DRIVING THROUGH WESTERN CAROLINA
Sunday started out with breakfast with Dana Nagle and Julia Tarr, friends since childhood. Julia lives in Chapel Hill but was here to visit her friend, Dana. She was also a student of mine who made a trip to Guinea, Africa, to learn African music and dance. I arranged the academic credit and got to read her poetic journal describing her intense mythic adventure. Julia isn’t 21 any longer with three very lively children 9 and 12 (the twins) and a successful environmental lawyer husband and a demanding job as a social worker helping mothers with problem pregnancies and post birth issues. She is in her 40’s with every minute taken with things she needs to do. Dana and Julia both went to Warren Wilson and Dana is a good friend of Susie’s and lives in a cabin about Todd and Susie’s land. Todd helped build her house. So it was great fun to catch up with Julia after 20 years and to see Dana again.
When they returned back up the hill Todd, Susie and I drove to a party they were invited to in Sylva where their friend, Jenny McPherson, was having her 50th birthday party and celebrating it with a game of kickball on a plot of land she and her husband, Greg, just bought on the bank of the Tuckasegee River. I have photographs of the game of kickball.
But the two hour ride to and from Sylva on back road curve after curve roads through the national forests with few houses was beautiful. On the way, to Sylva, in the middle of nowhere on a road called The Rattler, which draws motorcyclists from all over for its constant curves we found a family selling Cuban chicken, plantains, beans and and rice under and tent in the rainy. The three children were selling lemonade and I took their photograph after buying a plate of food.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 