Vlogging Appalachia- Grayson Highlands state park fall harvest festival-...

some appalachian nostalgia. grew up in west virginia, these photos are mine.

btw it’s pronounced app-uh-lach-uhn.

Antlers (2021) - Scenery #4

Where the South Carolina foothills turn into mountains.

Hillsides and Mountains with a Spring Bloom (Shenandoah National Park) by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: While walking around the Dickey Ridge Visitor Center with a view looking to the southwest to other ridges and peaks (Buck Mountain & Long Mountain based on PeakVisor app) in the Northern Blue Ridge. This is in Shenandoah National Park. In composing this image, I wanted to keep a balance with the foreground with the grasses and nearby trees and shrubs with that of the blues and whites in the skies above. I felt the foreground grasses helped to create a way to draw a viewer into the image and see the more distant mountains. I did some initial post-processing work making adjustments to contrast, brightness and saturation in DxO PhotoLab 7. I then exported a TIFF image to Nik Color Efex Pro 7 where I added a Polarization, Foliage, and Pro Contrast filter for that last effect on the image captured.

Drove myself up to the mountains today to do some photography as a form of self care. Got a lot of shots of the mountains themselves, and did some micro work, too. I don't have a real micro lens, though, so I had to do my best with the standard 18-55mm default lens for my camera.

All of these were shot at one of my favorite places in the world. The drive up there gives me mad anxiety (one way gravel road with steep dropoffs down a literal mountain and almost no place to pull over if you happen to encounter another vehicle), but it's worth it once you get to the top. You can see forever either way. At night, you can actually see the stars. Not quite like you can in certain remote places out West, but it's the best I've found in the Eastern US.

Absolutely love Appalachia. As much as I hate how many people are moving out this way, I don't know if I could ever leave. So much of who I am was formed by living here.

just saw someone call the second oldest mountain range in the world "hills" and would like to start an Appalachian Appreciation post! please feel free to reblog with your own favorite pictures of these beautiful mountains!!

(photo from outdoors.org)

I've spent a lot of time driving up and down I-81 and the stretch through Shenandoah is easily one of my favorite places to drive :)

I always think I want to make moodboards for my fics but then finding appropriately stock images is actually horrendous. Nevermind

Breaks Interstate Park ⛰️

“Bask in the magic surrounding you.

In the colors of the sky—beaming down and gracing your skin.

The feel of the grass between your toes.

The smell of the warm mountain air. Life is beautiful.”

—@builtbyfirexx

📸: Me • Words: Me

Blue Ridge Mountains Asheville NC Scenic Autumn Landscape Photography by Dave Allen Via Flickr: Memento Mori - Blue Ridge Mountains Asheville NC Scenic Autumn Landscape Photography Warm autumn light rays over mountain valleys filled with vibrant autumn colors in the mountains along the scenic Blue Ridge Parkway south of Asheville, NC. We were lucky enough to get some beautiful light rays over the fall colors during one of my autumn landscape workshops recently, and what a memorable experience with such a great group of folks it was. Remember to make the most of every day y'all, and hope you enjoy the view! Single exposure, Nikon D810 w/ 20mm f/1.8 and Singh-Ray 3-stop Reverse GND © 2019 Dave Allen Photography, All Rights Reserved. This image may NOT be used for anything without my explicit permission.

Chaymp.

Listen. Vermont is small. The mountains are stubby, the people are sparsely settled, the state itself can be crossed in an afternoon. Our field of view is short; there's always a mountain or six lifting up out of the horizon to block the way, and though they won't have the height of the Rockies they sure will keep you from seeing the next twenty miles.

Travel and the scenery will change every thirty minutes, a new mountain ridge visible over the next, and the next, and the next. The landscape comes in layers, each a little grey-greener and foggier than the one before. When the clouds gather at the base of the mountains, the dark ridges that emerge look like dragons floating through the mist.

I've lived on flat land. I've lived by the seashore. I've gone out my front door and seen the earth or the ocean stretch forth, seen the sky come down to meet it at an impossibly far-distant line. It's awful. Sorry. I know there's poetry about that, I know it inspires probably more people than it puts off. But I'm cozy up here, with my little gently-rolled Appalachians hemming me in on all sides.

And Lake Champlain is big! It's got that oceanic quality, where you can't always see the other side of it and there are deep currents running beneath. Of course there's a sea serpent in that lake, a monster, a swimming dragon as thick as a barrel and as long as a city bus. Plenty of folks have seen it. It hit me when I got there: we need to see it. We need that dragon's back layer, that extra ridge, that mystery for more mysteries to hide behind. You get used to the mountains up here, the way they halt the eye even when they're shrouded in mist. It feels bad to be able to see all the way clear to New York.

That's not to say Champ isn't actually there. It's just to say that Vermonters as a people are probably predisposed to look for it.

Antlers (2021) - Scenery #2

cardinals

In the dead of winter, surrounded by monochrome colors for months on end, there's something about a little bird bursting with song, vigor and the most obnoxious red color he can wear that can't help but lift even the darkest of moods. These cheery little chaps, duded up in reds that would make Santa feel embarrassed of his drab colors are year round residents who don't migrate, picking one spot and adapting to the ecosystem there, so they're one of the few birds that don't head south when the cold weather starts to set in. They also don't molt their flashy summer feathers in exchange for drabber colors that will blend in with the winter foliage. Because of this, the bright red cardinal has become a symbol of winter and winter holidays, unabashedly popping past the empty colors filling up our windows and doorways, splashing his vibrancy for all to enjoy. Well, the male does. The female cardinal is a much softer brown, busy blending in with the scenery while her flashy husband is out drawing all the attention. As the one nest sitting, this works out better for her. Flashy though her mate may be, he's loyal to her and cardinals are known for staying together once they're paired up for the rest of their lives, raising their children as a couple and even staying together out of mating season. Not all cardinals, mind you. These feisty little birds can split up to chose someone else if it suits them and there's no guarantee that the bright boi caring for his lady's chicks is caring for his own kids. Cardinals are social creatures though and once they find a group they like, and a mate they like, they're usually very content to stay put that way.

Cardinals are native to the Americas, ranging from southern Canada all the way down to central America. They've also been introduced to Hawai'i and Bermuda. As such, most of the folklore surrounding them comes from the Americas. I did find some for other countries, like China, Japan, Italy and England but given the lack of them having even heard of these birds until later as well as the fact that they have their own 'red birds' that aren't cardinals but people might confuse, I'm just going to focus on what developed in the Americas when it comes to superstitions and folklore for the cardinal.

The first of these is that when settlers came to the New World from the old they saw these jaunty little fellows and immediately went religious. Cardinals are named 'cardinals' after the Roman Catholic priests of the same name. Europeans saw the bright red feathers that matched the color of the priests' robes and the little tufted 'mohawk' the bird sports that seemed to resemble the red hats the priests wore and from that point on the bird was an official member of the Catholic clergy!

Birds in general have long been associated with the afterlife and there's a saying that "when cardinals appear, angels are near". Cardinals are also believed to be the souls of ancestors by some groups or send by the spirits of the dead and in parts of the US to see a cardinal meant that a loved one was letting you know they had died and you could expect a call to inform you of it soon. Unlike some harbingers of death however, cardinals were meant to offer hope and comfort during this time, promising that the living were loved by the newly departed. The Cherokee believed that cardinals carried the souls of the departed to the afterlife.

Cardinals signaled more than a loved one passing however. The Choctaw tell the story of how a red bird helped a man woo his love. Since cardinals are often monogamous they've come to stand for love and loyalty and their red color associated them with passion. Seeing a cardinal while you're single could mean that love is just around the corner for you. If you're not interested in romance, hearing the song of the social little cardinal means that you'll have a visitor soon.

Both certain Native American tribes and Appalachian folklore say that cardinals have the ability to predict rain with their singing. Hearing a cardinal's song in the morning, meant rain by that night.

The Cherokee tell the story of how the cardinal got his brilliant red color by helping Wolf pick off the hardened dung that Raccoon had smeared across his eyes while he slept, making him unable to open them. Once the helpful bird had picked away at the hardened mess enough for Wolf to finally see, Wolf told the bird of a nearby stone that had red streaks of color on it that the bird could go and paint himself with. Red paint symbolized war, success, strength and spiritual protection. In other Cherokee stories, the red bird was the transformed daughter of the Sun, who had died from snakebite but was brought back from the land of the dead in a box. While inside the box, she begged the men carrying her back to the land of the living to give her food or water but they ignored her because they'd been ordered not to open the box until they were safely back. Then the girl said she was smothering and, fearing she might die again, they cracked the box open. The second they did, a bit of red flew swiftly out of the box and away. The Sun's daughter had become a cardinal. In some of the stories, humanity lost their immortality because they let her escape.

Cardinals are symbols of hope, life, energy, love and family. This cheerful little bird really does do it all.