last week three close friends and i took a roadtrip down to and inside of north carolina.after a day in asheville, brandon asked me what do i think of asheville. i said it’s somewhere else, i like it.
which wasn’t to say that i abhorred where i’d been prior - philadelphia, where i live - though it’s easy to get cooped up in one’s home, i think, be it big city or small town. but asheville struck me as firmly its own compared to most towns. it wasn’t the same old boring chain stores of anywhere america. there was obviously a history—things about it you’d have to live there to begin to understand, to sense their actual size.
also, the people we met were friendly, unpretentious. i think that in philadelphia i am friendlier than most people. in asheville – in almost every place we visited in the south, really – i felt unfriendlier than most, and so i started paying more attention to the way i moved my body, my habitual gestures and so forth.
my guess was that nobody there was ready to steal anything from me.
walking down a street w/ brandon and riverbottum.we went to the great smoky mountains and did some easy hiking along “deep creek.” the air startled me it was so fresh, and we were all happy to be there. we debated whether the creek was deep enough to warrant its name. lots of kids were tubing in the creek. we decided not to join them.
brandon along deep creek.
ryan inside oconaluftee vistor center, margarita outside taking photo.
driving along the great smoky mountain highway we saw a few cars pull over and so we pulled over too and watched an elk eating grass. it turned its posterior to us and defecated as it continued eating grass.
we drove through cherokee, a reservation-tourist area outside the park. among the absurdities (of which there were plenty) were a couple of tepees draped with signs that said Everything Half Off, out front a gift shop.
we stayed in a cabin (see photo above) in the deep creek area, near bryson city, drank some wine and beer we bought from an IGA in bryson, watched game 5 of the stanley cup on the cabin’s little tv and took turns swatting flies. pittsburgh won in triple overtime to stay alive for one more game; riverbottum was elated.
the next day we drove up into the hills and took some more pictures of each other.
ryan & margarita.
part two later.
