The Mountains-to-Sea hiking trail runs from Clingmans Dome in Tennessee/North Carolina to the Outer Banks. Not yet completed, it is 530 miles long AND runs right past my neighborhood. For my run today, I ran a little portion of it along the Blue Ridge Parkway.
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lots of pretty flowers in early June
Bearwallow Mountain Trail is near Gerton, North Carolina. On Sunday, June 7, 2015 I went to hike the trail up to the top of the mountain with my wife Megan, dog Indy, and daughters ages six and nine. With temperatures in the 80’s where we live in Asheville, we were surprised to reach the mountain and find it 63 degrees on the dashboard temperature gauge. It was a cloudy day and the mountain was surrounded by a mist. The girls called it “magical” and it turned out to give the day its own unique feel. We plan to return on a clear day to check out the views.
the steps on the way to the top of the mountain
The hike is strenuous, about a mile in length, and it took us about 30 minutes to reach the top. Our youngest has recently proclaimed that she wants to be a professional runner, and so she’s been running a half mile in our neighborhood. So our kids are active and they made it up and down the mountain without much complaining.
noted by Mrs. T as a possible dwelling for fairies
We found out about the hike in an article published in the Asheville Citizen-Times by Mackensy Lunsford titles “5 Perfect Places to Picnic, and How to Create a Memorable Outdoor Meal.” Mackensy is @mackensy on Twitter and she was quick to credit @KarenChavezACT for the information in the article. I look forward to following both of these ladies for all things Asheville and the outdoors.
even though our views were obstructed by fog, the top of the mountain was beautiful
a short video from the top
Like just about everyone, I know what the letters LOL mean (although I think I might not type them anymore) but I encountered a new one I hadn’t heard: IRL. Do you want to hazard a guess?
I’m at a conference this week in Los Angeles called the Blogworld New Media Expo, and on the first day I was introduced to a website called Storify during a presentation by Kate Brodock and Jeff Cutler. Although I only saw Storify in action for about a minute, it seems to be something I could use to not only capture an online Twitter conversation, it would also give me the rhetorical space to offer my take on the conversation. For example, I participate sometimes in a Wed. night Twitter chat by using the hashtag #FYCCHAT. The letters stand for First Year Composition. Using Storify, it looks like I could pull tweets from one of our conversations into a page that would allow me to tell my version of what happened during that nights’ chat.
I’ve been thinking about audio essays where you’d hear the writer’s voice cruising along the same as if they were reading a paper they’d written, but instead of quoting folks, they’d integrate audio clips. The essay I have in mind would be an audio version of something you might read in the op-ed section of the newspaper (as if people still read newspapers) or in a journal about teaching or writing, except for that in the audio essay, you’d hear not only the voice of the writer, you’d also hear the voices of the writers being quoted. So if I were to write this kind of essay about my time here at the Blogworld New Media Expo, you’d hear an audio recording of my voice telling you about what I was up to, until I went to a clip from something I’d recorded or otherwise gathered online.
As for the letters “IRL,” they were spoken to me yesterday when I was talking with some folks including someone named Marlo who has a radio project she calls “Girltalk With Marlo.” Her card describes it as “relevant, intelligent talk radio. Women’s issues. Women’s Voices.” Sounded cool and so if you’re a woman, you might want to check it out. Marlo was telling me about a meet up, and I thought she was talking about a virtual one, but she corrected me by saying, “IRL.” I was baffled. The Indy Racing League? (yep, I’m a transplanted Indiana Hoosier).
“No,” Marlo said, “In Real Life.”
Mmmm, I’m getting old.
