Want to give an-out-of-state visitor a sense of North Carolina’s geographic diversity but only have an afternoon?

Take them to White Pines.

The 275-acre White Pines tract was preserved because of its namesake pine, a tree more commonly found in higher, cooler climes. In fact, the white pine once was common here — more than 10,000 years ago, during the last ice age. As the climate warmed, the white pine and other cool-weather species (spruce, fir and hemlock) retreated from all but a few isolated pockets of the Piedmont, where conditions created a cooler microclimate. In the case of White Pines, those conditions include cooler, north-facing bluffs (temperatures can be as much as 10 degrees cooler at White Pines than in downtown Pittsboro just 8 miles north) and the cooling influence of the Rocky and Deep rivers, which respectively form the preserve’s north and west boundaries. The trek from the trailhead down a ravine to the Rocky River is a descent that could be any number of places in the Pisgah National Forest.

Not that the preserve betrays its Piedmont roots. Hiking the west side of White Pines, on portions of the River and Gilbert Yager trails, are as Piedmont as it gets. A gentle climb up from the Deep River takes you through a familiar oak-hickory forest, and frequent glimpses of white-tailed deer, the sounds of the spring peeper, Cope’s gray treefrog and upland chorus frog, and a canopy aflutter with the usual local avian suspects (mixed with a nice spring and summer influx of such neotropical migrants as the yellow-billed cuckoo, Louisiana waterthrush, wood thrush and prothonotary and Yellow-throated warblers) are firm reminders you are in the heart of Carolina.

But then ...

You drop down from a bluff overlooking the Deep and are suddenly thrust into a coastal swamp — or what appears to be a coastal swamp. The southern extent of the Gilbert Yager Trail edges a wetland pocked with shortleaf pines that, with a little imagination, resemble bald cyprus and tupelo gum knee-deep in a coastal wetland.

Botanically, it may be a reach. But when you were in the mountains walking beneath towering white pines not 10 minutes earlier, anything seems possible at White Pines.

White Pines Nature Preserve trail guide
White Pines Nature Preserve Quick Info
White Pines Nature Preserve Map