This is the first day of our April Road Trip (see post of April 3), and as I did last summer when we took our Mini Cooper across the country, I am writing these next few posts in retrospect, based on faulty memory but reminded by notes that I kept along the way in a little notebook. I am not sure anyone is reading this blog, but if they are I hope they will enjoy the photos and share the joy of exploring!
The first step in our journey was a short one, but it took us 39 years back in time. We drove to Burnsville, only 2-1/2 hours from home, but on the way we stopped at a little house way out in the countryside that meant a lot to us at one time. Martha and I met in Asheville in 1978 and for several years we lived a simple life out here in Barnardsville, a tiny place north of Weaverville. I learned to run a chainsaw and heated this cold little house with firewood cut and split by hand; we had a huge garden, producing enough corn and potatoes to share with friends and neighbors; we watched the big moon rise over the hill across our front yard and got in touch with nature as much as with each other; I wrote a great deal of poetry and read a great many books; we watched our beloved dog Brandy have puppies; we had volkswagens, and a karmann Ghia, and we rambled up onto the Blue Ridge parkway nearly every weekend; and I gave up tobacco and started running, just a little at first, on a mile-long dirt trail I measured around the garden; we drew up the plans for our house in Highlands. It was a life free from responsibility, a time of discovery and beginnings, and a time that we remember fondly and reverently. Perhaps every couple has a time early in their lives like this.
But, alas, the little house had changed (although those big maple trees we planted to shade the kitchen from the afternoon soon were still there) as things do over time, to the point where I did not even want to take a photograph; Asheville native Thomas Wolfe knew you can never go home again, and of course we learned this lesson a long time ago ourselves.
In Burnsville, we stayed at the lovely and unlikely little motel where we had stayed in July of 2014 during a trip down the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Carolina Country Inn, just down from the Town Square on Main Street.
Trevor and Maureen purchased this place in 1999 and have made it just a little better every year they are the perfect innkeepers, friendly and interesting. I asked about his UK accent: "New Zealand?" I remembered imperfectly. "Zimbabwe," he replied. "Well, I remembered the Z," and Trevor laughed. He said they had just opened for the season - they were closed for three months every winter. "I hope you go someplace warm!" I said. "Africa," he smiled.
It is a lovely place and a fittingly beautiful start to our journey, with trees flowering and thrift cascading down the rock walls.
We had a light dinner up the hill at the Blind Squirrel, which was filled with local people who all seemed to know one another but were not unfriendly to the two strangers in Town.
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