That’s perfect mood music to finally finish this blog post from our June road trip, which included hiking in North Carolina’s DuPont State Forest.

Note the bridge; you’ll see it again later.

What’s three times better than a single    [Continue reading]]]> Oh, good – We’ve been hearing thunder for hours now and Polly is cowering and shaking under my desk.

That’s perfect mood music to finally finish this blog post from our June road trip, which included hiking in North Carolina’s DuPont State Forest.

Note the bridge; you’ll see it again later.

What’s three times better than a single waterfall? As soon as we climbed over the guardrail and onto on the Triple Falls trail we saw large plants, roots wrapped in burlap, lining the trail near the highway. Hmm…

We hiked to the crest of Triple Falls, and it was lovely. It was also devoid of other people, because all the sane ones had already headed back down the trail. The sky had turned black and thunder rumbled closer and closer.

When The Man finally finished taking pictures, we started back down the trail in the rain, dragging 60 pounds of terrified dog. By the time we got to the road, lightning was crashing all around us. This was not the smartest time to cross a bridge.

So we climbed down under the bridge to ride out the storm. Pretty soon a couple of ATVs pulled up under the bridge next to us and two guys started grabbing the plants by their root balls and loading them on the ATVs.

Turns out The Hunger Games was being filmed in the DuPont State Forest and apparently Mother Nature hadn’t put out quite enough greenery for the movie’s post-apocalyptic vision (I haven’t read The Hunger Games yet so I might be misrepresenting the scenario here.) The woods looked just fine to me: lovely, dark and deep – but I’m a writer, not a cinematographer, so maybe Lionsgate really did need those extra rhododendrons.

Eventually half a dozen other guys showed up under the bridge. They were part of the film crew rather than the landscape crew and the pecking order was clear. The head guy was wearing probably a thousand bucks worth of Patagonia and North Face gear. The other younger, scruffier guys shuffled around trying to impress him, nodding and chuckling whenever he said anything.

But the day’s filming schedule was shot and, expensive gear or not, everyone was soaked to the bone. Head guy pointed, his crew nodded in unison and followed him like sheep back out into the rain.

The rain came down like crazy for about an hour. Can you tell how wet it was? These individual rivulets were gushing out of the bridge drainage holes. Oh, yeah, and we had hail, too.

When we got home from our trip, I found this on YouTube and realized that if we’d tried to hike to Triple Falls a day earlier, we would have been stuck in traffic like everyone else and out of luck.

When you and the guy walking across the top of    [Continue reading]]]> The Man and I recently got back from our spring road trip. We had our usual quirky time – we like back roads and waterfalls and dams and fish hatcheries and of course we met enough characters to people a couple of novels (I hope).

When you and the guy walking across the top of the Holston Dam are the only people in a two-mile radius, you tend to get into conversation pretty easily.

This one started with, “That sure is a purty dog.” (Rule #1 for fiction writers: Get a dog, preferably a purty one.)

The guy said he came to the dam every day to meditate and pray. It was easy to stand on the far side of the dam and feel a supreme peace as you looked out at the placid lake caressed by green mountains – as long as you could ignore the massive amounts of rock and blood, sweat and tears that made it all possible.

“My uncle worked on building this here dam.” He pointed to the sloping wall. “Guy’s buried somewhere down in there. Fell in and they tried and tried to get him out.” He shook his head. “Almost lost some other fellers too, trying to pull him out. Back then they just didn’t have the equipment they got now and it was too dangerous. Didn’t make sense to lose a couple more guys to save one already gone.

“So his bones and everything is still right there inside that wall.” He was silent for a few minutes.

“That there lake’s ‘bout 250 feet deep in places – built the dam and the water just kept rising over houses, trees, whatever else was left down there. Water’s cold, too – not much above 32 degrees.”

He pointed to a section of the spillway wall. “A catfish – mebbe 200, 250 pounds got stuck right there in the intake valve back then. They didn’t have no way to deal with something that size, weren’t expecting nothing like that. Mebbe it was more’n 250.” He shook his head again.

“No telling what all’s in that lake.”

He rubbed Polly’s head once more before getting back in his truck. “Purty dog.”

~

The narrow road curved around to follow the bends of a fast-moving stream. Where they both straightened out a bit, we saw what looked like a series of home-made wooden dams straddling the stream.

We stopped to take a closer look. Below each dam, there was a wooden corral-like box crowded with fish, all trying to swim upstream. We were at a trout farm. We were also trespassing, and when we saw someone staring at us from their front door, it felt like time to move on.

Later we passed the State Fish Hatchery and pulled into the parking lot. It was hot, and the guy who ran the place told me to bring Polly inside the building. “My dogs love it in here,” he said and Polly seemed to as well. It was cool and fresh spring water bubbled through a channel along the floor before flowing into the large concrete fish tanks.

Mark (that’s not his name but he reminded me of a Mark) started talking about what the fish eat and how fast they grow and when and where the fishery staff release them. It was interesting, but once he stuck his hand in his pocket, I forgot everything he’d just said.

He pulled out a round tin.

Oh no he isn’t…
Oh yes he is.

A single well-practiced move and he opened the tin, pulled out an enormous wad of tobacco and crammed it into his cheek. Without pausing in his narrative one tiny bit. He just kept talking, looking like a lopsided Alvin the Chipmunk on steroids.

By now, there were four of us who’d been listening to him but I think we were all wondering the same thing: where’s he gonna spit that stuff out?

Oh no he isn’t…
Oh yes he is.

Mark kept talking and then his mouth did a quick sideways flk-splat into one of the fish tanks. He talked some more and then flk-splat into another fish tank. Then flk-splat into another.

Honestly, in the greater scheme of things by the time those trout make it out to open water and then into the frying pan, their nicotine cravings will be long gone.

Still, later that night in the Copper Kettle Restaurant, I considered the house specialty, pan-fried local Rainbow Trout, only briefly.

“I’ll have the catfish plate.”

It was a dark    [Continue reading]]]> This freaking cold weather has, for some reason, reminded me of the two years I spent in Wisconsin in the 1970’s. I started writing this vignette sometime during the summer and meant to post it at Halloween but forgot about it until today. So here you go, trick or treat:

It was a dark and stormy night….

My then husband and I were backpacking somewhere in the wilds of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, which is attached not to the rest of Michigan, but to the top of Wisconsin. This was back when I thought it was fun to carry 40 pounds on my back for miles so that I could sleep on the ground while swatting at battalions of cat-sized mosquitoes. (My idea of fun has changed radically since those days.)

It had been raining for several days, which is NOT fun when you are stuck in a tent you have carried in on your back, so we finally packed up our gear, which now probably weighed an additional 20 pounds because it was soaking wet, and trudged for hours to get back to civilization, a/k/a the state park parking lot and our dry (!) car.

When we finally saw a laundromat, we pulled in and began stuffing the washers and dryers with all our worldly goods.

Eventually Laundromat Guy came in and started wiping down all the machines and emptying the change boxes. He was wearing a Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers jacket.

Laundromat Guy was friendly, so we asked him if he knew of a motel in the area since there was no way in hell I was going to climb back into the tent. And we’d seen nothing for miles except this laundromat.

He made a quick phone call and then said, “Why don’t you come home with me? My wife says you’re welcome to stay with us.”

Really, it seemed like a good idea – it was already dark and there was nothing else around – so we followed him to his house a couple of miles away.

Mrs. Laundromat looked like Mary Travers (this was back in the ‘70’s, remember) with her long blonde hair. She’d put on fresh make-up before we arrived. She was gorgeous.

Their two kids were supposed to be upstairs sleeping. The house had those old open registers built into the ceilings so warm air from the living room could rise and heat the upstairs. Every so often, we’d hear giggles coming from the register, and could see two little towheads peering down and saying things like “I love you Daddy.”

Laundromat Guy would look up and say, “Love you, too. Now back to bed, kiddoes.” He’d blow them a kiss and turn back to us.

Then he’d show us another torture device, like a thumbscrew or these brass knuckles that had little bayonet thingies on the end of each knuckle.

oh. yeah.

We were overnight guests of a man who collected medieval torture devices.

We were in the middle of nowhere. (Rhinelander, perhaps?) None of our next of kin knew where we were. Cell phones hadn’t been invented yet. And it was, as previously mentioned, a dark and stormy night.

Turns out that Laundromat Guy really was Torture Guy. He collected medieval torture instruments, which he kept in the living room. He claimed he kept them in locked cabinets when he wasn’t showing them to strangers, but still…

He said they were all registered with whoever you register torture instruments with, and the police did regular patrols of his house: “You’re really safer here than anywhere else in town.”

So there we were, in a stranger’s house with a person who collected devices with names like the “breaking wheel.” And we were planning to sleep there.

We chatted for a while more, and finally Mrs. Torture showed us to our room. It was a screened-in sleeping porch, and she had just put fresh linens on the bed. It was serene and very comfortable looking.

Right before turning the lights out, she paused at the doorway: “I don’t want to scare you, but…”

good lord. what next?

It turns out they had rescued a baby squirrel in the storm, and made a nest for it in one corner of the porch. They’d flipped up a little bit of the screen so the squirrel could get in and out if it wanted. There was a dish of food. She didn’t want us to be scared if we heard the squirrel come in or out during the night. (She was assuming, I guess, that the squirrel wouldn’t be lugging a miniature garroting machine.)

Amazingly, we slept well after our several nights of rain-drenched sleep deprivation, and Mr. & Mrs. Torture couldn’t have been more gracious and lovely. We awoke, still alive, to a sunny day and a nice breakfast before heading out, thanking our delightful hosts and their adorable children for an, er, interesting visit.

I wondered whatever happened to those people and all that stuff as soon as I started writing up this scenario. I started doing Google searches on things like “torture” + “Wisconsin” and an occasional “laundromat.”

Trust me. Searches like that will bring up enough bizarre story lines to keep the least imaginative amongst us going for quite a long while.

And then I found this: The Museum of Historic Torture Devices in Wisconsin Dells. Definitely worth a phone call.

Even though I suspect they get more than their share of crank calls, the young woman who answered the phone at the Museum of Historic Torture Devices still thought I was nuts. Duh.

She finally told me that the Museum had acquired most of its exhibits from “a private collector” but she didn’t know any more than that. Her father, who ran the museum, might know, but he wasn’t around right then. Her parents probably hadn’t even been born yet back when I met Mr. & Mrs. Torture.

I gave her my phone number, which I assume she didn’t bother to write down, given her level of interest. But she assured me that she’d have her father call me if anyone at the museum was dying (dying – get it?) to answer my questions.

And that’s it. No return call, no nothing.

I know, I know. I’m disappointed, too.

I had hoped for some kind of satisfying resolution – like those adorable children grew up to be axe murderers anyway or, alternatively, had saved the lives of thousands because they knew where the “secret clasp” on the Dreaded Chinese Death Cage was.

I’ll just close with the motto of the museum itself:

Nothing is More Frightening Than Human History.

…ain’t that the truth…

Much more than a lump of coal, actually. This is Part Two of my earlier post describing our recent road trip.

This is strip-mining and mountaintop removal in operation. Mountaintop removal to extract the coal within has been going on throughout Appalachia since the 1970’s.

According to the EPA:    [Continue reading]]]> A lump of coal

Much more than a lump of coal, actually. This is Part Two of my earlier post describing our recent road trip.

This is strip-mining and mountaintop removal in operation. Mountaintop removal to extract the coal within has been going on throughout Appalachia since the 1970’s.

According to the EPA: “Mountaintop removal/valley fill is a mining practice where the tops of mountains are removed, exposing the seams of coal. Mountaintop removal can involve removing 500 feet or more of the summit to get at buried seams of coal. The earth from the mountaintop is then dumped in the neighboring valleys.”

aerial photo from ilovemountains.org

It’s hard to comprehend the scope and scale of these excavations from a photo. Here’s a screen capture from Google maps of mountaintop removal in southeastern Kentucky. It’s more than two miles across the brown excavated area:

More than 500 mountaintops — 1.2 million acres — across Appalachia have been removed so far to extract coal. Here are a few of those mountains:

mountaintop removal - Kentucky and West Virginia

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million.

Please take some time to watch this video and to visit iLoveMountains.org for more information and interactive features that allow you to find out if your electricity comes, in part or whole, from mountaintop removal. And what you can do if the practice of mountaintop removal seems terribly wrong to you.

I realize the irony of privilege that allows me to plug in my computer to write this, especially since at least part of that power comes from Kayford Mountain, West Virginia . And to post pictures taken during a fossil-fuel consuming road trip.

Still, I just finished reading The Secret to Turning Consumers Green in Monday’s Wall Street Journal. According to the author, Stephanie Simon, it isn’t financial incentives or more information that work to change one’s behavior toward consumption and the environment. It’s guilt. And peer pressure if you think your friends or neighbors or fellow bloggers are doing something that you could or should be doing as well.

God knows the whole Russian angst thang I specialize in has given me plenty of practice with guilt.

Awareness is a first step toward understanding the impact of our own footprints, toward action, toward change.

~~~
Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find that going to the mountains is going home. ~ John Muir, 1898

What do these mountains mean to you?

For one thing, I’d been trying to cram too much into the post:

• pictures of breathtaking mountains and equally breathtaking    [Continue reading]]]> I’ve been struggling for the last couple of days to write a coherent post about our recent road trip. Usually when I’m struggling this much, it’s because I’m on the wrong path using the wrong tool.

For one thing, I’d been trying to cram too much into the post:

• pictures of breathtaking mountains and equally breathtaking switchbacks on one-lane roads to get around them
• comparison of free-wheeling road trips and seat-of-the pants writing
• unexpected pleasures just around the bend
• unexpected pitfalls just around the bend
• Appalachian arts
• environmental rape and pillage

I could spend a lifetime writing about any one of the above and barely scratch the surface. No wonder I’ve been beating my head against the keyboard. I decided to ditch writing about writing and just write about the trip (phew). I’m also dividing the post into two parts to make it more manageable.

Focus. Zoom in for a close-up or two.

Click

We try to take spring and fall road trips every year. Our pre-planning usually consists of tossing some road maps, the cooler and a pile of pet-friendly hotel directories in the back seat of the car. Once we’ve cleared day-trip distance from home, we get off the interstate and hit back roads. We explored parts of West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee this fall. Fasten your seat belts and join us. (Click on any picture if you want to see a bigger image.)

Back roads and by-ways

Given the choice between a highway and the road less traveled, this is what we choose.

A asked me why all the mountain road pictures I shot showed guard rails when most of the roads didn’t have them. It’s because on those hairy switchbacks, I was gripping the Jesus bar with my camera hand.

The Jesus bar, for those of you who haven’t done much driving in the mountains, is the handle above the car door that you cling to while whispering ‘Oh, Jesus’ as you will the car to stay on the road even as that coal truck is coming straight at you from the other direction. Passengers only, please, on the Jesus bar. Drivers keep both hands on the wheel, but you can pray if you think it might help.

Pre-planning

Not so much. If I had done any research before the trip, I would have known that the entire Red River Gorge – campgrounds, trails, kayak put-ins – had been closed at the end of June/early July due to ‘the first black bear attack on a human in modern Kentucky history.’

After reading the article, though, I can’t say I blame the bear. Hello? You see a bear coming toward you in the woods and you pull out your CELL PHONE AND TAKE PICTURES?

Some people get what they deserve.

At any rate, the cell phone guy got stitched up and lived, but that bear is still running around in the woods, which I didn’t know until we got home and I did some reading on where we’d been.

I’m sort of hoping the bear bumped into a couple that we met hiking one day. Kentucky was dry as a bone, campfires were prohibited throughout all 37,000 acres of the Gorge area, some trails were closed due to active wildfires, and this woman was SMOKING as she walked down the trail.

Ack. Calling all bears.

Arts

These would be some of those unexpected pleasures just around the bend.

Why they’re called the Smoky Mountains

Mountains: Refuge and Healing

From a roadside placard in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park:

Clingmans Dome is a sacred mountain to the Cherokees, where the Magic Lake was once seen. The Great Spirit told the Cherokees that, “if they love the animals of the earth, when they grow old and sick, they can come to a magic lake and be made well again.”

For Cherokees, these mountains have meant a refuge, homeland, and a mythical and spiritual foundation for their people. During the Indian Removal Period of the 1800′s known as the Trail of Tears, the mountains meant safety from pursuing soldiers. Today these slopes provide a refuge and offer inspiration for visitors from a hectic modern society.

Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find that going to the mountains is going home. ~ John Muir, 1898

What do these mountains mean to you?

~~
Tomorrow’s post: A lump of coal