These mist covered mountains
Are a home now for me.
But my home is the lowlands
And always will be...
Mark Knopfler
Recently, I've digressed into discussions of smoking meat, and lots of it. We even cooked a pig in the clearing atop the finger ridge overlooking the log cabin, where children played as I tended the BBQ.
The word, "smoke," is evocative around here. We have Smoky Mountain High School, myriad businesses bearing that name, and even my wife Sloan's biannual conference that she conceived and organizes and tied to the local setting with this moniker. And then we have the National Park.
Ever wonder where the Great Smoky Mountains get their name?
The Coldholler Log Cabin sits well above the lowlands, in deep shade, facing North, on a small spur flanked by higher, laurel-choked shoulders, nestled against the steep headwall of a cove at the narrow tip-top of its longest hollow, or "holler," a ridgepocket really, one of countless hidey holes or wet dark cool hidden green notches in an seemingly exposed landscape where tall knobs promise full visibility but whose folded terrain and dense canopy and namesake shrouds of misty low clouds cloak a thousand secret places.
Here are several photos that illustrate my description, all just recently taken within a hawk's minute-long flight from the sky above our own ridge line, borrowed from Facebook (see attributions):
 |
| By Keith Miller, Blue Ridge Parkway September 2011 |
 |
| Nearby in the Smokies... |
No comments:
Post a Comment