Virginia
"I took the curve slowly around the tip of Jack Mountain and down through steep stands of oak, hickory, and red spruce forest. We had just finished taking a break on the border of Highland County for some leashless romping in the cool mountain laurel thickets. The dogs, happy, paws pungent from leaf litter, smiled in the rearview mirror.
Most people know this road as Route 250, but a zoom-in on Google had showed that it is also Hanky Mountain Highway, or Shenandoah Mountain Road. I wanted these names, instead of 250, next to the bright yellow triangle warning signs with pictograms of semi-trucks pointing at dangerous downhill angles over the words NEXT 2 MILES. Some sense of place instead of clear direction.
From the Virginia map calculations I had made at the B&B the night before, there were three mountains between Monterey and the big Shenandoah Valley. First Shenandoah, then Bull Pasture, and now Jack. At the center of this Appalachian geologic uplift, where some 480 million years ago the earth folded and buckled like pie crust, Highland County calls itself Little Switzerland, although it is really defined not by the elongated mountains and scattered knobs, but by the tabletop valleys in between. You won’t see such valleys in the young, spiky Rocky Mountains; this is the stuff of old mountains.
There are five fertile valleys in Highland County. Their straight-forward names had made me smile: Alleghany, Bluegrass, Monterey, Bullpasture, and Cowpasture. This is where the towns, villages, and hamlets were. This is where the sheep and cows grazed. This is where my ancestor Michael Arbogast settled."
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" Life, just as a garden, does not have to be perfect and neat to be complete. Leave the Dogs At Home serves as a prime example of how a humble experience in the outdoors can come to our aid in times of need and healing...the story is one that we dream about here - providing that undervalued, and often unrecorded, inspiration."
—Bruce W. Bytnar, Managing Director, Boxerwood Nature Center and Woodland Garden
Hover over pix for captions. Double click to see larger image.
Most people know this road as Route 250, but a zoom-in on Google had showed that it is also Hanky Mountain Highway, or Shenandoah Mountain Road. I wanted these names, instead of 250, next to the bright yellow triangle warning signs with pictograms of semi-trucks pointing at dangerous downhill angles over the words NEXT 2 MILES. Some sense of place instead of clear direction.
From the Virginia map calculations I had made at the B&B the night before, there were three mountains between Monterey and the big Shenandoah Valley. First Shenandoah, then Bull Pasture, and now Jack. At the center of this Appalachian geologic uplift, where some 480 million years ago the earth folded and buckled like pie crust, Highland County calls itself Little Switzerland, although it is really defined not by the elongated mountains and scattered knobs, but by the tabletop valleys in between. You won’t see such valleys in the young, spiky Rocky Mountains; this is the stuff of old mountains.
There are five fertile valleys in Highland County. Their straight-forward names had made me smile: Alleghany, Bluegrass, Monterey, Bullpasture, and Cowpasture. This is where the towns, villages, and hamlets were. This is where the sheep and cows grazed. This is where my ancestor Michael Arbogast settled."
----------------
" Life, just as a garden, does not have to be perfect and neat to be complete. Leave the Dogs At Home serves as a prime example of how a humble experience in the outdoors can come to our aid in times of need and healing...the story is one that we dream about here - providing that undervalued, and often unrecorded, inspiration."
—Bruce W. Bytnar, Managing Director, Boxerwood Nature Center and Woodland Garden
Hover over pix for captions. Double click to see larger image.