Appalachian Mountain Dreams

That’s my silhouette standing on the observation platform on Tuesday. The day was beautiful, the wildlife was scarce. I had the place to myself. This is a full 360.

You have to love a mid-winter morning that starts out with a temperature of 63 before the sun even starts to lighten the eastern horizon. I expect the sunrise will look pretty much like yesterday’s pictured below. I see from my morning forecast that the Blue Ridge’s will be flirting with getting above freezing today. All you folks living on

Yesterday, being as it was my birthday (and gorgeous to boot), I played hooky (legitimately) and took myself out on a Photo Road Trip. This shot is one of the results. There is a rural subdivision located about 25 miles from home that is a wildlife sanctuary. The buildup of this subdivision has been underway for about 20 years or

As I sit here with my first cup of coffee going through the mornings emails I see that winter is sticking around a bit this time in the Blue Ridges. I guess with Phil calling for an early spring Mother Nature decided to give us some winter to appreciate it. I can’t say winter is staying with us this past

We just went over this at work…I still think the lack of planning for travel restrictions shows a overly optimistic streak on the part of the CDC. If this goes pandemic the last place I would want to be is in the cabin of an airline with a few hundred unknown people from who knows where for an hour or three. And if it goes

This just hit the wires… Syndicated political columnist Molly Ivins died of breast cancer Wednesday evening at her home in Austin. She was 62 years old, and had much, much more to give this world. She remained cheerful despite Texas politics. She emphasized the more hilarious aspects of both state and national government, and consequently never had to write fiction.

My morning email brought me this from the Blue  Mountain Center of Meditation… January 30And then there crept a little noiseless noise among the leaves, Born of the very sigh that silence heaves.   – John Keats Today I was walking with some friends in Armstrong Redwoods Park and I was astonished at those trees. The more I looked at them, the

I drug myself out of bed early yesterday and drove into downtown Houston to the U of H Downtown for a seminar on Digital Travel Photography presented by National Geographic Traveler. It was this paragraph in the email solicitation that pulled me in: Learn the secrets of these two top nature and travel photographers, and get lots of useful, real-world

Leon Hale has a story from his childhood that tells it like it was in rural Texas. It starts like this… When the family gets together we sometimes retell the story of Uncle Billy Crockett’s camera and the famous pictures he took. The story has been retold so often that Uncle Billy himself might not recognize it. But this is

I see from my email forecast that we can expect a second day of sunshine before we go back to trying to live up to Seattle’s weather rep. It has rained (or so it seems from this side of memory) for the majority of the days in January. I guess we are making up for all of those beautiful blue