Top 'O Beech

Here's a picture taken at the top of Beech Mountain, North Carolina.

Sunday was a beautiful day for skiing -- we took close to 10 runs before we called it a day.

Monday? Not so good. It poured rain last night. Good day to be working, which we are...

High hopes for tomorrow. :o)

Another Rainbow!!

This picture was taken off of our back porch in North Carolina.

Another beautiful rainbow...

Wooly Worm Festival

We came up to the High Country of North Carolina to attend the Woolly Worm Festival.

Here's how the event got started...according to the Avery County website:

"Back in the late 1970s, the editor of the now-defunct Mountain Living Magazine, Jim Morton, was preparing to include a Woolly Worm Forecast in the winter issue of the magazine. He photographed the first Woolly Worm he saw to use in formulating the prediction and illustrating his story, but the next day he saw a second worm that looked completely different from the first.

'That's when it struck me that we needed some formal procedure to use to decide which was going to be the official worm for making the winter forecast,' said Morton. "

And so, the event was born!

There are craft vendors, food vendors with specialities like funnel cakes, smoked turkey drumsticks, and more. But, the most important part of the day is the worm races. You can purchase and name your worm. About 25 worms at a time race. The way it works is that you purchase and name your worm, go to the stage and when the announcer says "go", you put your worm on a string. The goal is to see which worm gets to the top of the string first. The best part is watching the people cheer on their worms. They clap, they yell, they cajole, they threaten. It's very competitive. Sometimes the worm just hangs on, going nowhere. Other times, the worm will climb up almost to the top, only to climb down to the bottom.

At the end of the weekend, all of the finalists race each other and the fastest worm wins. Then that worm is used to predict the weather for the winter. Gee, I wonder what kind of winter we will have...

PS. I almost forgot to tell you...my favorite part of the day is not listening to the hilarious names of the worms or watching the crazy people cheering their worms onto victory. My favorite part is watching people tote around special "worm houses" that you can buy for your worm after your worm has done its work. People walk around, carrying these boxes, filled with their trusty worm.

From the Low Country to the High Country

We live in the Low Country -- and this weekend we flew to the High Country, over the green and brown landscape dotted with farms and developments and fields, some cultivated, some not.

(I loved looking at all the various shades of color, from the bright green of the crops to the greyish green of the grasses and tawny green of the marshgrasses to the red clay of the land and the deep brown of the dirt. In fact, I took some pictures from the plane to aid me in my color selection for the house.)

There is nothing like getting away from your home, with its routines, its intimate insularity and regularity to give you a fresh perspective on things. Particularly those things which are complicated and distressing and perplexing.

And, fresh it was. The crisp mountain air, the bright colors of the trees and the mist, all contributed to a vernal freshness that was refreshing and inspiring.