Showhouse in Horse Cove

Martha had read about the Cashiers Historical Society's 22nd Annual Showhouse, which this year took place on a lovely 28-acre tract in Horse Cove.  We decided to attend because it was a beautiful day, and you can always get some decorating or remodeling ideas from seeing other houses.

The setting was spectacular, the broad monolith of Whiteside Mountain standing tall at the far end of horse pastures and shady maple trees.

The house itself was surprisingly modest, only a single story with a full basement, but very nicely decorated by several home decorators.  The rooms were filled with light, the walls adorned with paintings, and the hardwood floors covered with rugs.  The one in the bedroom, I noted, was cowhide and had a cattle brand visible.

This curved rock wall out back was a surprise.  It enclosed nothing; it was just a curved wall with a salvaged window in its center, defining a small patio  in privacy.

We wandered out on a curved walkway past the pastures where two beautiful horses were grazing, bridles hanging on the fence. What is there about grazing horses that gives you a deep sense of peace and serenity?

It was a quiet, magical place, and the road ended up at another surprise, a barn even closer to the base of Whiteside converted into a kind of guest house.  Decorators had set up displays here, and we climbed an interesting set of steps made of shorter pieces of flooring, which gave us an idea for a long-neglected stair-replacement project in our own home.

We visited a little cottage overlooking a pond, too, with a bullfrog providing the background rhythm.  We circled back and stopped in a tent set up by the Bascom art gallery, and I chatted with a woman who was painting interiors of the house in watercolors.  “You can’t make many mistakes with watercolors, can you?” I asked.  “No,” the artist answered, “Once you start you just have to go with it!”  It has been a long time since I attempted water colors, but it made me want to try it again.

What a beautiful and peaceful afternoon, this last day of July.  It made us think of all of the far-away events we have attended in Atlantic Beach, in the Outer Banks, and elsewhere.  But this one was right here in our own backyard, only eight miles away.  Sometimes you don’t have to go very far to experience special, peaceful, beautiful places, if you know where to look.

Repairing What is Broken

I have always enjoyed repairing broken things.  Like many who grew up during the Depression, my Mom and Dad were both faced with deprivation, and it resulted in a frugal lifestyle that persisted throughout their lives.  Repairing things was a habit and a way of life for them and one that I inherited.  If a garden tool broke, my Dad would repair it before considering replacing it.  If a seam became unraveled, my Mom would take needle and thread and do the same; she made most of her own clothes, in fact, with her trusty sewing machine.

This habit has persisted, often taken to an extreme that many would not endure.  I still have a bamboo rake with the handle attached with baling wire, and Martha can attest to how long I kept our old vacuum cleaner going with duct tape and hose clamps before finally replacing it.  We take recycling seriously, as a matter of principle, as a matter of respect for the world we live in.

At my worst extreme, I have been known to go to the landfill and come home with more than I took.  It is astonishing what some people will throw away, and I have rescued perfectly good wheelbarrows, doors, windows, and handrails from being pushed into the dumpster and buried in the County landfill.  In fact, most of our garden shed or "Folly" was constructed around the windows and doors we salvaged from here and there.

Without the help of a friend who saw me struggling with the task, I never would have been able to drag the thirty feet of ornate iron handrail out of the metal dumpster last year, which is still propped up against the wall along our driveway and is being overtaken by weeds.  I still haven’t found a use for it, but my only outraged thought at the time was “Why would someone throw that away!”

This week, Martha found this beautiful little lantern at a thrift store in Clayton; its sides are made of rice paper and it has a small light inside, but when turned on, it blinks on and off randomly, caused by a defective toggle switch, I am certain.

So today I tried unsuccessfully to repair it, disassembling the switch with some precious tools that I keep in my desk.  I concluded that the switch cannot be repaired, so I will replace it with one from the hardware store.  But in taking it apart I remembered again all of those things I delved into as a child, curiously removing screws and poking around inside radios and small electronic engines, marveling at the parts exposed inside like organs, the coils of copper wire wound tight, the transistors and resistors and capacitors.  And I used some familiar well-worn tools that reminded me of my heritage as a handyman.

That is my Dad's set of small screwdrivers at the top, which were always kept in the upper drawer of the sewing machine cabinet, with the brand name "ARCHER" on the package, telling me it came from Radio Shack, an electronics store I came to know well in my youth.  It was from my Dad and my older brother Fred whom I learned to solder electrical wires.  My Dad even assembled an Archer stereo amplifier from scratch, and I have found that these vintage kits are still in demand on eBay.

At the bottom is a pocket knife which belonged to Martha's Dad, given to me after his death, sharpened so many times that it is half its original width.  He was a skilled handyman, an inveterate tinkerer, whose expertise extended well beyond home repairs to such things as Model T and Model A Fords, and to this day I wish I could discuss this or that home project with him; he would invariably have a good suggestion to make.

So in my hands I held my heritage as a repairman, tools once held by my own father and by Martha's father, tools that repaired what was broken - not just from necessity, but from the joy of discovery, the fearlessness of getting under the hood of things.  That is a noble occupation, after all, and one in which I am thankful for having been well tutored and encouraged.

Tour de France

Another week has ended, and I find myself sitting at my desk reviewing my running log as I normally do on Sunday morning.  I add up my mileage for the week, I enter that number in the back of my little book where I keep a running total for the year (a paltry 261 miles, half of the mileage I have usually run by July), and I look at my interval times and long runs.  I was able to decrease the former to a 2:26 quarter-mile on Wednesday, my fastest since resuming running, and I was able to increase the latter to six miles, my farthest.  And I ran some short hill repeats on Wednesday, too.  Progress!

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back."  Now it seems as if I am entirely in the One Step Forward mode.  I suppose that is one good thing about an injury.  A runner of my age becomes accustomed to plateaus and to ultimately slower times with every race.  These days, I am actually making progress, catching up to where I was in April when I had completed my second of two half marathons this year and when I was, humbly but honestly, in  good condition.  For an old guy.

One of the things I enjoy doing in July is watching the Tour de France.  The Tour has taken a lot of well-deserved criticism over the years for rampant performance enhancing drug use; my one-time hero Lance Armstrong was one of the biggest offenders, stripped of his seven Tour de France titles, all of which I witnessed and for which I cheered at the time.  And I used to enjoy those long, rambling descriptions of the gorgeous French countryside through which the Peloton would ride as viewed from helicopter by those long-time commentators Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen.  

"Now we see below us the lovely Château d'Amboise, constructed in the 9th Century on the banks of the river Loire, Phil."

"Yes indeed, that is a lovely Chateau, and what a beautiful day here in the Loire valley, Paul."

"Yes, it is an absolutely splendid day."

Sadly, Paul Sherwen died earlier this year, but his role is being admirably filled by the long-time commentator Bob Roll, who not only had a brilliant cycling career himself but also has the perfect name for a cyclist.

I think I enjoyed watching the countryside as much as I did the riders.  But performing enhancing drugs or not, riding in the Tour de France is not for the faint of heart, and these athletes are among the toughest in the world.  This year we have seen only one or two small crashes, but it is not unusual for a crash to occur at any time and to witness absolute mayhem on the road.

One year I remember watching in horror as a rider flew over a guardrail and disappeared out of sight, only to painfully climb back up the hillside, bike in hand, bleeding with torn jersey, only to mount his bike and finish the stage "bloody but unbowed" as the poet William Ernest Henlry memorably wrote:

In the fell clutch of circumstance

      I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

      My head is bloody, but unbowed. 

That is something to keep in mind these days as I work myself back into good condition and prepare for the next race.  Others have suffered far worse than I ever have, and gotten up to ride again.

Home is the Best

We had spent some time during this trip exchanging anniversary gifts, but also remembering past anniversaries together and looking forward to journeys in the future.  It has been a wonderful journey with my lovely wife Martha, and it continues, day by day and year by year.  As the card I gave her last night said:

Two hearts committed to each other

for the long haul,

through the ups and downs,

no matter what -

that's the kind of love that lasts.

We have had a wonderful time in this special place along the river, and this morning we started packing up to make our way back home.  Bill is an early riser and it wasn't long before he showed up in his office and we settled up with him.  I took some photos of the signs he has posted in the large solar-heated room next to the gymnasium which speak to the kind of example he used to set for his campers and now sets for his exercise partners and guests.

How true I have found those words to be.  Like Bill, I have come to learn the value of hard work (although I am not sure I could keep up with this 82-year-old man all day!) not just in building houses and gardens and stone walls, but in training for and completing races, in building a marriage, in building a life.  It was good to be reminded of this on our anniversary.

Bill had this weed cutter framed and placed in a prominent place near his office, a memento of Camp Deerwoode and its hard discipline that turned young boys into men.  Some might say that I had been rebellious from time to time when I was young, and I imagine I would have found myself often holding the handle of this unforgiving tool.

I think Bill was surprised to learn all that we had packed in during our short stay here.  And if we return, I want to go through his exercise program, which he told me about again.  "We go through 72 stations in 35 minutes!"  Whew!  That would be a workout.  "Where are you headed next?" he asked.
 "Home."  He smiled and said, "Home is the best!"

As for the rest of our day, we took a route we had never driven before through the countryside between Brevard to Hendersonville, through an area called Little River near the Dupont State Forest, and spent the day walking around Hendersonville, having a light lunch, and then driving to our favorite restaurant, Paesano's, in Seneca.  Delicious and memorable!

We arrived home before dark, glad for the journey we have had, but glad to be back home again.  "Home is the best!"

The N. C. Arboretum

We had been to the N. C. Arboretum near Bent Creek more than once in the past, but we had always felt that we did not have enough time to fully explore it.  Martha had found that there would be a tour this morning and had arranged to participate, so we awoke relatively early and drove to this beautiful 434-acre arboretum and botanical garden only a half-hour from Deerwoode.

Our volunteer guide was Barbara, a down-to-earth and friendly woman who clearly enjoyed showing the gardens to visitors.  She took us through the Promise Garden, the Stream Garden, and the Blue Ridge Quilt Garden on this cloudless day – the perfect day for being in a garden. 

We chatted with some of the other visitors and took plenty of photos, only a few of which I will post here – a lovely purple Rose-of-Sharon, for example, and a small, compact sunflower.

There was also some impressive sculpture and other artwork in the gardens.  I especially noted this lovely metal gate with rhododendron, turtle, and pitcher plants.

And, continuing the tour that afternoon on our own, after lunch at the on-site Bent Creek Bistro, we marveled at this Life of the Monarch Butterfly sculpture in the lower end of the Meadow.

We hadn't really planned out the rest of the day, but we had identified several options, such as going on to Asheville to view the Botanical Gardens at UNC-Asheville, or perhaps visiting the River Arts District.  But when we left the Arboretum it seemed as if we were almost drawn by a force of nature onto the entrance to the Blue Ridge Parkway located there; we spent a lot of time on the Parkway early in our marriage and it holds a special place in our hearts.  So in just a few minutes we were climbing up toward Mt. Pisgah (where we had spent our honeymoon), thunder all around and showers veiling the valleys below.

Sometimes it is good not to have a plan, to make a plan along the way; some of our best journeys have happened that way.  Somewhere along the way, when we had found we had internet service on our phones (non-existent at the Arboretum, which has no unsightly cell-phone towers), we discovered that there was a waterfall on Highway 276 just above Looking Glass Falls to which we had never hiked.  It is called Moore Cove Falls and is not marked with a sign, but we have driven past it dozens of times and wondered about all of the cars parked near the old stone bridge.

The trail was steep but relatively short, perhaps the most difficult hike I have done since my surgery but negotiated without any problems. 

The 50-foot falls are impressive, and although one can supposedly walk behind them as we can our local Dry Falls in Highlands, the rocks looked too slick for us to venture there.  How many times, we both marveled, had we driven by this trailhead and not known about this beautiful waterfall, right under our noses!  It is a lesson we learn over and over again.

At the end of the day we returned to Deerwoode for out third night and had a wonderful dinner out on the porch.  In the river haze before us we could see the observation tower, behind which we imagined we were being observed by ghostly deer hidden in the tree line as daylight faded to darkness.

Firecracker 5-K

We awoke in plenty of time to drive the short distance to downtown Brevard.  We had already learned during our brief stay at Deerwoode that it is usually foggy down here along the river where the summertime moisture comes to lie down on the river overnight and then slowly rises and burns away, and this morning that fog seemed to envelope all of Brevard.

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Runners were already gathering on Main Street, and I enjoyed being back in a familiar place, the start of yet another race, wandering through the growing crowds and warming up a little.  Martha warmed up for the usual mile, but I just walked back and forth and did some short pickups, trying to wake up my legs.  High overhead, a drone, advertized in an advance e-mail from the Race Director, was circling over the crowd, peering down through the fog.

We lined up at the start and a pretty young woman with a beautiful voice sang the national anthem as runners removed their hats respectfully or placed hands on hearts.

Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Then the Race Director counted down the time and we were off.  I had positioned myself toward the rear and I immediately found myself behind a wall of walkers.  Making my way around and through them, the 600 runners thinned out a little, and I called to some spectators along the way, "We're looking good, aren't we!?" as I often do to scattered laughter.  Just then, a man pushing a wide stroller came flying by, nearly nicking the side of my foot.  The road was rough much of the way due to construction and we were both watching where we were running, but it would have been disastrous to take a spill so early in the race.  Martha later told me that the same man and his reckless stroller nearly hit her, too.

I do love racing, and I have often described in this blog how much fun it is to jockey for position, chat with other runners, and call out to spectators.  A teen-aged boy kept flying up alongside me, and then abruptly stopping to walk; we played leapfrog like this for much of the first half of the race, and then he dropped behind me, unable to sustain the repeated effort of sprinting that hard, over and over again.

We had driven the course yesterday before we picked up our race packets, so I knew when we were reaching the bottom of a long hill on Tinsley Road.  "It's about time this course got interesting!" I said, and someone laughed and told me to shut up.  Up we climbed, through nice semi-rural countryside, climbing above one of the prettiest vegetable gardens I have seen, its rows neatly laid out and nary a weed in sight.

I glanced at my watch at the two-mile mark and was surprised at the time.  Since resuming running, I had timed myself running 3.1 miles on our usual route in Highlands and had been encouraged by watching my time drop in a straight-line progression from 47:24 (my third day back), to 43:37, to 41:33 on Monday.  My goal had been to break 40 minutes, and I was way ahead of that!  I pushed a little harder, climbed one last steep hill, turned the corner, and found myself coming down Main Street toward the finish line chute.  My finish time?  37:03.  Martha, who had already finished in 29:07 (her goal had been to finish under 30 minutes), was not expecting me so soon and said she regretted taking my photo.  But I later found both our photos on-line.  (Note the usual photo:  a runner ignoring the big finish-line clock overhead and hitting the stop button on his and her GPS watch.)

We walked around in that pleasant euphoria after a race, drinking water and checking out the finish-line food and SWAG ("Stuff We All Get") common to races, which today inexplicably included not only bananas and tangerines and water, but also large bags of slivered almonds and samples of dental floss.  Someone was nice enough take the obligatory photo after the race for our newsletter and our Facebook post.  ("Richard is running again?! Yay!" commented our friend Colleen when she saw it on Facebook.)

By the time we had returned to Deerwoode, showered and changed, and returned to downtown Brevard, it was only 10:00 a.m., and we enjoyed browsing through the booths of a crafts show set up on Main Street and a car show on Broad Street, which we both agreed Martha's Dad would have enjoyed immensely.  The car show was just beginning and a young woman - the same one as earlier, I think - sang the national anthem for the second time that day.

We had both been thinking about Barbeque for lunch, something we seldom eat except on such occasions and on such a holiday as this - what could be more American, after all? - and so we drove to a very good restaurant on the Pisgah Highway which we had never tried before called (in hillbilly spelling) "Hawg Wild."  And it was indeed hawg-wild good!

Our next stop was the Brevard Music Center where Martha had gotten advance tickets to a Patriotic Pops concert this afternoon featuring the national anthem (our third time) plus a medley of the music of all of the branches of the military, during which family and veterans were encouraged to stand at the appropriate times.  Remarkably, a veteran of World War II was present and stood to a round of applause.  We enjoyed watching families spread out picnics on the lawn as their children played.

The concert concluded with a rousing performance of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture featuring live and very loud cannons.

It is always a good thing to spend some time walking after a race, so when we returned to Deerwoode we explored some of the extensive acreage before dinner.  The French Broad River gurgles quietly nearby, deep and much narrower than we had expected; the stretch of river we normally see in what is called Sandy Bottom near the Arboretum is shallow, rocky, and as broad as its name would suggest.

There are some remarkable trees on the property, too, including an ancient poplar tree which marks the spot of the old post office for Transylvania County in the early 1800s, and this impressive 400-year-old white oak tree just across the pond from our cabin.

The pond is crowded with cattails as brown as Cuban cigars, and this is the source of our nightly serenade from the bullfrogs.

Martha spotted the first of several deer that we were able to watch from our covered porch, but none of the photos turned out very well at that distance; it leapt across the road and ran across the field, then took up a position in front of the observation tower to which we had hiked the previous day.

"Look!" I could imagine it saying to its partner.  "There, on the porch!  Humans!  I think the big clumsy-looking one is a man!"  

And Martha also spotted a huge white bird, perhaps a river heron, that climbed slowly into the sky from the larger pond on the other side of the garden.

We heard the sound of a tractor beyond the pond and discovered Bill working on a farm tractor in the barn there, still hard at it at 5:00 p.m. on the Fourth of July; he stopped the tractor and asked about our day.  We looked in several of the other cabins, and down below us we could see him heading out in the cool of the evening dragging a mowing attachment behind.

We continued on toward the opposite end of the property from our cabin and entered the Bamboo Forest, which we had read about in the little book kept in the cabin filled with comments from previous guests (many of whom had also enjoyed the fishing and had returned for special occasions and anniversaries).

I had never seen bamboo like this, perhaps 50 or 60 feet tall, as thick as my arm.  I could envision bamboo of this size being used for bamboo flooring.  “It’s like a cathedral in here,” Martha said.

As we exited the bamboo forest and continued around the perimeter of the property, with the river to our left visible from time to time, we could hear the sound of a tractor coming closer and closer.  It was Bill, mowing the grass path ahead of us.  He stopped and turned off the engine.  “Don’t you ever rest?” I asked him.  He must smiled and shook his head.  “Nope.”

But we rest.  It had been a long day, and we made our way back to the cabin, had dinner, and went to bed early, lulled to sleep by the sound of nightbirds and bullfrogs.

Deerwoode Lodge and Cabins

Martha and I wanted to celebrate our 40th Wedding Anniversary in some special way on its actual day, July 6, even through we are considering our trip to Britain and Ireland in August to be our 40th Anniversary Trip, so we decided to stay close to home.  Martha found a truly wonderful place in Brevard called the Deerwoode Lodge and Cabins (five stars on TripAdvisor), only one hour away, so we drove over this afternoon after lunch on our own deck.  We had signed up for the Brevard Rotary Firecracker 5-K on the Fourth of July, my first race since resuming running, so we planned to spend the night before and after as well as an extra day.

We had checked this place out a couple of weeks ago so we knew in part what to expect.  Deerwoode is located on 176 acres along a bend in the French Broad River, much of it in Conservation Easement Reserve and a Wildlife and Bird Sanctuary for over 143 species of birds.  There is fishing, hiking, canoeing, a beaver dam wetland, a bamboo forest, organic gardening, and a fitness center operated by the owner and manager, Bill Mayes, who has lived on the property for 53 years.

Our little cabin was a bit more rustic than we had expected, but it turned out to be just fine, with wooden floors, hand-made furniture by Bill, and this nice porch, on which we could sit most evenings, eat dinner, and watch deer playing in the fields that stretched out before us to the river.

The cabin is one of several on the property, most of them constructed from parts of the many cabins that were once located here when it was known as Camp Deerwoode from 1967 to 1991.

 

Bill is a real inspiration, as tall as I am and very fit looking at 82 years of age.  He has operated the fitness center on the property for years, and still has a group of regulars who come to work out with him.  "Come work out with us this evening if you like!" he invited.  We explained that we were running a race first thing in the morning and were going to take it easy a little tonight.

Bill works from sun-up to sun-down and seems to thrive on the work and the people he meets.  His two sons used to help him, but they became more interested in music and now play with a band called Jupiter Coyote, so he and his wife Elizabeth seem to run the place themselves.  I have to admit that I was taken aback a little by the gingham curtain under the kitchen sink, the single open board containing cups and saucers, and the haphazard construction, but it was clean, comfortable, and ultimately very charming in its own unique way, and we came to appreciate it more and more each day.  It was also the quietest place we have every stayed the night before a race, except for the bullfrogs in the pond on the other side of the road.

Elizabeth is an artist, and her large, gorgeous semi-abstract paintings adorn many of the walls.

We prepared our usual pre-race dinner of pasta with marinara sauce, here in our own little kitchen instead of in a crowded Brevard restaurant, and then enjoyed walking on the mowed grass path along the walnut grove.

You could look back and see our rustic little cabin, surrounded by the green woods and fields.  It reminded me, on this 40^th Anniversary weekend, of that song by the Incredible String Band, after whom I once named a beloved black cat.

Oh Black Jack David is the name that I bear
Been alone in the forest for a long time
But now I have found me a lady so fair
I will love her and hold her
Singing through the green green trees

Early to bed tonight as we plan to awake at 5:00 a.m. and drive the two miles to downtown Brevard for the race.