This past summer my husband and I spent a weekend at Wintergreen Resort. The highlight of the trip was a hike led by an expert at The Nature Foundation at Wintergreen. John, our guide, led our straggly group of twelve strangers on the hike while explaining the geological history of the area and the notorious…
Belmont Mansion is a one-hundred-and-seventy-year-old mansion in Nashville, Tennessee. Its salmon-colored, exterior walls and grand interior staircase eloquently mask the fact that this house was built by Adelicia Hayes, the widow of one of the most successful slave traders in American history, who owned approximately seven hundred and fifty slaves over three plantations in Tennessee…
I’m a bit haunted by Mother’s Day—a difficult day for me at times. Over the past decade or so, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I am now motherless and am myself a child-free adult (that’s a fancy new term I just learned this week!). Both facts can be a source of some…
Trees: wise, sturdy, stoic. I have always loved trees—individually and for the forest they form collectively. These slender pines seem to be on a race to reach the sun, or at least the Carolina blue sky, with their piney tufts topping each barked pole and shading the ground below. But on a recent hike through…
Ever heard of the Stephen Stills band “Manassas?” Me neither, until this week. Apparently, this is the fiftieth anniversary of the release of the first (of two) albums by the band named “Manassas.” Stephen Stills (of the Crosby, Stills, Nash, and—sometimes—Young fame) formed this band in the wake of a chance encounter with Chris Hillman…
There were some interesting Easter traditions in my house as I was growing up. Yes, we got the chocolate-filled baskets with a years’ worth of M&Ms just beneath the grass. Yes, we got the chocolate bunny which we either crunched off the head immediately or saved for last—depending upon our age and relative spunk. Yes,…
