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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Skunk and deer visit

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Trick or treating kitty

#mabsdrawlloweenclub2025 – Day 31 – Rest in Peace

Last day of the drawlloween trail, and the vulture showed up early – punctual as always. The sun’s already half gone, the light all copper and hush. A mound of fresh-turned earth waits beside a crooked marker, “RIP” carved in shaky letters, but it doesn’t feel sad. It feels… finished.

The shovel’s still standing there, like it’s taking a breath before the next job. Maybe it’ll be a while. Maybe the desert gets to sleep now, too. The air smells of dust, sage, and quiet forgiveness.

It’s strange how peaceful endings can be when you stop resisting them. The vulture isn’t mourning – just witnessing. That feels right.

We’ve walked through ghosts, swamps, and strange dreams all month. Tonight, we rest. Thank you friends for joining me on another doodle journey.

Happy Halloween!

#mabsdrawlloweenclub #mdwc25d31 #restinpeace #vulture #desert #doodle #halloween

#mabsdrawlloweenclub2025 – Day 30: Goth Moth

Up before dawn, shoes damp with dew from the McAfee Knob trail. The stars were still sharp and bright enough to pierce through the last of the night when I reached the edge – that familiar jut of rock that feels like a ship’s prow above a sea of mist. The valley below still sleeping, the horizon just a whisper of silver.

And then, the moon rose full and fat and pale as bone, and there she was: a great moth, black and blue and ghostly, wings open like a cathedral window. The Goth Moth, messenger of all things quietly electric and melancholy. She hovered in the moonlight as if stitched from it – all lunar shimmer and shadowed lace. The air hummed.

I thought about how moths chase light, even when it burns them. Maybe that’s what we’re all doing – drawn toward what glows, even if we can’t stay near it long. On the ledge, I watched her drift into the white circle of the moon and vanish.

Walked back down with a pocketful of small stones and one black feather.

🦋
#mdc25d30 #mabsdrawlloweenclub #gothmoth #moonwatch #AppalachianMagic #skychurch #doodle #roanokeva

#mabsdrawlloweenclub2025 – Day 29: UFO

Evening hum in the sky tonight, like a refrigerator dream. The kind of sound that makes you look up and squint into the soft dark, wondering if the stars are winking back this time. I painted the idea instead of chasing it – cool blues, watercolor worlds, and one little saucer slipping through the ink of space.

Maybe they come not for conquest, but curiosity. Maybe we’re just the next interesting bug under glass, glimmering faintly in our thin atmosphere. Or maybe, we’re the ones visiting them – every time we dream of what’s out there, shining past our horizon.

Tea cooled before I finished the piece. The brush drifted, the stars multiplied. Somewhere, a satellite blinked its code. Somewhere, someone else looked up too.

#mabsdrawlloweenclub #mdc25d29 #UFO #doodle #digitalwatercolor #roanokeva

There isn’t an exact count of bats shown in that image, but a close visual estimate puts it at around 150 to 200 bats in total.

≈ 200 bats total seems like a solid approximation.

#mabsdrawlloweenclub2025 · Day 28 · Topic: Swarm

At dusk, the cave held its breath. So did I.

The first sign wasn’t sight, but sound – a ripple, a whisper, like dry rain. Then the dark began to move. Bats, thousands upon thousands, spilling from the mouth of the earth in a twisting column. The air became alive, trembling with wings.

It felt like standing beneath a heartbeat made of shadows. They passed close enough to stir the hair on my arms, a cool flutter that smelled faintly of stone and dust. The horizon turned from gold to ink, and the swarm climbed higher, stretching into a ribbon of motion that reached beyond the last light of the sun.

I thought about how small a single bat is. Fragile, almost delicate. Yet together – a force. A breathing storm that eats mosquitoes and darkness alike. When they vanished into the night, silence returned in a softer key, as if the world itself needed a moment to steady.

The cave, empty again, exhaled. So did I.

#mabsdrawlloweenclub2025 #day28 #swarm #bats #nature #twilight #fieldnotes #nightmagic

#mabsdrawlloweenclub2025 – Day 28 – Topic: Swarm

Sunset poured itself over the ridge like melted sherbet – orange, pink, violet – that impossible in-between hour where the day exhales, and the night takes its first breath. Then, as if on cue, the air itself came alive. A ripple, a hush, a rising tide of wings.

The bats woke.

Thousands of them, black brushstrokes against the flaming sky, a moving inkblot that pulsed and changed shape with every heartbeat of the twilight. The sound – that soft, chaotic whisper of leathery flight – was almost like rain. Or applause. Maybe both.

Standing there, I couldn’t help but think: a single bat is small, almost fragile. But together – a swarm – they are a force, a living current, a tide of motion and instinct. Nature’s murmuration of shadow. The mountains bowed beneath their collective will, and the sun slipped beneath them, yielding the sky to the night’s winged inheritors.

Sometimes, strength isn’t in the singular. It’s in the group.

#mabsdrawlloweenclub2025 #mdc25d28 #swarm #bats #autumnmagic #roanokeva #blueridgemountains #doodle #digitalmarkers

#mabsdrawlloweenclub2025 – Day 27: Poison Plant

Tonight’s sketch: a little houseplant with big ambitions and a bottle of bad intentions. Black ink blooms and skull labels – everything a witch’s windowsill might need to keep nosy neighbors polite.

There’s something quietly elegant about the dual nature of plants: green life hiding quiet danger. Foxglove whispering heartbeat secrets, nightshade smiling purple lies, oleander humming lullabies for the unwary. The bottle beside it isn’t the real threat – it just wears the warning out loud. The plant smiles in silence.

Maybe that’s the trick – beauty with a sting. Nature doesn’t bother to warn; it just is. We humans are the ones who have to label things poison.

I imagine this one growing under moonlight, listening to the drip of midnight rain, sipping from the edge of a cracked glass jar. It dreams in chlorophyll and venom.

#mabsdrawlloweenclub #poisonplant #inktober #mdc25d27 #doodle #digitalink #drawloween #roanokeva

#mabsdrawlloweenclub2025 – Day 26: Laboratory

Beakers burbling, fluorescent hum overhead – the air tastes faintly of ozone and curiosity. Today’s subject: Laboratory. The scene is half science fair, half madcap carnival. I wandered through the stainless-steel maze of benches and vents, when suddenly – there he was. A simian scientist in full lab coat and goggles, wielding brain and beaker alike, splashing technicolor discovery across the sterile world.

There’s joy in the chaos here – proof that not all experiments need tidy conclusions. Some fizz, some spark, some spill into unexpected wonder. I imagine this monkey (call him Professor Pokonos, PhD in Mayhem) cackling softly as he perfects the formula for spontaneous delight.

Sometimes, the best breakthroughs take place when you forget what was supposed to happen.

#mabsdrawlloweenclub #mdc25d26 #laboratory #madscience #joyinchaos #roanokeva #digitalmarkers #doodle

🕯️ #mabsdrawlloweenclub2025 – Day 25: Ghost Rider 🕯️

Out beyond the picket fence and the whispering graves, a pale horse gallops where the road forgets itself. The rider is lighter than smoke, flowing hair tangled in the wind of another world. Moonlight catches in her outline like frost on glass – she doesn’t stir the grass, doesn’t break the quiet, but every dog in town wakes up howling.

Some say she’s chasing something. Others say she’s running from the moment she burned too bright. I just think she’s keeping her appointment – same hour, same path, every October 25th, when the veil thins and the fields hum low.

If you’re lucky, you’ll only see her reflection in the puddles, a shimmer of hooves where no horse rides. If you’re unlucky, you’ll feel the chill before you turn your head.

Either way, wave politely. Ghosts have long memories. 👻🐎💨

#ghostrider #mdc25d25 #mabsdrawlloweenclub #doodle #digitalmarkers #roanokeva

(Ink and afterimage, night edition.)

Another random #scottfact – I refreshed my knowledge of Morse code to get my ham radio license.

(It is no longer needed to get one.)

I initially learned it to get my Signs, Signals and Codes badge in Boy Scouts when I was a kid.

https://filestore.scouting.org/filestore/Merit_Badge_ReqandRes/Pamphlets/Signs%20Signals%20Codes.pdf