My nervous system can’t handle Walmart, but I’ll drive hours through the backroads of remote Appalachia alone with no cell service just to explore an abandoned farmhouse.

Out on the backroads again, where the air hums low and steady and every bend of the road feels like it’s keeping a secret just for you. My nervous system, bless its fragile wiring, can’t manage the sensory assault of Walmart, too many lights, too many voices, too much everything all at once. But drop me in the hollers of remote Appalachia, no signal, no GPS, just the crackle of the radio fading out somewhere past civilization, and I’m at peace.

There’s something grounding about an old farmhouse half swallowed by weeds, the kind that seems to breathe on its own. Boards sigh when you step inside, dust motes drift like memories in the morning light. I can hear the wind crossing the mountains outside, slow and patient. Maybe I find comfort in the stillness of what’s been left behind, places that don’t ask anything from you but quiet attention.

It’s funny what feels safe and what doesn’t. Some people need crowds, others need ghosts. Me, I’ll take the soft creak of an abandoned porch over the hum of fluorescent aisles any day. Out here, my nerves finally unclench. Out here, even the silence feels like company.

#Appalachia #backroads #abandonedplaces #quietcorners #introvertlife #roanokeva #doodle

A surprise sprinkling of snow drifted in before sunrise, soft and quiet as a held breath. Just a dusting – the kind that doesn’t quite stick but still turns the world silvery for a blink. The air held that hush that only snow brings, a sound thinner than silence. Later, as twilight settled in, the flakes returned again, swirling in streetlight cones like ash from some secret celestial fire.

Tonight the thermometer’s on its way down to 26°, sharp enough to remind the trees to tighten their bark and the rest of us to reach for another blanket. You could almost taste winter on the wind – the clean edge of it.

Stopped by to see the Salem RidgeYaks today – yes, actual yaks, shaggy and serene, standing like misplaced clouds in the pasture. Their coats are thick as storybook winter, long bangs hanging over calm, curious eyes. They move slow, deliberate, as if time itself runs a little gentler around them.

Some folks say they don’t really belong here – that yaks aren’t native to the Blue Ridge at all, that they’re creatures of the Himalayas, not these soft Virginia hills. Maybe that’s true, but looking at them under the gray November sky, with the mountains rising behind like folded blue paper, they seem right at home. Far be it for me to deny any creature welcome to this place.

The cold wind lifts their fur; they blink, unbothered. The ridges breathe mist, and for a moment it’s easy to believe the world fits together in ways that make quiet sense.

#SalemRidgeYaks #SalemVA #MountainLife #RoanokeValley #RoanokeVA #doodle #earlysnow

A variant on this

https://www.lemontreedwelling.com/jalapeno-popper-wonton-cups/

Made in the style of buffalo chicken dip, but with jackfruit, in wonton

Also played a little Dead Island 2 on ps5 – free if you already pay for plus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Island_2

🌊 Carvins Cove, November

Carvins Cove keeps its own kind of time. Out there, just beyond the last of the city’s neighborhoods, the world hushes itself. The reservoir stretches wide and still, a mirror for the gray sky. A few brown leaves drift across the surface like tiny boats heading nowhere in particular.

The air smells like pine and cold water. Somewhere down the trail, a woodpecker knocks out a slow, deliberate rhythm. You can hear the creak of tree trunks leaning, the faint sigh of wind moving through the hollows. Even footsteps sound softer here, as if the earth has learned to listen.

The mountains fold around the water like a secret. You feel it when you stand at the overlook, that small tug in the chest that says, stay a little longer. The light shifts hour by hour, gold to silver to blue, then gone. The surface of the Cove catches every change and holds it for a heartbeat before it disappears.

A few fishermen linger on the shore, jackets zipped up, lines quiet in the water. They do not talk much. The day does not ask for conversation. It just keeps breathing, slow and even.

By the time the sun slips behind Tinker Mountain, the world feels rinsed clean. The first stars appear, sharp and pale. You can almost hear them if you stand still long enough.

Carvins Cove does not shout. It does not sparkle or call attention. It waits, patient and deep, content to be the place where Roanoke comes to remember how to listen.


—

#Roanokeva #CarvinsCove #BlueRidgeMountains #Virginia #AppalachianQuiet #NovemberLight #NatureBlog #SlowDays #StillWater #MountainReflections #ValleyAndRidge

🍂 Explore Park, November

Explore Park sits at that “edge of the world”-feeling spot, where the Blue Ridge Parkway dips its shoulder toward the valley. November has folded itself over the trees like a faded quilt, russet, smoke, a whisper of frost along the grass. The cabins there lean with the kind of contentment you only get from watching decades of seasons pass.

The air tastes like woodsmoke and riverwater. The Roanoke River moves slow, carrying bits of leaf and light, as if both were the same thing. A heron stood in the shallows this morning, perfectly still, patient enough to let the sun find its way through the gray.

You can walk for an hour and meet no one. Just the creak of the trees, the shuffle of a squirrel who thinks it’s invisible, the distant hum of a car on the Parkway, a reminder that the rest of the world still spins, somewhere beyond the pines.

Every bench here feels like a memory. Some carry initials carved long ago, some just the worn shape of someone who once needed to rest. The park is quiet but not empty; it is full of echoes that do not need to be loud to be heard.

By late afternoon, the light goes honey colored, catching on every last stubborn leaf. Then the chill slides back in, and the trails dim. Time to head home before the fog rolls up from the river.

Explore Park does not ask you to do much, just to walk, breathe, and listen. November does the rest.

#Roanokeva #BlueRidgeParkway #ExplorePark #Virginia #AppalachianAutumn #NovemberLight #NatureBlog  #MillMountainMoods #ValleyAndRidge #SlowDays #QuietPlaces

Community Support Initiatives
– Providing food and assistance to families in need since 1993.
– Operating a store where qualified individuals can choose items for free.
– Offering various volunteer opportunities and ways to support the community.

Youth Fundraising Activities
– Friend’s grandson’s baseball team conducting leaf removal as a fundraiser.
– Donations-only service, teaching youth the value of earning money.
– Seeking neighbors who might need yard work services.

Neighborhood Social Events
– Planning a winter soup gathering for neighborhood residents.
– Seeking ideas for fun social events like ‘game nights’.
– Appreciation for the successful appetizer event.

Community Property Enhancements
– Board initiative to improve common areas and make them more attractive.
– Planting low-maintenance greenery in various locations.
– Pleased with the overall appearance of neighborhood yards.

Capital Reserve Fund Amendment
– Proposal to amend covenants regarding new homeowner assessments for capital reserve.
– Changing the fixed $250 fee to an amount set by the board of directors.
– Aims to build the fund to cover HOA liabilities and avoid broad-based assessments.

Board Member Elections
– Two board members’ terms expiring this year.
– Larry Hurt and May Wenge willing to serve another term.
– Nominees approved for a three-year term starting January 1st.

Budget and Mailbox Updates
– No due increase anticipated for 2026, with a monthly due decrease.
– Mailbox numbers replaced with durable 3D decals from a small business.
– Pleased with the improvement over previous peeling decals.

Community Safety and Maintenance
– Encouraging residents to report suspicious activity to county police.
– Leaf removal contract specifies mulching, not collecting, for better soil.
– Discussion pending on HOA’s continued obligation for gutter cleaning in 2026.

Streetlight Concerns
– Complaints about new stark white streetlights replacing amber ones.
– Residents finding the new lights excessively bright.
– Seeking contact information for the county to address the issue.

Miniature Graceland
(Roanoke Notes, November 6, 2025)

There’s a little patch of Roanoke that hums softly with the ghost of Elvis, not through jukebox speakers or velvet paintings, but through plywood, shingles, and love. Tiny Graceland still stands, or maybe leans, out there on the edge of Don Epperly’s old yard, the grass curling up around its miniature white columns and blue trimmed chapel.

Don built it back in the eighties, one small imitation at a time, Graceland’s gates in miniature, the birthplace in Tupelo recreated with devotion and a steady hand, a landscape of memories small enough for squirrels to tour. They say he started after visiting the real Graceland, came home and decided that the King deserved a Virginia echo. It grew into a neighborhood landmark, a shrine to both Elvis and the sheer stubborn joy of making something just because it should exist.

Now it sits quiet, weather-silvered. The plastic flowers have gone pale, and the paint has given itself back to the seasons. The Salem Garden Club tends it here and there, keeping the spirit alive even as vines try to crown the place with green. Every now and then someone pulls over, camera in hand, smiles, and whispers a “thank you very much” into the breeze.

Tiny Graceland isn’t a tourist trap or a spectacle, it’s a memory of belief, scaled down but not diminished. Don’s gone now, but his heart’s still parked there, somewhere between the tiny chapel and the tinny strains of “Love Me Tender” that once drifted from a boombox on the porch.

If you pass by, slow down. Look close. The King’s still there, just smaller, kinder, and maybe even closer to heaven.


—

#roanokeva #TinyGraceland #Elvis #Virginia #RoadsideAmerica #minigraceland

🕰️ November 6 – Time’s Uneven Footsteps in Roanoke

Some mornings, the air over Mill Mountain feels like it’s holding its breath. The clock on the star says one thing, but the crows circling above the Roanoke River seem to mark another hour entirely. Down by the farmers market, the world hums in coffee sips and shoe taps – a fast, modern tempo – while in the old cemeteries up on the hill, you can almost hear the tick of moss growing over names, slower than a sigh.

Time here never runs evenly. On Brandon Avenue, it sprints – deadlines, buses, traffic lights flipping red before you’re ready. But out near the greenway, by the cattails and the ducks who couldn’t care less about minutes, it ambles. You can walk for what feels like hours and find the light hasn’t shifted an inch.

Maybe it’s the mountains. Maybe they bend the seconds, fold them like warm laundry. Or maybe Roanoke just keeps its own sort of calendar –  one where the seasons overlap, where October ghosts still wander through November fog, and where the same church bell seems to ring both too soon and not soon enough.

Tonight, the clocks will insist it’s late. But standing under the soft hum of the Star, watching the valley’s lights drift like embers, you can feel how the moment stretches – a slow, generous kind of forever.

(current mood: clocks made of fog and songbirds)

Roanoke is completely surrounded by mountains.

When you stand here beneath the Star,
and let your eyes settle over the valley,
the body knows something before the mind does.

You can feel the land gathering around you.
The ridges rising and folding like the slow breath of the earth.

This place is held.
Not confined.
Held.

The mountains don’t close in.
They embrace.

It is a bowl of energy,
resting between the Blue Ridge Mountains
and the broader sweep of the Appalachians.

The valley curves into itself,
as if cupping something precious.
Light.
Wind.
Memory.
Presence.

When a land is shaped like this,
held in all directions by mountains,
it becomes a spiritual basin.
A place where things settle down
and come home.

You feel it in the chest.
In the breath.
In the quiet steady place inside the ribs.

The Roanoke Star stands over all of this,
shining for decades.
Not a monument,
but a reminder.

At night it glows over neighborhoods and back roads,
over the river and the train lines,
over the soft hum of the valley at rest.

Folks may not think about it much,
but they look up at it.
Almost without meaning to.
As if checking in
with something that remembers them.

From up here, the mountains stretch out in long blue layers.
Soft as breath.
Patient as time.
They have seen storms, fires, migrations,
laughter in kitchen windows,
the way people build lives.

And still, they stand quiet.

People come here for the view.
But they stay for the stillness.

The way the wind slows down,
so you can finally hear it.

The way the valley opens,
not outward,
but inward.

The way time, for a moment,
does not rush.

And in that moment,
the world is not something happening to you.
It is something you are part of.

Held by the mountains.
Rooted in the valley.
Breathing with the land.

This place listens.
This place remembers.
This place carries its people.

And when you stand here,
quiet and steady,
you can feel it all.

The land.
The light.
The pulse of the city.
The slow blue rise of the mountains.

All of it living.
All of it connected.
All of it breathing together.

🌀 Spiral in the Sky – November 4, 2025

Evening blue fading over Mill Mountain, the trees whispering a little before full dark, and there – a bright curl hung above the rooftops. A soft “S” shape, glowing faintly like someone had drawn it in moonlight and then let it drift. For a minute, it almost felt alive – twirling slowly, dissolving into the air like a thought half-remembered.

At first, I thought comet? cloud? cosmic ghost? But no – word filters in: yes, the comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) is up tonight, swinging through the Virginia sky, bright enough for the naked eye if you step away from streetlights. There’s also a Sentinel-1D rocket launch tonight — you can check it at rocketlaunch.live. The trails of its exhaust can twist into those eerie spirals high above the atmosphere, catching sunlight even after dusk. Science and wonder sharing the same inkblot in the heavens.

Somewhere between the comet and the rocket, the spiral floated – a momentary signature, a kind of glowing question mark reminding us how the sky never really sits still.

Back on the ground, the city hums, dogs bark in the valley, and the faint scent of woodsmoke drifts through the crisp air. Somewhere up there, a machine made by human hands is circling Earth, and a ball of ancient ice is writing its own slow arc through the solar system.

Good night, Roanoke – keep looking up.

#whatstheskydoing #roanokeva #comet #rocket #hypnoticeyepfgod

The world is a slightly better place today.

Some recent nature in roanoke, virginia

Up on Mill Mountain this morning, where the fog lifts slow and the trees wear their last fire-bright leaves like old medals. The oaks and maples were humming orange, the sky the color of cooled steel.

Out from between the trunks came a bear – big, black, and steady. Not rushing anywhere, just existing in the kind of way that makes you feel small but safe. He was wearing a white shirt, crisp against his dark fur, with a bright red circle-and-slash over a crown: no kings.

A quiet manifesto in the woods.

He didn’t roar it. Just stood there, breathing clouds into the cold morning air, as if to say: we don’t need crowns here – just balance, warmth, and berries enough for all.

The mountain seemed to nod. The leaves swirled. A jay shouted something rude from above, and the bear went on his way, stepping over moss and memory.

Down the slope, the Roanoke Star blinked faintly through the mist, watching too.

No kings, no hurry. The forest already knows how to rule itself.

#roanokeva #edemberleystyle #doodle #digitalmarkers #sicsempertyrannis

November wander – Mill Mountain hues

A slow climb through the switchbacks this morning, the road lined with trees in their full autumn whisper – golds, russets, and the last stubborn greens clinging to the ridge. The guardrail hums along the way like a silver thread pulling us upward through the forest. Windows down, air sharp with leaf scent and the faint sweetness of decay.

At the top, the overlook opens wide – Roanoke stretched below like a model town in amber light. The skyline tiny but proud, hugged close by the blue-gray humps of the mountains beyond. You can almost feel the valley vibrate with life.

The Star looms ahead, a gentle giant of steel and light, framed by red maples and coppery oaks. Standing under it, I can hear the low buzz of electricity and the soft murmur of visitors talking in that hushed, reverent tone people use in cathedrals and on mountaintops.

Leaves tumble across the path, catching the wind, spinning toward the edge. I linger for a while, watching the clouds herd shadows across the town, thinking how lucky we are to live in a place that still blushes this beautifully before it sleeps.

#MillMountain #Roanokeva #Autumn #BlueRidge

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