Doctor HP Flowers

Cute and Crinkly

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     It's the end of May and early June.  Great days for backroads.  Greens begin to mature.  All's fresh and lush.  And the chilrens are still in school.
     It so happens these days lie in the middle of a micro season long called Blackberry Winter.  Characterized by tumultuous weather and the proliferation of wild blackberry whose peaking flowers make hills and fields look dusted with snow.  Especially so this year soaked by unusually generous rainfall.
     I love the showy fence lines and should have stopped a hundred times, but did this once.  First admiring from a distance, then moving close.  Close enough to hear the sensuous hummm from a chorus of bees slurping with a meadow of smiles.  Each indifferent to the wealth of dusted snow flakes with cute crinkly petals.

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© d090525-034  Blackberry on Fence
  Upper Paw Paw Road
  Madison County, North Carolina
  Monday 25 May 2009

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Gentleman, Start Your Camera

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     Every backroads escapade has a first stop.  Usually identified prior to departure.  It serves as a warp, a pivot away from city affairs, a liberation, a place and time for transformation to life on the road.
     This year, as in others, a little known spot in the headwaters of the French Broad River provided the phone booth for Clark Kent's inexorable metamorphosis.  A spot always friendly to picture taking, soothing to stretched nerves, and portentous for the absorbing backroads ahead.

    

© d090524-006  Rainy Day on River
  North Fork French Broad River
  Transylvania County, North Carolina
  Sunday 24 May 2009

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Epistemological Indifference

“Oh what a tangled web we weave,
 When first we practice to deceive”

     -- Sir Walter Scott

    

© d031012-023  Indifference
  Murphy, North Carolina
  Cherokee County
  Sunday 12 October 2003

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Red Barn

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© d081202-004  Red Barn
  Alexander County, North Carolina
  Tuesday 2 December 2008

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Lost Highway

I'm a rolling stone, all alone and lost
For a life of sin, I have paid the cost
When I pass by, all the people say
Just another guy on the lost highway.

Lyrics by Leon Payne
Recorded by Hank Williams Sr.
September 1949

© r0737-09  State Road 209
  Spring Creek, North Carolina
  Madison County
  Thursday 14 June 1994

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...with Gas Pump

     Parts of Alexander County are very friendly to backroad gawking and photography.  This shot, taken a week ago today, is the first from my recent winter trip.  Ground level steaming from winter dew did not show as well as I had hoped.  Heart level steaming was unaffected.

    

© d081202-003  Old Gas Pump
  Caldwell Pond Road
  Alexander County, North Carolina
  Tuesday 2 December 2008

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A Day Trip Away

     My old backroads buddy H-Man Slim, superb map manager and creative navigator (tho' occasionally prone to rookie mistakes), recently demonstrated the folly of my complacent attitude that new roads within a day's drive cannot be found.  Without laser guidance or global positioning H-Man sniffed out a magnificent watershed in the Cherokee National Forest named Citico Creek.  Sporting stove-sized boulders strewn about by some epochal catastrophe, the creek maintains a wadable roadside intimacy for mile after agreeable mile.  We marveled and filled flash drives with memorable zeros and ones. A day trip away.

    

© d081025-042  Citico Creek
  Cherokee National Forest
  Monroe County, Tennessee
  Saturday 25 October 2008

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Bend in the Road

Now imagine
A bend in the road…

    

© d080528-002  Gray Hills in Storm
  County Road 1433
  Alleghany County, North Carolina
  Wednesday 28 May 2008

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Laurel in Stormy Light

     This shot was taken along the Blue Ridge Parkway, near mile post 238 elevation 3400 feet, in Alleghany County, North Carolina.  A formidable storm cloud exhaled a radiant  breath of diaphanous silver light.  The Laurel and I were both caught off guard.
     Fourteen years later, actually 10 days ago, I splashed by this spot in a driving rain wet brakes shuddering with scornful displeasure.  Did not stop for another shot.

    

© r0732-04  Mountain Laurel
 Blue Ridge Parkway, Mile 238
 Alleghany County, North Carolina
 Friday 10 June 1994

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The Dappled Surge

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     Silent, like the shadow from a passing cloud, the Spring Line glides swiftly Northward.  Inexorable, and ghostly at times.  Appearing here, disappearing there.  Leaving behind but sensations and impressions that must wait another year to be affirmed.  Don't blink; don't hesitate.  Follow along, find the crest and hop aboard the dappled surge 'till it heaves its final sigh. Leaving me undone, jostling for another wave.

    

© r1374-00  Spring Line
  Cherokee County, North Carolina
  Saturday 23 April 2005

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