The Fall

The trees sway every few minutes and let down a rain of yellowed leaves. I mistakenly believed fall arrived on a slow moving train. Instead it came abruptly, chilling the evenings and mornings alike. Our firewood collection remains quite humble, but we can see the need for improvement in every brisk, foggy morning that turns to a dark and cold night. We have set to work felling trees and trimming branches in order to clear the property and bulk up our firewood. The neighborhood is still around us, absorbing the sounds of chaos we create. 

Luckily the daylight stays with us through most of our work. The cabin stays naturally lit throughout the day, despite the lush forest that surrounds us. I look forward to wasting quiet days in the cold silence of autumn, counting every knot in the cedar walls and piling logs into the cast iron fireplace. 

The Neighborhood

While still feeling apprehensive about our move from the robust and colorful city of Asheville, filled with music makers, artists and wanderers, we drove to our new log cabin through the rolling hills and lush forests of Clyde. Our neighbors are cows. Driving down the windy country roads that connect our little piece of nature to civilization, we see more cows than people. Furry cows, black cows, white cows, black and white cows, brown cows, and calves. Cows standing, lying down, grazing, alone, in groups, in two's and three's. In wide open pastures that go on for miles, and in small contained areas by the road, in pastures that climb the sides of mountains, and between the trees at the edge of the forest. These cows make me happy. It's somehow reassuring to see a place where the animals out-number the people. They become more than just farm animals, they are my neighbors.

The hills are blanketed with bright, bushy green trees. They appear soft and friendly and I imagine in the winter, as life dies, we will have the chance to see the dark, hard boulders that make up these mountains. The drive down these roads hasn't grown tiresome yet, there is so much life to see, so much corn, tobacco, goats and chickens. Red barns with white trim, horses pulling buggies, and a creek that runs along the road, sometimes bubbling quietly and other times crashing and splashing with all the roar of the Nantahala River. It's the kind of drive that makes you forget where you're going and where you've come from.