It was 10:00 at night and I was tired. It had been a long, hard day at the end of a long, hard week. I had been dealing with the public for about 9 days straight and suddenly the phone rang. Dutifully I answered or should I say fearfully. I half expected work to be calling to ask me to work another of my days off. I liked the money but not the broken weekends which rarely fell on an actual weekend. Frequently I'd work several days and have a single day off then repeat the process. I had 3 whole days ahead of me. The only way to be sure not to be called would be to be out of town but I was exhausted and didn't have enough money to head out of town on a whim. Working in retail is like that. It wasn't work which was a real relief. Instead it was Brianne asking sweetly if I'd like to take a trip to Little Switzerland in North Carolina as she'd got an hotel booked and her girlfriend had pulled out. In a trice I said yes and she announced she'd be at my place in the morning.
Having duly packed a few things, which for me is simply a case of tossing a few clothes into a bag, I was ready to go. Brianne's Chevy crunched its way up the dirt track and pulled up outside my humble abode. After a quick breakfast I'd whistled up for the pair of us, we were on our way. What a stomach churning ride it is up to Little Switzerland. The road snaked and turned with hairpin bends up and up, ever higher. In many places the road was simply a narrow track on a man-made ledge in the hillside. One one side was sheer rock and on the other a sheer drop.
The view at the top was marvellous though there was an almost continual haze. The mountains vanished into the distance, obscured by haze. The air was thinner but at 6,000 feet, not that thin. I remembered skiing in Austria as a lad on the Stubai Glacier. Two weeks there and my cheeks were rosy red with extra red bloodcells. As I was up there for just two days it was unlikely that I would benefit greatly from extra bloodcell production.
The hotel (of which I never did take a photo) was decked out like a hunting lodge with moose heads hanging on the wall. While I was there I did speak to one of the local Mountain Men and found that he did a lot of wedding photography etc. It wasn't his main job. His main job was in an assaying office for there is gold in them thar hills. The interesting comment was that he charged about $200 for a wedding, shot exclusively in JPEG and copied the images to CD within minutes of completing the job so that the bride and groom could leave with a CD of their wedding. That was rather a splendid way of doing things.
Scattered around the perimeter of the hotel were a series of lodges designed to look as rustic as possible. There's probably a lot of hunting that goes on in those hills, not to mention gold prospecting. Needless to say, I didn't hang around the hotel too much. I did have a little wander around and saw that even at the enhanced altitude (which was chilly), the usual flowers were blooming and insect life abounded.
Around the left of the hotel was a trail that went downhill. For a bit of fun I wandered down that trail and down and down and down I went. It was quite a long trail with plenty tire marks despite the sign that was beside the trail.
People in America seem to have a thing about shooting at signs. I must say that they have a mighty fine shot grouping. I doubt they were shooting from much more than about ten feet from the sign though. This is not the first sign I have seen with bullet holes. I've seen quite a few - usually larger caliber. This seems to have been shot with a .22 or similar. Quite possibly somebody was hunting with a .22 target rifle - it's quite adequate for small game and I saw a video recently of somebody shooting through 1/2 inch plywood with .22 at 450 yards. They were claiming that it was powerful enough to be used as a self-defense round.
As everywhere, half way down the path, somebody had dumped some unwanted kitchen appliances. It looked like they had thrown them down the slope in the sure knowledge that nobody would really care. I am pretty sure nobody really did care because aside from myself and the locals, no tourist would ever go where I do. I like to see the gritty underside of the tourist areas.
Further down was a waterfall. It wasn't a big one and it was tricky to get closer to take a better photo as those trees were barely clinging onto the sheer edges of the deep rift through which the water ran. I looked but did not fancy my chances of being able to clamber out of that rift if I fell in and it was in such a remote location that nobody would be able to hear me if I did go down.
It was quite a haul to walk all the way up that trail. It certainly wasn't as easy going up as it was going down. I know I never reached the end of the trail. I reached a point at which it was appropriate timewise to turn back. I work on a formula for trails like that. It takes half as long extra to climb up as it does to go down. Thus, if I have an hour and I go down for 25 minutes, it may take 40 minutes to get up again or just a shade over an hour. It did in fact take longer as I had not counted on being so used to city living that I was out of breath.
Near the top of the slope was an interesting wooden fence. I love the way the fence is so dilapidated. It looks almost as though it's straight from the old west though I suspect it's no older than about 20 years. Running up and down hills is fun but it's considerably less fun when you're carrying a camera as even a single camera has weight. It always seems that by the time I get back, the camera that weighed next to nothing at the start now weighs an appreciable amount. Hence, of course, I tend to follow the example of one of photography's greats. “Anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn’t photogenic.” -Edward Weston
Eventually I made it back to the top of the hill, just in time for dinner. And so ended the day with feasting and merrymaking. The next day, however, was stormy and wet. Not a fit day for going out to take photographs. The weather in them thar hills is a mite unpredictable so that evening, rather than paying for a second night in the hotel, we headed home.
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