I’m not sure if it feels like summer or if it actually is summer at my wife’s sister’s place in the woods outside Asheville. We saw some signs of changing leaves in West Virginia but none here.
Rusty and I went walking with Geeta and Bob first thing. I apparently have made a name as a walker in the thirty years I have been visiting so off we went.
There are ponds and streams and the Toe River with swimming holes and rapids and spots where Bob can sit up to his chest in invigorating mountain water.
Celo community has increased the number of families seeking rural peace and quiet during and since the Covid epidemic and this is the sort of place where passersby wave and some children play unsupervised.
The forest is cool and damp but it’s t-shirt weather in the shadow of Mount Mitchell the highest point east of the Mississippi.
In Celo incomers have to apply to join the community which in the spirit of the Quaker founders has to reach consensus on the application. Neighbors know neighbors and Geeta is aware of which residents don’t like people walking through their yards. And which don’t mind.
I have got lost here as the trails look alike and wind for miles through rhododendron forests deep in the middle of nowhere. It used to be cellphone signals didn’t penetrate but now they do and I take my phone if I plan to visit parts not known to me. I can read the map on my phone as well as I used to read paper maps.
Rusty’s pretty good at finding his way home. His first visit was his first time out of the tropics and he stayed in the house listening to the lifters crunching and the red leaves falling and he was scared. Now he’s an old hand.
He doesn’t swim but he likes to rinse off in a fresh water stream from time to time and then take off running through the woods leaving me to pick my way, which I do slowly, stopping to look at the light and the trees and the plants as we go.
