The top of Rabun Bald offers that rare view of wildness — no houses, roads, cellular towers or smokestacks. On a clear day, looking northeast, you can see for 100 miles across the Blue Ridge Escarpment, where Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina meet. There lie some of the last large uninterrupted forests in the Southeast.

Layers of ridgelines on the horizon, dark to lighter purple, appear endless. From the observation platform atop the 4,696-foot summit of our two-mile climb, the clouds move in horizontal puffs of gray and white, inviting us to reach out and touch. Rabun Bald, in the northeast corner of the state, is Georgia's second-highest peak, topped only by Brasstown Bald, an hour away near Young Harris.

PETER McINTOSH/mcintoshmountains.com (ENLARGE)
On the hike up Rabun Bald, North Georgia artist Honor Woodard takes a perch in the 'sitting tree,' most likely a witch hazel well along in years.
PETER McINTOSH/mcintoshmountains.com (ENLARGE)
Richard Hyatt surveys the view from the observation platform atop Rabun Bald. He and his wife moved from Lawrenceville a few years ago and opened a birding-supply store in Clayton.
PETER McINTOSH/mcintoshmountains.com (ENLARGE)
The leaves are just barely beginning their autumn transformation as Richard Hyatt and Honor Woodard ascend Rabun Bald along the leaf-covered trail on a recent October day.
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More Ga. fall Hikes Wilderness: Hikes offer nature at its best  'Wildness' abounds on trek up the state's second-highest peak  Natural close encounters at Moccasin Creek state park  Falls-studded trail rimmed with scenery that dazzles  Where giants once towered, a trail to wild treasures         More Ga. travel ideas WHAT YOU'LL SEE • Autumn splendor from the observation platform atop Rabun Bald's 4,696-foot summit. • A 360-degree view of the Blue Ridge Mountains -- a rare reward for a two-mile hike. • On a clear day, uninterrupted wildlands. They stretch for 100 miles to the northeast. • Telltale signs of mountain development, especially to the south and west. • A variety of birds at the higher elevations: warblers, woodpeckers, towhees and grosbeaks. • Designated overlooks along Ga. 246 driving to the trail head, ideal for fall photos. IF YOU GO Getting there • From downtown Atlanta, take I-85 north to I-985 to Gainesville, which merges with Ga. 365, then U.S. 23/441. Follow U.S. 441 to Clayton and on to Dillard. At Dillard, turn right (east) on Ga. 246. There is a sign pointing to Sky Valley and Highlands, N.C. It is 4.1 miles to Old Mud Creek Road. Turn right (water wheel and service station at corner) and travel 2.9 miles to Kelsey Mountain Road, a narrow, steep paved road on the right; there is a forest service sign that says Rabun Bald Trail. It's two-tenths of a mile to the trail head. Resources • "Trees of Georgia and Adjacent States" by Claud L. Brown and L. Katherine Kirkman (Timber Press, $24.95) • "The Sibley Guide to Birds" by David Allen Sibley (Knopf 2000, $35) • "All the Birds of North America" the American Bird Conservancy Field Guide by Jack Griggs (HarperCollins 2002, $19.95) • "National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America" (National Geographic Society 2002, $21.95)

In every direction from the 360-degree lookout, glorious panoramas of fall unfold. Except for the narrow northeastern view, there are also telling reminders of creeping sprawl.

Buzz Williams, director of the Clayton-based Chattooga Conservancy, says that if all the wild forest lands — like those few remaining — had been preserved, Rabun Bald might have become the Yosemite of the East. In the 1990s, 14,000 acres surrounding the mountain were proposed for wilderness. Now only 5,000 acres are preserved from roads and logging.

Due north, past a foreground of red oaks and yellow sassafras stunted by mountaintop winds and storms, is a view of Sky Valley, a growing golf community en route to the popular Highlands, N.C., resort area. To the southwest, along U.S. 441, widening ribbons of development blur the lines between towns like Clayton, Mountain City and Dillard.

On a brisk fall day in mid-October, the leaf colors are subtle, still turning as we survey them across the ridges. But closer up, patches of brilliance — vivid red maple, bright yellow hickory — adorn our path. The trail head is a 40-minute drive from Clayton, two hours northeast of downtown Atlanta.

"Looks like someone splattered a fresh bucket of red paint," says Richard Hyatt, pointing to a showy maple tree against a deep green backdrop of rhododendron as we begin our trek. A resident of Otto, N.C., Hyatt and his wife, Jean, opened Mountain Nature and Wild Bird Supply in Clayton a year ago. Hyatt grew up in Los Angeles, so he appreciates the rural life. He once owned a sawmill in North Carolina, though, and takes a more pragmatic view of conservation than some outdoors advocates.

"Too many people," he says, surveying the view on the way up. "But they have to live somewhere, and they need wood for their houses."

The Hyatts retired from jobs in Lawrenceville a few years ago to realize their dream of owning a birding shop. Hyatt doesn't claim to be a bird expert, but using his binoculars he easily identifies a black-throated blue warbler and an Eastern towhee for us.

The first half-hour of our hike is an easy jaunt. Artist Honor Woodard and I can't resist picking up a few fallen maple leaves, some deep red, others orange, with yellow veins and green edges. We spread them on a nearby rock covered with moss and step back to admire our random creation.

The 34-year-old Woodard, who owns Moonfrog Studio and designs jewelry, spots her favorite tree. While the rest of us puzzle over just what kind of tree it is, Woodard, who has hiked the trail many times before, simply calls it her "sitting tree." Its lichen-covered limbs jut out horizontally, inviting us to rest on its sturdy branches.

We take one of the tree's asymmetrical yellow leaves with us — and decide later, as we study my reliable tree book ("Trees of Georgia and Adjacent States") that it is a well-aged member of the witch hazel family. According to the tree guide, some witch hazels grow as tall as 35 feet. It is the largest one any of us has ever seen.

Our conversation ceases as we reach the higher elevations, where a congregation of birds meets us — blue jays and a couple of rose-breasted grosbeaks.

Woodard spots what she thinks is a moonstone, the shiny rock she uses in some of her jewelry. She's wearing a moonstone necklace, so we get to see how the rock looks when cut and polished. Woodard graduated from Washington University in St. Louis and worked for an outdoors magazine in New York City for five years before returning to her native Georgia. In addition to making jewelry, she works at Main Street Gallery in Clayton.

"I've been coming here since I was 2 months old," she says with a laugh, meaning to Rabun County, where her parents, now retired, still maintain a home on Lake Burton. Now she's building her own house in Lakemont, near the Chattooga River.

"This is the most magical place in the world to me," Woodard says, and she doesn't want it to change. She bemoans the lack of stronger mountain and stream protections.

We climb steep switchbacks for the last, seemingly endless, fourth of a mile. As we listen for birds, Woodard asks about another sound she hears, a grating one. It's like a distant rock-crushing operation or a motorcycle revving up. With the help of photographer Peter McIntosh, we decide it's a ruffed grouse. The male grouse beats its wings to make a distinctive drumming noise.

Once we reach the top, we hear not just bird calls, but human voices. University of Georgia students Bynum Boley and Anna Maxey have just arrived. They hiked up the Bartram Trail from the Three Forks area, a longer route.

Boley, from Atlanta, is a forestry major; Maxey, from Dalton, is studying consumer journalism. The two have hiked parts of the Appalachian Trail; Boley says one of his favorite "easy" hikes is a seven-mile loop at Black Rock Mountain State Park, just off U.S. 441 near Dillard.

The sun brightens our way down on a day that began with overcast skies. It's a three-hour hike up and back for us — with picture taking and stops to look for birds and examine rocks, trees and plants.

We enjoy hot tomato basil soup and sandwiches afterward at a cafe in Clayton and vow to gather more friends to hike some of the same trails in different seasons.

There's always some forest wonder overlooked the first time. On Rabun Bald Trail, I forgot to look for my favorite Fraser magnolia, the deciduous native that caused 18th-century explorer and naturalist William Bartram to name Rabun Bald "Magnolia Mountain."

When I return home, I can't resist pulling out the well-worn "Travels of William Bartram," who in 1774 called Rabun Bald "an exalted peak."

Bartram's description of our mountains, as he traveled from the Georgia Piedmont 230 years ago, is timeless: "The ridges rise higher, the rocks in beds of clay heave their sturdy shoulders through a rich and fertile mould."

In the fall, you can smell, see and touch all of that.