2024 Spring Vacation, FR, 5 of 5
Showing posts with label Travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Travel. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 01, 2024
Tuesday, November 07, 2023
I Find Sweet Peace in Depths of Autumn Woods
November
by Elizabeth Stoddard
(1823-1902)
Much have I spoken of the faded leaf;
Long have I listened to the wailing wind,
And watched it ploughing through the heavy clouds,
For autumn charms my melancholy mind.
When autumn comes, the poets sing a dirge:
The year must perish; all the flowers are dead;
The sheaves are gathered; and the mottled quail
Runs in the stubble, but the lark has fled!
Still, autumn ushers in the Christmas cheer,
The holly-berries and the ivy-tree:
They weave a chaplet for the Old Year's bier
These waiting mourners do not sing for me!
I find sweet peace in depths of autumn woods,
Where grow the ragged ferns and roughened moss;
The naked, silent trees have taught me this,--
The loss of beauty is not always loss!
Thursday, July 11, 2019
Sunday, June 17, 2018
Wednesday, June 13, 2018
Some Vacation Panoramas - Places Visited and Stayed June 2018
Saturday, November 25, 2017
Friday, November 17, 2017
Monday, November 13, 2017
Monday, November 06, 2017
Wednesday, November 01, 2017
Friday, July 07, 2017
A Travel Journey Entry, 14 June 2017
Day 07.3 - Cherokee
14 June 2017
We are blessed over the last dozen years with many a summer travel mainly to different regions of North America. Much of our travels were curtailed by time and subsequent venues. Invariably in the course of every vacation, we were overwhelmed by the four Ws (who, what, when, and why) at the places visited. Nevertheless, in our mostly "see America first" journeys, we've learned and gleaned from the tapestry of our country's makeup. Scenery and landscape were always present in places we visited, though in varying proportions.
The pastoral beauty of the hazy Appalachian hills, interlaced with waterfalls and rivers, and further accented by congregations of fauna and flora. It is a region of unsurpassed beauty. And yet, all were merely scenic props. They awaited man's intrusion or discovery to give the region permanence and purpose; to give it a fuller and magnified landscape later preserved for posterity now known as the Blue Ridges and Smoky Mountains.
The Cumberland Gap and its environs were once serene and undisturbed wilderness, saved as a trace for the woodland buffaloes. Since it became a designated path blazed by Daniel Boone, as noted by Turner on the 12 June journal entry of "Cumberland Gap", "...the procession of civilization marching single file...the Indian...the pioneer farmer - and the frontier has passed by." Man has left a historic imprint on the Gap since the 1750s. Today, it still serves as a transit point westward. A century later at a place called Gettysburg, a stretch of farmland now preserved as a "hollow" and "consecrated" ground. As a timeless memorial imprinted on this field of blood, President Lincoln dedication this parcel of land to all the "brave men, living and dead." The scenery indigenous to both landmarks had served to establish, fortify, settle, and stir one's imagination to the historic importance, respectively, of these two landscape examples.
Cheorkee, NC, is a small foothill town at the southern edge of the Great Smoky Mountain NP. Located within a designated federal trust, the town also serves as the headquarter of the tribal community. When we arrived at Cherokee this morning, a rather dark chapter of our republic's history peeled back and opened to us. Surely, in the palimpsest of our nation's history, the Cherokee landscape had been paved with tears, toils, tragedies, as well as triumphs.
Tuesday, June 06, 2017
Ready for Summer Vacation
Leaving for the Great Smoky Mountain states on Thursday, 8 June. I should be back on 18 June.
"My heart thrills like the wilding sap to flowers,
And leaps as a swoln brook in summer rain
Past meadows green to the great sea untold.
O month divine, all fresh with falling showers,
Waft, waft from open heaven thy balm for pain,
Life and sweet Earth are young, God grows not old!"
Theodore H. Rand, 1897
Sunday, March 26, 2017
My Food, My Fortune, and My Sweet Hope's Aim
Mine eye's clear eye, my dear heart's dearer heart,
My food, my fortune, and my sweet hope's aim,
My sole earth's heaven, and my heaven's claim" - Shakespeare
Place: The Redd Restaurant, Yountville, CA
Entree: Carmelized diver scallops, caulifower purée,
almonds, and balsamic reduction
Dessert:Pineapple Upside-down Cake and Sherbet
Friday, July 03, 2015
Alaska Trip - Ice Floe Up Close & Personal
Riding on a Zodiac to check out the ice floes. The L'Austral in the background.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
