An installment in our Blue Ridge Travel series. Most roads exist to take us somewhere else. We drive them without giving them much thought, watching the miles disappear until we reach a trailhead, a scenic overlook, or a small town. The road is simply the space between where we are and where we want to be. The…
An installment in our Blue Ridge Travel series. The change usually begins before visitors realize it. They arrive in the Blue Ridge carrying more than luggage. They bring unfinished projects, crowded schedules, traffic jams, unread messages, and all the small pressures that accumulate during an ordinary week. The mountains may be outside the windshield, but their minds…
An installment in our Appalachian Foodways series The reunion had barely started before people began lifting casserole lids and peeking beneath sheets of aluminum foil. Children darted through rooms. Chairs scraped across the floor. Someone carried in a crockpot and set it on the counter. The meal was still an hour away, but the inventory had already…
An installment in our Folklore & Legends series The Fourth of July arrives early in Ivanhoe. By midafternoon, lawn chairs begin appearing around the Jubilee Park and Horse Show Grounds. Families claim their spots for the evening festivities. Children drift between food stands while volunteers make last-minute preparations. Before the day is over, much of the community…
An installment in our Appalachian History and Culture series. The doctor lived twelve miles away. Reaching him began with a hand crank mounted on the kitchen wall. The farmer stepped to the telephone, turned the crank, and waited. Somewhere inside the local exchange, a flap dropped. The operator looked up from the switchboard. “Number, please?” The caller…
An installment in our Blue Ridge Travel series. Mention Grayson Highlands anywhere in southwest Virginia and someone is likely to ask the question: “Did you see the ponies?” Not the views, the hiking trails, or even the nearby high peaks. The ponies. For many visitors, spotting one of the shaggy little horses grazing on a mountainside becomes…
An installment in our Blue Ridge Travel series. The trail begins in familiar territory. Trees line the path. Rhododendron crowds the edges. For a while, the landscape feels much like any other hike in the southern Appalachians. Then something changes. The woods fall away. The horizon opens. Wind moves across broad stretches of grass where ponies graze…
An installment in our Appalachian History and Culture series. The newspaper clipping is yellow with age. Beneath a photograph of a simple brick schoolhouse, a headline announces the end of an era: Last Two-Room School Goes, But Without Tears. The reporter described excited children looking forward to cafeteria lunches, waxed floors, and more space. Progress had arrived,…
An installment in our Appalachian Foodways series If you’ve ever visited any of the restored mills scattered across Appalachia, you’ve probably thought what most visitors do: What a pretty place. The wheel turns. Somebody takes a picture. It’s easy to see why mills end up on postcards and calendars. But the people who built them weren’t interested…
An installment in our Appalachian Foodways series The cabbage has been gathered. Apples rest in barrels or baskets. Smoke rises from a few chimneys on cool autumn mornings. Another growing season is winding down. Yet one harvest remains. Wagons loaded with sorghum cane roll toward a local mill. The crop looks more like corn than something destined…
An installment in our Appalachian History and Culture series. The letter had probably arrived days ago. That was the frustrating part. A family living along a mountain road in 1900 might know that a son in Roanoke had written or that a husband working railroad construction had mailed word he was coming home. The letter had likely…
An installment in our Appalachian History and Culture series. A farm truck pulls up at the edge of an orchard in the Shenandoah Valley. Men climb from the back wearing dusty work clothes stenciled with large white letters: PW: Prisoner of War A few local workers pause long enough to look them over. Then the ladders come…