Exploring

I spend most of my free time writing. It is, after all, what I consider a job even though I have rarely earned anywhere approaching half the amount I make as a laborer (over the course of a year). To that end I sometimes rarely have the opportunity to read the books I want to read, see the movies I want to see, or visit the forests I want to explore.

I've had to force myself to take something of a break.

In the next few weeks I hope to catch up on some sorely missed reading and to watch a few movies. And I hope to get up to the mountains to go hiking somewhere I can find some solitude. We have a four-day trip planned to southwestern Virginia where I'm going to bag some peaks I've wanted to climb for quite a number of years.

I genuinely love to write, but I need to take a bit of a break from the constant act of creating fiction.

One thing about the southern Appalachians: they are completely green.

Self-portrait on Mackey Mountain. This area is home to many tracts of virgin forest. The largest poplar trees in Pisgah National Forest are located here. This was also the first land to be designated as National Fores in the USA.

Cascade on Mackey Mountain.

Mackey Mountain forest. Looks beautiful still, but the hemlocks are all gone--killed off by hemlock wooly adelgid.