these gorgeous old trees are hundreds of years old, but they are almost all infected, and many have succumbed.

I wanted to touch the old trees, let their sap permeate my skin. As a kid I liked running my fingers along the smallest branches stripping off a handful of needles and crushing them in my hand so they would release their fragrance.

When I did that at Cataloochee, a handful of adelgid came as well. But the trees overpowered the little insect and the smell was entirely of the tree. I inhaled it down deep, hoping to keep its essence inside me never to be exhaled.

What saved so many hemlocks from lumberjacks is contributing to their loss. They are not a commercially valuable species. They are subject to "shake," internal cracks and fissures in the wood making it undesirable for lumber.

Old trees are liable to splinter when felled as well. The best trees for lumber are said to be under age 75. All this makes the older trees unprofitable to cut. It also makes it difficult to get the resources to save them.

I asked Harold Phillips of the N.C. Forest Service what he thought the loss of the hemlocks would mean to the forest. He said he didn't know, but that some streams he used for fishing had lost their hemlock cover and weren't producing fish anymore.

There will be changes when the hemlock goes. No one knows how that will affect golden crown kinglets or blackburnian warblers, two species that feed and nest in hemlocks.

No one can be sure what the forest will look like when it settles down again. But I can tell you I will not venture into the Appalachian Mountains again witnessing the death of these giant old trees without feeling a hitch in my throat and ache in my heart.

That too will pass, all too quickly.

Eric Schaefer is a freelance outdoors writer. He lives in Reidsville. Contact him at janeric@bellsouth.net