"Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you . . . while cares drop off like autumn leaves." — Naturalist John Muir (1838-1914)

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Splashes of color along Dick's Creek Falls include orange hearts-a-bustin', tick trefoil in pink, aqua and lavender and red cardinal flowers.
Peter McIntosh/Special (ENLARGE)
In order to get to where the three creeks crash into the river, Cecile Thompson (from left), Dwayne Thompson, Peter Stent and John Woodward cross Holcomb Creek on the Three Forks Trail. A narrow, unkempt path on the steep creek bank awaits the hikers.
Peter McIntosh/Special (ENLARGE)
The Dick's Creek Falls and Three Forks trails lead to creeks and falls that empty into the Chattooga River, which runs through hardwood forest ablaze with color in autumn.
Peter McIntosh/Special (ENLARGE)
Purple ironweed and downy lobelia capture the attention of wildflower expert Karen Pietrowicz, owner of Morning Glory Gardens in Clayton.
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WHAT YOU'LL SEE Dick's Creek Falls • Splashy fall wildflowers: orange hearts-a-bustin', blue lobelia, lavender trefoil, goldenrod • Cascading waterfall flowing into the Chattooga River • Historic stone railroad culvert, built by European artisans • Canada geese on river (maybe) Three Forks • Fall color: sourwood, black gum, red oak trees • Roaring white-water creeks and waterfalls • Forest plants: witch hazel, mountain mint, wild ginger, yellowroot • Deciduous Fraser magnolia unique to the area • Old "splash dam" built by loggers -- to release water and float logs downstream to mills -- Martha M. Ezzard GETTING THERE Directions to Dick's Creek Falls Trail: From downtown Atlanta, take I-85 north to I-985 to Gainesville, where the road becomes U.S. 441 and goes through Clayton. Turn right at the second stoplight in Clayton, which is Rickman Road. Rickman runs into Warwoman Road. Go six miles to Sandy Ford Road, on the right -- then .4 miles to concrete bridge, where Sandy Ford takes sharp left over bridge and becomes dirt road. It's not quite three miles to trail head on the left. There's no sign, but trail begins just before the creek crosses the road. There is a cleared area for parking on the left where the trail begins. It's an easy walk by the creek, less than a mile, to 60-foot falls and the Chattooga River. Directions to Three Forks Trail: From downtown Atlanta, take I-85 north to I-985 to Gainesville, where the road becomes U.S. 441 and goes through Clayton. Turn right at the second stoplight in Clayton, which is Rickman Road. Rickman runs into Warwoman Road. Travel east 14 miles to Overflow Creek Road, which is on the left. It's four miles on a dirt road to John Teague Gap and Three Forks Trail, on the right. (A one-lane bridge over Holcomb Creek is 1.4 miles after the turn onto Overflow Creek Road.) The hike is an easy 1.25 miles down to Holcomb Creek; it's another quarter-mile (rigorous) on a steep bank (north side of creek) to Three Forks, where white-water creeks converge to form the Chattooga River's west fork. The climb out is moderate. BEFORE YOU GO To check fall leaf color: Web site (click on seasonal information, then fall color information).

Clayton — Like hors d'oeuvres before an exotic dinner, Three Forks Trail and Dick's Creek Falls Trail in northeast Georgia offer tantalizing tastes of the wild.

But watch out — these two trails, no more than a half-day outing, may tempt you to a full-course daylong trek next time. Both are within 16 miles of Clayton, a mountain town alive with lunch spots, galleries and shops, not quite two hours' drive from downtown Atlanta.

Waterfall "music" and wildflowers on a wooded trail can renew the spirit, advised John Muir 100 years ago. Pierce Cline, an avid hiker at age 77, began taking that advice seriously when he was 60, going on short hikes with his wife, Margie.

"You don't have to make a big commitment at first," he says. "Just do more as you enjoy it." The Social Circle couple own a cabin in Rabun County, and Cline thinks nothing of a 14-mile "day hike."

Dick's Creek (the shorter trail) and Three Forks lead to the wild and scenic Chattooga River, and both feature magnificent waterfalls and colorful autumn hardwood forests. The 57-mile-long Chattooga snakes from its headwaters in North Carolina's Blue Ridge Escarpment to North Georgia's Tugaloo Lake, and is the only federally protected river in Georgia that's part of the national system of Wild and Scenic Rivers.

Dick's Creek Falls

More than two centuries ago, pioneering botanist and wilderness explorer William Bartram wrote in his classic 1791 "Travels" about meeting Cherokee Indians near what is now Dick's Creek, one of the best known trading routes. There is still that feel of the wild where the falls tumble into the river. Yet the short hike — little more than an hour in and out — is comfortable for all ages.

Buzz Williams, who heads the Chattooga Conservancy, a Clayton-based nonprofit environmental group, calls it "an easy hike with a big payoff."

"What I love about Dick's Creek," Williams says on a recent morning as we drive out Warwoman Road east of Clayton, "is that its cultural history is so strong."

Remnants of the 1700s trade route and an abandoned 1800s railroad plan remain. Legend has it that Warwoman Road was named for the first Indian woman to become a tribal chief, a Cherokee who was brave in battle. It was customary for a "Cuhtahlatah," a female warrior, to accompany male warriors to bring luck.

About six miles from Clayton, Sandy Ford Road forks right off of Warwoman, then takes an abrupt left over a concrete bridge. It's three miles on the well-maintained dirt road to the trail head — easy to spot because it's the last pull-off before Dick's Creek flows across the road. (You can ford the creek and drive or walk straight down to the river, but you'll miss the falls and scenic trail.)

About a mile from the bridge, this side of an open horse pasture (on the right), a stately 160-year-old stone culvert on the road's creek side still stands. It was built by European artisans sent into the southern Appalachians by U.S. Sen. John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, who envisioned a commercial rail route through South Carolina and Georgia. The route would have required 13 tunnels through the mountains. It was halted before the Civil War, never to be revived.

Lucky for us, wildflower expert Karen Pietrowicz, owner of Morning Glory Gardens in Clayton, is along on the hike. The bright splashes of yellow along the way, she says, won't disappear anytime soon: tiny golden asters, wild sunflowers and goldenrod. Pietrowicz stops to admire purple ironweed and downy lobelia near a beaver-gnawed log that provides a natural bench by the river. Other splashes of color include orange hearts-a-bustin,' tick trefoil in pink, aqua and lavender and red cardinal flowers.

The Chattooga River is hardly at low ebb this rainy year, but when it is, adventuresome types can wade or swim out to a rock ledge and see the waterfalls head on. Otherwise, there's a view from the top of the falls along the way and peeks at its cascading waters near the river at the trail's end.

Three Forks

Three Forks trail is a bit of a misnomer as far as the U.S. Forest Service is concerned. The official trail, with its name emblazoned on a large rock at the trail head, leads only to Holcomb Creek as it rushes to meet two other white-water creeks. Holcomb Creek, Big Creek and Overflow Creek form the west fork of the Chattooga.

Hiking that well-marked trail, about 45 minutes from Clayton, takes less than an hour one way and provides a great spot for picnicking, wading or just relaxing on the rocks.

To experience the white-water drama of the three creeks crashing into the river, though, you must cross Holcomb Creek and maneuver a narrow, unkempt path on the steep creek bank. That lastquarter mile to the actual three forks isn't recommended for children or inexperienced hikers. In fact, foresters and conservationists worry that foot traffic on the bank will simply cause more erosion and more sediment flowing into the pristine river.

Nevertheless, our group of hikers tackles it on a recent Saturday afternoon, after the leisurely downhill walk to Holcomb Creek. On our way, we discover mountain mint and sniff heart-shaped leaves of wild ginger. Kristina McClees, an Atlanta radiologist, adds a professional's view without rejecting outright our excitement about medicinal plants we spot, such as witch hazel, supposedly good for treating bruises and insect bites.

Williams, who knows every plant intimately, points out yellowroot, used by the Cherokees for dyeing baskets.

No more than 20 minutes down the trail, the faint rush of white water beckons.

"When I hear that sound, it just lifts me," says Cecile Thompson, co-owner with her husband, Dwayne, of Timpson Creek Gallery near Lake Burton.

Comments like that delight Williams, who says, "If we don't get people out in the woods to see these trails, we're going to lose them."

We zigzag past sourwood, black gum and red oak trees, destined to blaze scarlet and yellow later on. We mourn diseased hemlock, stricken with woolly adelgid. The conservancy and the forest service have aided the release of thousands of predatory ladybugs to fight the infestation.

Determined to experience the fork's thundering waters, we cross Holcomb Creek, then slip and slide for a half-hour or more across twisted rhododendron roots and wet rocks. McClees wonders out loud if the contorted path is the only way back. (It is!)

The tortured last leg of the hike is forgotten, though, in the cooling spray from the roaring creeks' convergence. John Woodward, a Clayton veterinarian, Dwayne Thompson and Peter Stent scramble out to a large rock to experience the waterfalls' "surround sound."

"It's like a rain forest," says Stent, a visitor from San Francisco. "I'd like to drop a cork and sit a while," says Thompson, a devoted fisherman.

Williams notes that the Chattooga has had a lot of "near misses" since the Cherokees explored it. "It escaped a rail route and eight proposed dams," he says, "but encroaching development could be the biggest threat of all."

We are a silent group hiking back, and not just because it's uphill. A taste of the wild imparts a sense of precious solitude. Once again, Muir said it best: "I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay till sundown, for going out I found that I was really going in."

Martha M. Ezzard can be reached at mezzard@alltel.net