The Game Sucked for Panthers Fans

Short blog today. We went to see Faye, my mother-in-law yesterday for her birthday, (her 84th!). Our intention was also to watch the Super Bowl game. Now, under normal circumstances neither my wife nor I am in the least bit interested in the Super Bowl. But this year the local team (Carolina Panthers) represents the NFC, so we figured we'd watch. However, the Panthers were playing so poorly that we left to head back home shortly before half-time. And Carole's mom was really tired after the birthday celebration anyway.

Don't forget...the serialization of my novel THE CLAN is available at Channillo. You can grab subscribe at this website.

Carole decked out in her Panther stuff. Dig that crazy hat!

I got a hat.

Happy 84th, Faye!

Dystopia and Apocalypse

A lot of science fiction writers and science fiction fans complain that both the science fiction field and fantasy field is mired in dystopian and apocalyptic books and stories. And they're right. One rarely sees a great forward-thinking novel of light and progress in either genre these days. The industry seems to be led by viruses and invasive species and reanimated dead and planet-ending disasters on a solar scale.

Gone are the days of the future as viewed through rose-tinted glasses where humans move beyond the bounds of our own planetary system and branch out into the cosmos to explore and make contact with other space-faring species. These days when there's a book about going into deep space, it's to fend off an alien invasion and grapple in a struggle that means the very end of existence of Homo sapiens.

And the epic stories of people in fantastic worlds questing across green mountains and verdant fields full of elves and dragons and fairies to find magic or treasure or love (or all three): those are dead and gone. These days it's another fight to the finish with the heroes toe-to-toe with the vilest of things, ready to take them down or see all of civilization drown in its own blood.

What happened?

Well...what I think happened is that we actually are living in at least a dystopia if not actually an apocalypse. And we might already be in the midst of that final death-affirming collapse.

Look around. What's selling in the world of fantastic and speculative fiction? People being eaten alive by animated corpses. Tales of magic and steel drenched in gore and the worst kind of fatalism with no chance of redemption or salvation. Worlds at war with one another over fertile turf with the winner getting the spoils and the losers finding species-wide oblivion. Publishers abound with Fascist tales of racist gun porn--that shit sells. Brother, does it sell!

And why is this? What's going on? Why are so many trapped so completely in these worlds of total death without so much as a glimmer of gold or life or happiness?

Again: we actually are living in something akin to what the religious call the end times. It's just not the end times their silly holy books claimed would come to us. The reality is something worse. Our planet's atmosphere is on fire around us. You can deny it, but you'd be the worst and lowest of idiots to do so. The seas are being poisoned and spoiled and almost daily vomit up immeasurable tons of their dead in the form of fish kills and whale beachings and vast tides of crimson death. Humans fell all of the forests and kill all of the wild animals and pollute all of the rivers and lakes. We even carve down the mountains and toss their bones into the valleys to bury the waterways.

We have raped Mother Earth and frankly--to paraphrase those addled street preachers of old--the end is fucking near.

People deny it. No one likes to acknowledge their own mortality. Especially if they brought it down on their own heads through the worst forms of waste and debauchery. But that's what we've done and that's where we are. And it's coming out in our popular art: films and television and books.

We go without any winters now. The mountains rarely know snow. Droughts expand and rivers dry up and the aquifers retreat to the point of no return as our fellows on this globe, the animals who have been with us for all of these many thousands of years, lie down and die before us.

Yeah. We did it and we know it's coming. We might not want to admit that we did it and that we brought it on ourselves...but we did. Our subconscious is talking to us.

So keep buying your guns. They won't do you any good unless you want to kill yourself or commit murder with them. Read your zombie novels. Those will reinforce your distrust of your neighbors and further inflame your racist madness. Dream of weapons in space, because humans aren't going on deep space journeys anymore. We made out little jaunts around Luna and that's over; that's as close as we'll ever get. So stay glued to your TV and let the propagandists tell you which nations to hate  and which religions to despise and prepare your children for war and send them off as cannon fodder. That's not going to change--we'll keep on doing that right up till the end. That crap won't stop until we've all gone down with the ship.

They say drowning is actually okay after that initial panic.

We'll find out, I reckon.

I actually liked this apocalyptic nightmare of a novel. Because this guy got it right, I think. He spelled it out pretty much the way I think it's going to go down. Not in a flash of atomic fire or because of a giant asteroid doing the smack-down. We're going to merely drown in the ecological equivalent of the pool of shit we have created.

Types

I've been in the business of being (and trying to be) a professional writer for several decades. Since I was in my mid-20s. Learning how to write and going about the labor of submitting and selling fiction was a long, slow, painful process. In that time it was both my pleasure and my misfortune to encounter other professional writers. As with people in general, many of those encounters were unpleasant.

Why?

It took a long time for me to decipher, but mainly I discovered that most of the writers I met were selfish and mad for themselves.

The act of writing and submitting work is an exercise in egomania. I mean...to think that your work is worthy of entertaining and/or enlightening other people...that's a terribly self-centered thing to even contemplate. What are the odds of your being right? Of your work actually being worthy of having been seen, of amusing the reader in a positive way, or educating another person or sparking them to think about things with a new form of insight? To just think of putting your work out among the great readership is to be egotistical.

That said, admitting that writing is--at least in part--the voicing of ego, there are other extremes, and I face these extremes almost daily.

Most of the writers I have encountered online, through the mails, and in person--these folk have taken ego several levels beyond sanity. Forget about pleasant company, these cats are pure terror and unadulterated pain to be around.

One of my least favorites of this lot is a guy who, having experienced some mild success in writing, began to crow of himself as "a brand". He would constantly speak of himself in third-person terminology as "the SoandSo Brand" (I'm not giving him the satisfaction of mentioning his name. Advertising and all that sort of thing, you know.) Every time I heard him say this, or saw him write this, I wanted to either puke out my guts, or punch him in his sanctimonious face. He loved to announce in this way that he was no longer a person toiling at a job, but had transcended that existence and had entered a new level of being.

And even some of my close friends who are writers talk about how great they are and how wonderful their current project is...as if bragging about it and screaming it aloud will make it so.

My message to them is this:

Cut it the fuck out.

Really. Just stop it. The fact that you wrote something is enough admission of ego. The act of having shepherded that work into print is a further voicing of your mad self-centered existence. When you step beyond this and enter that next phase of assholiness you have become a slimy salesman, a seller of snake oil, a mover of sub-prime interest, a scumbag politician.

So just cut it the fuck out with the false bravado of how great you are and how perfectly sparkling your work. Because mainly it's all a lie, and truly--except for a few idiots--you're not impressing anyone and only making yourself look like a goddamned idiot.

You think you're Hemingway. But you're not. You're this guy.

Down By Law

Some of my favorite movies appeal to me for no more mysterious reason than that I like them without having investigated the reasons why. Sometimes when I encounter a particularly attractive film I don't try to read anything into it and I don't want to analyze it and I don't give shit-one as to what the writer or director or cinematographer or actors were trying to say in subtext.

I just want to dig the show.

One such film for me is "Down by Law", written and directed by Jim Jarmusch.

Before I say anything else about it I need to point out something. I first saw this film when I was a young man and I had never seen anything like it. Now, being a typical American, almost every movie one encounters here--if you discount romance films--are very violent. And while I knew that I was watching a broad and human comedy, I kept wondering where the guns were, where the stabbings were going to be shown, where the bloody beat-down was going to occur, when the first murder would take place.

Yeah...as a viewer I was a diesel engine on a narrow-gauge track.

Oddly, there is a killing in the film, but it's off camera and only referred to and is strangely funny. Similarly, there is one act of mild violence in the film and it is also oddly humorous. The only real action features some running and is absolutely hilarious when taken into context with the scene immediately preceding it.

I often recommend this movie. Most Americans I meet don't care for it. Because...well...it's not full of gun-play and explosions and revenge-killings. We Americans are freaking weird that way.

Down by Law is an extremely well structured piece of art. The black and white photography and the grimy settings in the Louisiana low country are perfectly meshed. All three of the major actors are wonderful in their roles. John Lurie, best known these days as a director, is very good as a pathetic pimp. Tom Waits turns in a great performance as a prickly jackass every bit as rough as his gravel-voice would indicate. And this was the first time I ever saw Roberto Benigni who pretty much steals every scene he's in. If you pay attention, you also will note a very young Ellen Barkin in a role as Waits' girlfriend.

Well...there you are. As I said, I'm not here to dissect the thing. Only to say how much I enjoyed it and to let you know that I recommend the film. After all of these decades it remains one of my favorite movies.

Yeah. Benigni steals most of the scenes.

Yep. That's Ellen Barkin. Must be the first time I ever saw her.

Testing the screws.

Waits tries his best, but Benigni takes the prize.

Now what?

My Book Trailers

Back in the day when I was really pushing to promote my books out of my own pocket--since publishers rarely do that anymore--I cobbled three book trailers together. One was for THE FLOCK from Tor Books, and the other two were for books published by Severed Press: HISSMELINA, and THE LIVING END.

Now, I never claimed to be much of a salesman, nor am I a graphics artist. I can do either of these things if I'm forced to, but neither are in my area of expertise or skill. I pretty much just wing it.

I think I did okay in producing this trio of book trailers, but it would have been nice to have something of truly professional caliber to push the books. 

Still, I may do one or two in the future to see if I can improve on my video production skills.

THE LIVING END book trailer.

THE LIVING END.

THE FLOCK book trailer.

THE FLOCK.

HISSMELINA book trailer.

HISSMELINA.

Extinction Event

When I was a young man working on honing my writing skills, I had the good fortune of

meeting a lot of the old pulp writers. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the world of the "pulps", they were magazines printed on low-quality paper, often featuring garish covers to attract readers. There were, during the great days of the pulps, hundreds of these magazines on the newsstands. And then...slowly at first and then more rapidly...they died off. It was like a vast extinction event.

When I was speak with these old veterans of the prose world they would tell me of how they could make a good living simply sitting at home with their typewriters churning out one story after another, or one novel after another, and selling them to the pulp magazines of the day. Most of these guys would tell me how they'd sold the first story they ever sent out! It wasn't that they had started out with such great skill, it was just that there were so very many fiction markets that they had a treasure-trove of editors from which to choose.

Pulps at that time were similar in many ways to the comic book markets of that industry's great days. There were groups of pulps for every kind of interest and sub-interest you can imagine. Crime stories. Cop stories. Murder mysteries. Fantasy mags. Horror titles. Horse fiction. Publications about hunters. Romance tales. Kinky romance tales. Aviation magazines. Dog stories. Cat stories. Mainstream yarns. If you could think of a title and purpose for a magazine, then it likely existed.

A lot of the guys I had met and spoken with had written for western pulps and science fiction pulps. And each of them would tell me how they could pay the bills just writing short stories. Screw the novels--they didn't need to do that. All they had to do was sit down and write a respectable, competent, fun short story and it was money for groceries and housing and clothes and maybe a trip to the beach with the family.

And then...one by one...the magazines began to close down. The newsstands changed (and vanished). The fiction publications dwindled and faded until there was no way to earn a living writing short stories anymore. The most talented of the lot adapted and learned to write and sell novels, news articles, what-have-you. Most of them just stopped and went to work in the shops and factories or wherever they could labor for a living.

When I would ask them why--what was it that had killed off the goose that laid those wonderful eggs, they would each and every one of them respond with the same answer:

"Television."

Like some extinction events in the world of biology, it was this one huge thing that slammed into the landscape and changed everything forever. The television was the giant asteroid for the pulp magazines. It created the enormous, dead boundary that killed off an entire way of life. Before the popular availability of television one can examine a rich and varied fossil record of amazing pulp fiction. After...almost nothing remained.

I began to think of these old guys and the world in which they worked because of something that happened to me this year. For Christmas I got one of those USB devices that allows you access to a limitless number of movies and episodic video. I can watch pretty much any damned thing I feel like watching.

Normally I read about two or three books a week. Since I got that damned little TV device on December 25, 2015 I have read...zero books. That's right. Not one freaking book. I haven't read any books and I haven't purchased any books.

Shit. And I know better.

The old dudes were spot on the money.

Lazy Day

I took it easy yesterday. I bought a plastic strainer so that I can search for minerals and fossils in local creeks. Just a simple plastic colander. Yesterday was the first time I've tried using this method to look for stuff, and I didn't spend a lot of time messing around with it. But I did find a nice piece of white quartz. If I can find enough decent stones I may drag out my father-in-law's old tumbler and lapidary stuff and polish them up.

Spent a little time there on Gar Creek. The most interesting things I saw were animal tracks. Some were quite fresh. In fact, I think the deer had just passed by before I got there. I saw some fox tracks, but they were so faint that I couldn't get good images of them with the camera.

Since the creek was near my wife's family church I drove over to clean up the grave site where her father and brother are buried. There wasn't much to do beyond pulling up some stray tufts of grass and brushing off the headstone.

Then I headed back where I checked on the backyard hemlocks and am very pleased to see that there has been no new sign of the wooly adelgid infestation. The insecticide I treated them with last year seems to have completely killed off the hwa. I used both a spray application and soil drench. I think I killed off the little scumbags for good. From what I understand, the hemlocks shouldn't need another treatment for a few years. I'll keep my eyes peeled to make sure.

Gar Creek. Didn't find much. I'll try again another day.

I think the deer had just passed by. (Water was slowly filling the tracks when I found them.)

Raccoon tracks. I also spotted some little gray fox tracks but they were too faint to photograph effectively.

One last look at Gar Creek before I walked back to the truck.

 

Cleaned off the Henderson family plot.

Checked on the back yard hemlocks. So far, they seem to be completely free of hemlock wooly adelgid.

Accessible.

I love to hike to see waterfalls. My favorites are the waterfalls that are so far out in the middle of nowhere that not only aren't there any roads leading to them, there aren't any trails. You have to bushwhack over long distances, over steep slopes, and down into plunging gorges to see them.

One day I was at a waterfall that's fairly easy to get to. You can park about a mile away and walk to it over highly engineered, well-graded trails. To get a good view of it I walked up a side trail and found that there was a wooden viewing platform with benches. And a handicap-accessible sign.

Soon after that I realized that there was a gravel road leading to this spot. Another hiker showed up. "What is this place, anyway?" I asked him.

"It's for handicapped people in wheelchairs. The park rangers can give them access to a gated road and they can be driven here and roll their wheelchairs in or use their crutches to see the waterfall," he told me.

"Huh," I said, the fantasy of wilderness at that point completely blown.

After sitting there for about five minutes taking photos we heard the sound of automobile tires crunching gravel. A big SUV appeared. Full of people who had gotten permission to use the road and the handicap-accessible spot to see the waterfall.

A family of American lardasses oozed out of the vehicle. Not a one of them under 300 pounds.

Handicapped.

Right.

Triple Falls. You can hike to see it. Or if you're a pathetic sack of lard the park rangers will give you the keys to the road where you can sit on your disgusting, fat ass and look at it from the comfort of your freaking gas guzzler.

I ain't gonna tell you where this one is. Some jackass will lobby for a ramp to be built to it because hiking there isn't "fair" to everyone.

Reality Sent Wernher Von Braun to Bed Without His Dreams

I love science fiction as much as the next nerd. However, most people take that stuff much too seriously. They think it's all going to come to pass--interstellar travel, terraforming other planets, encountering alien civilizations, and other such fantasies.

Worst of all of those fantasies are the ones wherein people think we'll find another Earth-like planet.

The odds of finding a planet where we can breathe the atmosphere and not get blasted to smithereens by radiation are...hmm...let's see: ZERO!

It ain't happening. It's a fantasy and a pipe dream.

What are the ingredients. The Goldilocks zone around a sun pretty much exactly the same mass, age, and activity as Sol. A planet not only approximately the exact same mass as Earth, but with the precise chemical and elemental makeup with active tectonics and vast systems of oceans and rivers of H2O at the triple-point of water. A planet that has a HUGE moon so large that what you're looking at is a double-planet system--said "moon" helping to keep the main planet's core heated and the magnetic shield in action. Which means, a planet that was smashed at some point earlier in its life by a Mars-sized body that it absorbed, kicking off a Moon-sized portion of the impactor into orbit so that the duo would form said double-planet system.

Yeah...we're going to find exactly that somewhere in the galaxy where we can travel in our faster--than-light vehicles. LOL!

Go watch a Stark Trek show, my fellow geeky mooks.

Yeah....We're going to find this concoction.

Reality slapped Von Braun in the face and sent him to oblivion with the realization that it will never happen.

Honesty

A few years ago I was a guest at a science fiction convention. They treated me well and gave me a prominent place on panels and a nice spot to sell my books. All gratis, for being a guest at their show.

It was an okay experience. I met a few interesting people but I didn't sell a single book.

Some time after that they sent me a questionnaire. They wanted me to list the good things about the show and the bad things, if any, about it. They even went out of their way to mention that there would be no repercussions for mentioning any negative aspects of the show or how it was run.

I complied, with complete honesty and absolutely no rancor, since I had been well-treated. But I did point out some things about the show which I thought needed improving.

I was not invited back. Ever.

Alas.

Well, Hell...I got to meet Jeffrey Combs!

Hello...Bobby. Don't come play with us. Not ever..or ever...or ever.

And Then There's the Bad.

I love to write about the great places where Carole and I go to camp and kayak and hike. It's fun to recall them and I think it's a nice thing to do to tell other interested parties about our favorite spots.

But sometimes we visit places that are less than pleasant. Most of the time I don't want to think about those locations, and then there's that old saying about not saying anything if you can't say something nice. So I generally stay mum when it comes to lousy times at crappy places.

One spot that I kept meaning to talk about and haven't for some time is Cascade Lake Recreation Area. I had decided to mention it again--and how lousy a place it is to stay--and was looking up some links when I discovered that it's closed with no plans for reopening. So here goes what was wrong with it:

The campground was the closest National Forest-related campground that we could find to DuPont State Forest. Du Pont does not currently have its own campground and I'm not sure if there are any plans for it to ever have one. I've heard rumors, but nothing definite. We don't generally like private campgrounds because--frankly--there are a lot of negative aspects to private campgrounds and we almost always have a negative experience at private campgrounds.

My understanding was the Cascade Lake Campground is technically owned by the National Forest Service* but is rented out to a concessionaire. I don't know why so many state and Federal parks do this, but for some reason they argue that it's cheaper to let someone else hire out the premises for a chunk of any profits that are generated. One most often runs into this kind of operation with the hotels in such National Parks as Yellowstone and Glacier and Yomsemite, etc. The land and structures belong to us...the citizens...but the profits go to a private concern. Personally, I think this is a dumb way to run things, but there you are.

Cascade Lake Recreation Area was run like this. It was a concession owned by a non-governmental operation. The second we arrived we encountered what we almost always do with this kind of operation: rude, inept assholes acting like prickly little Nazis. We had to wait at the entrance for about 45 minutes before we could get in because the people admitting campers were idiots who didn't know what they were doing. In addition, they were very rude to my wife. Yes, I'm sure they were snippy because they were stressed, but that's the kind of thing we generally encounter from these concessionaires who win their contracts by being either the lowest bidder, or the only bidder.

From there it just got worse. The campground is on a nice, man-made lake, but it was extremely crowded. Also, a lot of the chores were farmed out to volunteers who weren't paid, but were given free campsites for doing odd jobs such as customer relations and cleaning up the garbage (of which there was much). The place was packed, messy, poorly maintained, and noisy. When we did encounter anyone who worked there it was a negative experience (imagine the Soup Nazi from the Seinfeld TV series).

So, briefly, I would never again stay at the Cascade Lake Recreation Area unless it was turned back over to the National Forest Service completely. As it is, I'm sure its closure is only temporary so that the slimy concessionaires can argue for better terms before "giving in" and taking on the job for a much better piece of the action. (Action which they will not ever get from our business.)

This was our campsite. It looks okay and was across the road from the lake. But it was in direct sunlight and was on an artificially created area produced by gouging out the side of a hill and dumping the fill into a wetland.

My nephew Mark and I in 2008. The reason we camped at Cascade Lake was for easy access to Du Pont State Forest which is totally insane with amazing waterfalls.

This one is called Merry Falls and was at the head of Cascade Lake near the dam.

Merry Falls.

*I just learned that it was never a National Forest property, but always privately owned. But it was run by the CFAIA which I had always associated with the National Forest Service. (My mistake.)

Roads Closed!

When Carole and I decided to take the sled up to the high country to try some hills, our plan was to hit a state park where there are plenty of hills and no worry about trespassing on private property. The nearest park where we knew there to be appropriate grassy slopes covered in snow was Stone Mountain State Park. Upon arriving we found the gate lowered and the park closed. At this place the snow was about ten inches deep. Bad, but not horribly so. And it was still snowing at that time. Still...we were disappointed and headed to the next possible park: New River.

However, while for some reason the park service had opted to plow the road and open the park, we found that there were no good places to sled. Too many trees and no open fields. Okay, fine. We then headed toward Mount Jefferson State Natural Area. It used to be a state park, but was downgraded to "Natural Area" for various reasons (park size being one of them). At first it looked as if the park was going to be open. We drove up the road until we saw a barrier and a sign indicating that the road (and the park) were closed. Shit.

We didn't discover until later that snowfall totals at most of these parks was in excess of two feet. Too much snow for the parks to safely open. In fact, Mount Mitchell State Park not far from where we were at one point, recorded 66 inches of snowfall during the storm. Impressive.

Still, we had a good time walking around in the snow and taking photos.

Park closed. Alas.

White pines in the snow.

Deep snow (about fourteen inches here, we were told. But no good spots to sled!

I started the video just a little too late to catch a pair of white-tail does running across the road in front of us.

Goodbye till later, New River State Park!

We thought we'd visit the dairy in downtown West Jefferson and buy some fresh butter. But they were closed. Everything was closed.

The creaking noise was made by two hardwood trees growing so close together that their trunks were grinding against one another in the wind.

Trailers

Carole and I dearly love our Casita travel trailer. However, at some point we will end up spending a lot of our time on the road, going from Forest to Forest and National Park to National Park. When this happens, we'll be gone for many weeks and months at a time. Our Casita is great for trips of shorter duration and wonderful for getting us into backcountry places where your average travel trailer or motorhome cannot go. Also, we will likely apply to be campground hosts from time to time, and most state park and National Park and National Forest campgrounds won't allow people who have smaller travel trailers to be campground hosts. Why? Because they (probably rightly) figure that people cooped up in very tiny trailers will get stir crazy and opt to leave, putting the campground at risk of having no host (since it's largely a volunteer deal with the host getting a free place to stay for doing various tasks for the privilege of using the campsite for an extended period).

So we've been reluctantly looking around at different travel trailer designs and layouts and manufacturers for the day when we'll sell little Casita-girl and hit the road in a larger trailer. We saw one today that we liked. Generally, we have always wanted to steer away from trailers with slideouts, but after researching this particular make we may opt for the model pictured below. It's still a small enough trailer to get us into the out-of-the-way campgrounds that we prefer, but is large enough so that we would be accepted as campground hosts from time to time if we so desired. Also, it's less likely for us to go stir crazy if we're cooped up in this larger trailer due to weather events.

It's a likely possibility.

The kitchen area of the trailer. It has a gas oven which we have been searching for in a travel trailer.

The bed area. The bed is aligned with the length of the trailer instead of side-to-side as with our current trailer. No climbing over one another to get to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

The bath room. It has a large pantry to the left which I couldn't show. Storage for towels, extra clothing, soap, shampoo, etc.

And the outside of the trailer. As I said, we're not big fans of slideouts, but it does add a great deal of space to the living area, and we researched how to care for the option to prevent leaking and deterioration, motor failure, etc. We also liked the awning on this trailer.

New River Ice.

Carole and I stopped yesterday at the New River State Park here in NC to check out the campground. All of the other state parks were closed due to the snow, but for some reason the state had plowed the roads for this one and had opened the gates. I haven't a clue as to why they opened this one.

What was interesting to us was that the New River was in the process of icing over. There were unending rafts of snow and ice floating on the surface of the river. Given several days of this kind of weather I'm sure the river would freeze over or produce ice jams (I've seen it, but not in a couple of decades). But the weather is supposed to break, and warm up. No ice jams this year.

That's the New River down there. covered in floating ice and snow.

I'll try to post some other video tomorrow.

As Crazy Horse said...

Hoka hey, boys and girls!

Kerouac called them. "Pomes". I used to write a lot of pomes. Not so much anymore. I should get back to it.

"Alas"

by

James Robert Smith

Floating the Sea of Life
I leave
a multitude of injured right wing morons
and
whining butt-hurt liberals
in my wake.

I am amused. And know
that I am doing something the way
it should be done.

Bob on Fuchthalottayu Creek. (With paddle.)

Southern Mountains

"Hey, Bob! Why do you like hiking the southern mountains so much?"

Well...this is why.

Peaks of Otter, VA.

Table Rock Mountain, NC.

Alligator Back Rocks, NC.

The Amphitheater, Linville Gorge Wilderness.

Apple Orchard Falls, VA.

Big South Fork River National Recreation Area, Tennessee/Kentucky.

McAfee Knob, VA.

Backbone Rock Falls, Tennessee.

Bald River Falls, Tennessee.

Pisgah National Forest in the Black Mountains of NC.

Rowland Creek Falls, Virginia.

Blackwater Falls State Park, WV.

Hawksbill Mountain, NC.

The Pinnacle, NC.

Jacob Fork Falls, NC.

Twin Arches, TN.

Black Mountains, NC.

 

Blue Jay Falls, NC.

An unnamed cascade, NC.

Waterfall near Thurmond, WV.

Behind a waterfall, Du Pont State Forest, NC.

Dolly Sods Wilderness, WV.

Seneca Rock, WV.

On top of Seneca Rock, WV.

Citico Creek Wilderness, TN.

 

Middle Mountain, VA.

Helton Creek Falls, GA.

Charit Creek Gorge, Kentucky.

And so on...