Falling

About a week ago, the Professor had a fall break, so we went camping. He picked the Pisgah National Forest, where we enjoyed the colors of the leaves.

We set up our fancy new giant tent. The top opens so you can have air breeze through and you can view the stars, but we were very grateful for the rain covering, as it was cold, cloudy, and the rain fell hard at night.

It was quite foggy and rainy our first day, blocking any chance of seeing vistas, so we went into Asheville to see the sights and eat well. Here are our shopping bags from the fabulous bookstore Malaprops and the best chocolate shop in the world, the Chocolate Fetish.

The next day was gorgeous, and we took in every view we could. A nice local couple we met at one overlook told us their favorite place to hike was Dupont Forest, and we were so glad we followed their tip. So many beautiful waterfalls!

Here I am at Three Falls.

And here are two of the Three Falls, with the Professor, for scale.

And finally, High Falls.

All this talk of “fall” reminds me of a short short piece of creative nonfiction that mesmerized me over a decade ago, stuck with me through the years, “Falling” by Art Homer. The final line is so gorgeous. I hate to repeat it here–you should read it in full. I don’t know why I shift from light talk about a camping trip to the profundity of this piece, but somehow it ties together to me. Perhaps the gorgeousness of nature, the sublime. The end of the life of summer, the terminal drop of rivers–they end, and start again, and that is the beauty of life.