Wilderness has been described as original creation and as part of the American soul. Nowhere do those descriptions fit better than on Chestnut Lead Trail in Georgia's 35,000-acre Cohutta Wilderness, the largest wilderness area in the Southeast.

No roads or motorized vehicles are permitted in the wilderness, allowing the sounds of birds and soft winds to lull a hiker into rhythmic tranquillity.

PETER McINTOSH/McIntosh Mountains Photography (ENLARGE)
Like a splash of spring in fall, the lovely pinkish-white blossoms of turtlehead adorn the moist, rocky environs of Barnes Creek Falls.
PETER McINTOSH/mcintoshmountains.com (ENLARGE)
Wayne Jenkins (left), who heads Georgia Forest Watch, and Joe Gatins, a volunteer for the organization, stand at Chestnut Creek, a tributary of the Conasauga River.
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (ENLARGE)
The Conasauga logperch, which may reach 6 inches in length, is on the federal Endangered Species List.
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IF YOU GO Getting there • Chestnut Lead Trail is about a two-hour drive from downtown Atlanta. Take I-75 north to I-575, which becomes Ga. 515 and follow it to Ellijay. From the Ellijay town square, travel west on Ga. 52 and turn right on Forest Service Road 18. It's three miles to Forest Service Road 68. Turn right on 68 (the sign to follow says Lake Conasauga). After about three miles, you'll see Barnes Creek Falls; it's another six miles to Chestnut Lead Trail (parking area on the right). While you're in the neighborhood • The annual Georgia Apple Festival, Saturday and Oct. 10 and Oct. 16-17 at the Ellijay Lions Club Fairgrounds, features arts and crafts, country music, family games, an old-fashioned cakewalk and a pie contest. Also an antique car show, Saturday and parade Oct. 16. 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturdays; 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Sundays. $5; under age 10 free. Parking is free, but $2 donation suggested to benefit local Boy Scout troops. Gilmer County Chamber of Commerce: 706-635-7400. Web site. CHESTNUT LEAD TRAIL What you'll see • Stumps of the American chestnut, once the king of the forest. • The pristine Conasauga River, known as a hotbed of biodiversity; home to endangered and rare fish. • 100-year-old hardwoods dressed for fall on a wilderness stage. • Warblers and woodpeckers and, maybe, a scarlet tanager. • Graceful Chestnut Creek and remnants of a single-gauge logging railroad. • Wild onions, Indian cucumber and blue cohosh. • Fall turtlehead blossoms at Barnes Creek Falls, on the forest service road to the trail head.

"It chases away the demons," says Joe Gatins. Gatins is a retired Virginia newspaperman who lives in North Georgia. He volunteers for Georgia Forest Watch, an organization that works closely with the U.S. Forest Service to preserve wild lands, roadless areas, wildlife habitat and high-quality fishing, hiking and camping.

No surprise that the most striking landmark on the 1.8-mile hike to the pristine Conasauga River is the 70-year-old remnants of the American chestnut, the historic giant of Appalachian forests. Less than a half-hour into the hike, Wayne Jenkins, who heads the Ellijay-based Georgia Forest Watch, points out a huge reddish-brown stump, its splintered edges jutting up defiantly from clumps of lady fern. Three of us, joining hands around it, declare it to be 15 feet, more or less, in circumference.

In the early 1900s, a bark fungus that chokes seedlings with collarlike cankers was brought into New England by Asian chestnut nursery stock. By the late '30s, most American chestnuts — called the kings of the forest — were gone. Following the trail's blue blazes (painted on trees), we stop to admire a towering tulip poplar, a fast-growing tree that has largely replaced the chestnut in the forest.

We muse how scientists can send a robot to Mars or transplant a human heart but for almost 100 years have been stymied by the chestnut fungus.

If the chestnut reminds us of nature's mysterious power, the endangered fish in the Conasauga remind that man's intrusion also has an impact.

According to Mike Hurst, a Gainesville-based U.S. Forest Service biologist, the Conasauga logperch, a tiny fish found nowhere else in the world, remains on the federal Endangered Species List because of threats from silt in the Conasauga's tributaries. Some of the river's tributary creeks outside the wilderness area lack large green buffers and aren't protected in the proposed Chattahoochee forest plan, one that won't be modified for another 10 to 15 years, Jenkins says.

Hikers aren't likely to spot the tiny logperch or the rare holiday darter — so named because the male turns red and green during spring mating season. But adventuresome types undeterred by cold mountain waters have spotted them on occasion when snorkeling in the mirrorlike river near the Tennessee line.

Though snorkeling is hardly a usual mountain pastime, fishing is. Anglers love the Conasauga, where red-eye bass, German brown trout and rainbow trout abound. There is excellent trout fishing upstream and down from Chestnut Lead Trail's end at the river.

As we wind our way down to the river's edge, the bell-like call of the pine warbler accompanies the swishing sounds of Chestnut Creek. The pine warbler wears yellow "spectacles" around his dark eyes and has a buff yellow and olive streaked breast. The Cohutta Wilderness is a haven for birders, who covet sightings in spring and fall of the scarlet tanager, the stunning red migratory songbird with jet-black wings.

According to Rex Rymer, a Cohutta District forest service biologist, the most frequently sighted birds in a recent survey — in addition to the pine warbler — include the red-eyed vireo, indigo bunting and Carolina chickadee.

You don't have to be an experienced bird-watcher, though, to spot dozens of small holes in tree bark left by the yellow-bellied sapsucker, a member of the woodpecker family. As if tutored by a master carpenter, the sapsucker drills shallow holes in precise rows, then returns to drink sap and eat the insects attracted to the holes.

The tanager, like most songbirds, loves old-growth mountain forests. Because of turn-of-the-century logging, most of the Appalachians are "second growth" forests, but many of the hardwoods are almost 100 years old and tower above the evergreen understory. It's the reverse in the northeastern part of the state, where white pines and hemlock often are the dominant giants.

Jenkins, who spent 10 years as an organic farmer, points out Indian cucumber — small and bland, but refreshingly crisp, he says. (Picking plants is prohibited in the national forest.)

Jenkins searches in vain for ginseng, which grows in the Cohutta's rich, loamy soil. Nineteenth-century Virginia Gov. William Byrd once said of ginseng tonic, "It cheers the heart even of a man who has a bad wife."

Jenkins readily spots ramp, a wild onion, and blue cohosh, with its distinctive doll's-eye berries (red, with black and white "eyes").

Taking a lunch break at river's edge, we lament that so few rivers are as clear. Each pebble is distinct, and large white chunks of quartz sparkle in the sunlight as if strategically placed by an artist's eye.

Reinvigorated by our backpack snacks and homemade muffins shared by Jenkins, we admire the season's first colored leaves on a fallen log as we cross Chestnut Creek.

Gatins looks skyward at the tall hardwood trees: "Give this forest a couple of hundred more years and it'll be another Joyce Kilmer," he says, referring to the famous old-growth preserve in North Carolina's Slickrock Wilderness.

In October, some of the tall maples we admire will be orange, the hickories bright yellow and the red oaks, the last to turn, vivid red. (The red oaks' color lasts into November.)

A few things we missed scurrying down the trail seem to jump out at us on the slower climb up — a worn piece of track, for example, from a century-old single-gauge railroad, used no doubt for hauling logs.

We see telltale signs of boars (harmless and wary of people) rooting for worms and insects, fresh troughs of dirt and uprooted plants.

Added to the sounds of the rippling creek waters and crackling leaves is our audible breathing on the steep climb from the river. Rated a moderate hike by the forest service, it's tough in places, though there are stretches of even ground for resting.

On our drive back to town, about six miles down Forest Service Road 68, we stop at Barnes Creek Falls, a lovely picnic site with creekside tables. Built in the late 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps, it was transformed from quarry to rock waterfalls. Now it nourishes delightful forest plants like turtlehead, its whitish-pink fall blossoms bobbing in the wind.

Aldo Leopold, father of the Wilderness Society, described wilderness as a feeling, not just a physical experience. In a three-hour trek, Chestnut Lead Trail conveys that intangible connection with the land that's part of the Southern heritage.

No wonder folks like former President Jimmy Carter, who grew up in rural Georgia, devote time to the American Chestnut Foundation (www.acf.org), which declares that scientists are close to crossing the "immune gene" from the Asian chestnut with the American native.

If successful, the unique timbers that fashioned Southern culture will return to their former glory. Until then, a hike on Chestnut Lead Trail speaks to the enduring values of biodiversity.

Martha Ezzard can be reached by e-mail at mezzard@alltel.net.