September 19, 2015 On the Edge of the Pisgah Forest

It is the last weekend of summer, the last gasp of heat, of swimming in pools and ponds, of watermelons and ripe tomatoes, of sitting on porches in the dark listening to the chorus of cicadas, crickets and frogs. I am going to a log cabin overlooking Rocky Creek, that flows into the Toe River in Yancey County North Carolina.  It is not so far up I-26 East, joining Hwys 19 and 23 to Burnsville, the county seat, passing by a billboard for Zen Tubing, "Find Your Inner Tube", past fields of cosmos and zinias now fading, past Mars Hill  ( where my grandfather went to college) and Bald Creek.  I am in the unreal mountains, blue and green and astonishing as they stand across the sky.  There is an exit for Mount Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi, where in the Spring, bicylists ride their bikes from Spartanburg in South Carolina to the top in the Assault on Mt Mitchell.

In Burnsville, I find restrooms beside the visitor center just off the square where there are historic buildings, antique and gift shops,a coffee shop "Java",  the Nu Wray old hotel still in business with a restaurant, the Monkey Business Toy Store, the Menagerie, down the street, Stonefly Outfitters.

There are now trees turning yellow and red among the evergreens.

Highway 19 meets 80 South in the Micaville Loop. Now the side roads are:
Bear Wallow, Gold Knob, Boone Hill, Grizzly Bear, Bowditch Bottom, Mudslinger, Roaring Spout, Morning Glory, Locust Creek, Moccasin Flower, 7 Mile Ridge, Everlasting, Wild Cherry, Goodtimes, Passional, Powderhorn, Stillhouse and Hardscrabble, Lookout Rd and Heavenly View.  I am on the Quilt Trail, displaying traditional quilt squares on the sides of buildings, houses and barns.

At Blivens Farms, I buy grits from Boonville,  Bear Berry Jam (blueberries and blackberries) and Frog Jam (figs, raspberries, orange and ginger), a big red mountain tomato and a rustic bark bird feeder.

Soon I have traversed windey roads until I reach the beautiful log cabin perched over Rocky Creek.  Inside there is every modern convenience. Ken, the owner, built this cabin himself. There is an antique iron stove and a modern gas stove, heat, stained glass windows, a shower with a mosaic tile wall patterned with a cabin in the mountains.  There are decks surrounded with mountain laurel and rhodendron.  There is even a little cabin set apart as a reading library.

We set out for a swinging bridge over the Toe River, where looking down, we see trout swimming among the rocks.  We hike up to a waterfall which splashes down over level after level of rocky stairs.  We see many small dark gray juncos flitting through the trees and bushes.

At night, the water stops running in the faucets, but we have buckets to flush toilets with water from the creek and bottled water to drink and brush our teeth.

We are packing up when a neighbor walks by with his stick. He says for years, he has spent the winter in Florida and the Spring, Summer and Fall here in his house on the Creek.

"This year," he says, "I am going to try to make it through the winter here."