Burnsville Stroll

The mountain philosopher resting from his labors. Brother in Law Bob holds the western North Carolina record for silent rocking.Which is all well and good, but when you are a restless soul like me and on vacation you have places to go and things to see.The last time I was in downtown Burnsville was in the freezing winter of 2008 and I have to say this time of year the place is much nicer. I found another of those notions stores that I photographed not so long ago in Key West.This little town calls itself the Heart of the Blue Ridge mountains and promotes itself as a healthy and cheerful place to live. My family tells me a lot of this Mayberry-like cheerfulness was son the line recently when the city, the seat of Yancey County voted on whether or not to go wet. The supporters of alcohol sales won by a sliver of votes and in addition to all the other blessings the Creator has endowed this town with, alcohol has been added to the list. I think it was Benjamin Franklin who suggested that beer was proof that God wanted us to be happy.Cheyenne and I were at a loose end while the wife was smashing up a treadmill near by so we took a short walk around the town square, pride and joy of this little town. They have managed to retain the Old Town with its government buildings but across Highway 19 one can see the visions of unloveliness inflicted on us all by Big Box Stores.
Yancey County, all 300 square miles, of it is named for Bartlett Yancey a North Carolina politician promoted posthumously to the rank of "statesman." They were happier, more trusting days back in 1828. The city is named for Captain Otway Burns who served in the Navy in 1812 and got the state legislature to create the western counties of the tobacco obsessed state. Nowadays tobacco has lost it's cachet, and it's federal subsidies incidentally, and the good clean air of the mountains is all the rage.

They had a habit back then of building nice buildings that looked good and were planned to last.

I am reliably informed there are a hundred churches within a stone's throw of where this picture was taken but clearly the concept of ecumenism is still a million miles away. As hard as I searched I found no trace of quotations from the Bhagavad Gita, Quran or the musings of Confucius. What exactly this piece of Psalmistry means in this earthy context I am not completely clear.

According to my King James edition the next verse reads thusly: Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. Though what this has to do with public flowerbeds I'm sure I don't know. All to the greater glory no doubt. However every Paradise has it's serpent and it turns out they are prejudiced against certain classes of society in their precious formal garden.Overall it is quite refreshing how dog tolerant this part of the world is, far more so than even Key West ironically. Banking and law making all crowded into one prominent part of the city. It says something doesn't it even though this isn't actually a direct arm of Goldman Sachs.Scooter alert!Big sky country. I saw these contraptions on many roofs and I forgot to ask what they were. Something to do with snow no doubt. Nasty cold stuff.I really quite like Burnsville on a hot June afternoon.More precisely at 2:45pm.Cheyenne pooped out on me at this shady point.

92 in the shade is really more of a Key West type of temperature. She cooled off on the 20 minute drive back to the remote fastness of Celo.Where I put some Burnsville bought beer in the fridge for later. Wet cities, what a blessing!

Celo Fungus And Stuff

Cheyenne being illegal on the couch upstairs at Jacob's house in Asheville. Mason led the way so it wasn't her fault.Jacob and Bevin have built themselves a modern passive solar house in this city designed as an almost off the grid home benefiting from the heat of the sun stored by day in the massive concrete foundation and returned to the house by night. last winter, the coldest on record cost them $20 a month in heating bills... And one day they plan to to incorporate expensive solar panels to reduce their daily living costs even further as they raise their children here.All of which has absolutely nothing to do with the pictures I have lined up of stuff I saw growing in the woods around Asheville. I have found over the years that there is a stereotype of mountain people in these parts that has as it's source that exciting and 1972 movie Deliverance. It told the story of a camping trip gone wrong where the city slickers upset some locals and pay a horrible price for their invasion of their secretive Georgia backwoods. The "squeal like a pig" rape scene shocked audiences at a time when such a thing as shock was possible in a theater and the image of country people as violent inbred freaks has persisted. It is a great shame because the few people I have come across on my rambles in these mountains are shy, kind, cheerful and generous in inverse proportion to their poverty. My in laws who have made these mountains their home for 35 years know far more than I do and their experiences have been uniformly positive. Such is the power of Hollywood and advertising.I grew up in a part of Italy where truffles and fungus are a way of eating and I rate a plate of mushrooms fried in garlic and olive oil as a worthwhile meal any day of the week. I am no picker of mushrooms but I find them fascinating and beautiful in their colorful resilience and I was delighted to see them sprouting in the leafy piles along the mountain trails.

Oops, there goes my dog getting in the way as usual.

Proper mushroom chasing gear is of the essence for any successful expedition.

Rhododendrons aren't technically mushrooms but they can be lovely too.

Aha, here we have tracked down elusive fungus.

Cheyenne nearly kicked this one into eternity. They were everywhere.

Battered but alive.

I have mentioned previously that in the interest of safety all roads have to be labeled nowadays.

the beauty of the change was that residents got to name their own streets. Geeta and Bob are the only residents of this lane so they got to call it thusly. Bob had proposed "Dappled Dharma" whose alliteration appealed to me but apparently common sense prevailed. Very tedious is common sense sometimes.

Driving Rolling Rock

So many winding mountain roads as though built expressly for two wheels. here I was on vacation driving a splendid but four wheeled Fusion.This place looked nice- in the summer sun- give it a few weeks and then it will be leafless and frosty and a reminder that the Florida Keys are the only place to be in winter.We blew through the town of Boone in our motorized exploration of the mountains north of Asheville. Boone is home to the Appalachian State University -never heard of it- a fact supported by the sudden appearance of young people slouching along the sidewalks in a manner reminiscent of students the world over.Boone itself looked unremarkable enough, a variety of cute restaurant names, pubs and gathering places for the young and supposedly studious, but my sister in law had planted a seed in her sister's head and we were bound through this town elsewhere. Scooters are everywhere, at least when the sun is shining. Whether or not this rider has health insurance he is wearing the state's requirement on his head. One more reason to prefer Florida's flat roads.My wife's role as chief financial officer never ends and she had some papers to copy and fax or something so I resumed my important family role of chief dog entertainer, which meant she and I climbed the retaining wall behind Staples to get a better view across the valley.

There wasn't much to see from our grassy vantage point and soon enough Cheyenne and I were recalled to earth and resumed our winding drive to the place recommended by Geeta. We were to find lunch somewhere in the strangely named town of Blowing Rock twenty minutes from Boone.The primary requirement was shady parking for young Cheyenne, the secondary requirement was somewhere interesting to eat. The main tourist street was crowded so I dived down a leafy side road and found Cheyenne her spot. Which caused us to pass this place off the main drag, thanks to the dog's parking requirements, so we stopped in:The dining room closed at 2pm so I was ready to call it off but my wife is made of sterner stuff and the young woman in the dining room ushered us to a table saying "It's one fifty eight so we must still be open." We need to come back to this place this winter.

The town is called Blowing Rock because before Europeans showed up local Indians (Catawba and Cherokee I'm told) noticed windy cliff face conditions in the area and the tourist authority says there is a Romeo and Juliette legend featuring lovers from both tribes who met here and he, despairing, threw himself off the cliff but the strong winds blew him back up again into her arms. Aw! Sob. Gimme beer.Beer and fried green tomatoes go well together. My wife thinks this might be a version she wants to replicate, beans and a vinegar based dressing that she had never before tasted.I was ready to eat a sandwich and move on to Linville Gorge but we ended up with a two beer sit down lunch. Duck salad for her and fried scallop sandwich for me. I had never had such a thing and never expected it in this mountain fastness but I expect I just need to get out more.It was profoundly warm in the sun outside especially out of the breeze but the garden looked magnificent through the screen. It is perhaps another measure of my ignorance but Blowing Rock claims to be high on lists of desirable places to be among travel writers and "professionals" of that trade. It also claims to be well liked by Southern Living magazine. I like it too well enough for a lunch stop now.Our friendly young waitress told us Boone with it's box stores is the center of commerce but Blowing Rock, her home town, is the laid back place to be in these valleys. She did mention her impending move from home to China, and as she didn't elaborate we were left to speculate that she was either going to trade credit derivatives or to save souls. She was so sweet I don't think Goldman Sachs or the Honkers and Shankers Bank would want her ilk. Soul saving it is, I think and I expect they will enjoy having her around as much as we did.

This was decidedly not the place to ask to photograph her chest but after we had paid our $46 tab we hiked back to the car to make sure Cheyenne was enjoying herself as much as we were. A quick shot or two of some flowers in the delightful gardens and lunch was quite over for the day.We then started the sunny hike back to the main drag for a quick peek at Blowing Rock. There is a pretty little park at the top of the hill (NO DOGS) and a home made ice cream parlor which was attracting attention.This town should really be sickly sweet and cloying but there is something fresh and innocent and charming about western North Carolina that breaks down the skeptic in you. Even this lot didn't look like a movie set,they looked just..happy? I need to take a leaf out of their book.

I had competition when it comes to looking out for my dog.Women yes; dogs no. Grrr.Ice cream anyone? We were stuffed already thanks and the heat index was getting close to explosive.

Cheyenne's eye view of a 90 degree sidewalk.

We took a shady short cut back to the car, stopping along the way for a delicious discarded snack, an unconsidered trifle in a planter.Cheyenne was selflessly helping to keep North Carolina's prettiest little town looking it's best.