Stokes County – Page 2 – Into the Woods

At last, a free day

I apologize for the long absence from the blog, and I appreciate the emails asking if everything is OK. I’m heavily involved in a local political campaign, trying to bring a little progress to Stokes County. Things will get back to normal after the election.

Today was the first day in many days that I didn’t have to go out. It was a perfect day for that. Reading Ivanhoe in my room, all I could hear was the cat purring under the blanket, the rain dripping from the eaves, and a crow over on the ridge.

A tour of Vade Mecum

Most of the readers of this blog are not from Stokes County, or even from North Carolina, so I need to explain what Vade Mecum is and why people in Stokes County are so concerned about it.

A hundred years ago and longer, Stokes County was a tourist destination. People would come into Walnut Cove on a train, then travel by wagon to one of the resorts. The resorts were clustered around what is now Hanging Rock State Park. There are cool-running springs there, particularly on the shady north side of the park. It was a cool place to be in the summer. Most of the old resorts, which were built of wood, are gone. Only one remains: Vade Mecum.

Vade Mecum was never exactly abandoned, but it was a bit of a white elephant, and no one knew quite what to do with it or how to deal with the expense of keeping it up. It belonged to the Sertoma Club for many years, and for that reason it’s often known by another name, Camp Sertoma. In recent years, it has been managed by N.C. State University. However, N.C. State was losing money on the property and abandoned it on short notice last year. The Stokes County commissioners scrambled to figure out what could be done with the property. Interested citizens floated a business plan, but the plan never flew. But at present, the North Carolina General Assembly is considering a budget bill that would include some money for Vade Mecum and attach Vade Mecum to Hanging Rock State Park, which is just a stone’s throw away. It seems likely that the bill will pass and that Vade Mecum will be saved for the people of North Carolina. But people in Stokes County aren’t counting their chickens yet.

Yesterday there was a tour of Vade Mecum. Many people who are very interested in saving the place had never been inside, including me.

The dining room

The kitchen

Just inside the main door

Robin, superintendent of Hanging Rock State Park

Friends of Vade Mecum and leaders of the tour

A bedroom on the third floor

The chapel

The chapel ceiling

The gym, which has a stage at one end…

… and a fireplace at the other

The big porch in front of the gym

A vast swimming pool behind the gym

Some of the cabins

The main building

No Fracking in Stokes: our new video

As regular readers know, I’ve been involved for the last two years with No Fracking in Stokes, a grassroots group fighting fracking in Stokes County and in North Carolina.

Our group has released a new video, filmed here in Stokes County (except for the shots of actual fracking in the Marcellus shale area of Pennsylvania). The actor is a retired schoolteacher, and the farm where this was shot is just a few miles from the abbey.

That’s the abbey’s garden in one of the photos near the end of the video, and the chicken perched in the Jeep window is an abbey chicken, Fiona.

The original music is by Rex McGee, a Stokes County musician.

Christmas in Danbury

Carolers

Carolers at the Arts Council reception

Moravian star in front of the old Stokes County courthouse

The old Stokes County courthouse

Charlie’s surrey

Charlie

Inside the Stokes museum

Mantel in the museum

Inside the Stokes museum

The rewards of rural life

A concerned citizen speaks to the Stokes County commissioners.

Though I certainly enjoyed my 17 years in San Francisco, rural life is far from boring. One of the good things about backroads places such as Stokes County is that the American system of government operates at a small scale. People know each other. It’s easy to get involved. A few people can make a big difference.

In my political activities against fracking, I’ve gotten to know a good many people. Often the same people who show up to work for one urgent cause will show up to work for another urgent cause. In Stokes County, the newest urgent cause is preserving an enormously valuable 19th-century resort and keeping it in the hands of the public. The resort, Vade Mecum, belongs to the state of North Carolina at present and has been operated at a loss by N.C. State University. A few weeks ago, N.C. State informed Stokes County that they’re closing Vade Mecum, which had been used mostly as a seasonal camp for young people. Very quickly, the county’s leadership — both elected and unelected — have gone to work to come up with a plan that would get Vade Mecum and its pristine 900 acres into county hands and keep it open. Tourism is increasingly important to this county, and Vade Mecum adjoins Hanging Rock State Park, which is the most visited state park in North Carolina. So Vade Mecum and its land could become an important part of Stokes County’s tourism master plan.

The room was packed at a meeting Monday of the county commissioners. A retired farmer, in a 30-minute presentation to the commissioners that was simply the most entertaining and most effective presentation I have ever seen, outlined to the commissioners a plan for preserving Vade Mecum that was developed by a group of concerned citizens. The commissioners seemed to like the plan and have promised to act soon on preserving Vade Mecum.

Though dramas like this certainly happen at the state and national level, here at the county level everyone is up close to the action. There is a real sense of working together. I like it. And at this stage of my life, I’d rather live here than even in a place like Paris.

The main lodge at Vade Mecum

Portable sawmill

Click on images for high-resolution version

A neighbor hired a portable sawmill operator to come in and saw up his hyper-local poplar and oak. He’ll use the lumber to build a new shed.

Note the steam-punk control panels.

A Stokes County promontory

Click on photos for larger version

Stokes County pretty much has its own small mountain range, the Sauratown Mountains. These views are from Hanging Rock, the centerpiece of Hanging Rock State Park.

Road trip to Yadkin

I went on a road trip yesterday to Yadkin County, where most of my family live. Here are a few photos from along the way.

For ages, I’ve been fascinated with the old concrete silos. I think it’s related to my fascination with towers. I’ve always thought that a silo could be converted into a great place to live. These silos are on the north side of Pilot Mountain.

About my photos: Normally, when I post photos on the blog, I size them down to 600 pixels wide so that the pages load nice and quick. Now that I have a much nicer camera, for some of my photos I will include a link to a high-resolution version of the photo.

[Link to high-res] A butterfly in my mother’s magnolia tree

[Link to high-res] A field just north of Hanging Rock State Park

Summer: To hate thee or not to hate thee?

Looking toward Prabhupada Village from Moir Farm Road

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate…

— William Shakespeare, Sonnet XVIII

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if summer days were still temperate?

I realized while I was mowing this morning that I don’t hate summer. What I hate is abnormal summer. After a long run of days with temperatures in the 90s and as high as 97, today seems downright cool. It was 80 degrees out when I was mowing. Now, at 3:30 p.m., it’s 86. It feels like a cool spell, but really it’s not. It’s just close to normal (though still a few degrees above normal). According to the National Weather Service, the normal temperature for June 13 in Greensboro, N.C. (south of here) is 83. Amazing, isn’t it? Temperatures come down to a few degrees above normal and it feels like a cool spell.

But this is what summers used to be like.

Since the weather was so fine, and since I had to go to the post office anyway, I went on a short picture-taking expedition to Danbury, then through back roads to Sandy Ridge, and home again.

I stopped to talk to Carl Hicks, who was out on his tractor on Mission Road. Mr. Hicks owns the land that the nearest Verizon tower sits on, and I drove by hoping to bump into a Verizon technician who I might pump for information on Verizon’s Internet services in these parts. There was no technician, but Mr. Hicks did confirm that Verizon finally ran fiber to the tower a couple of months ago. Maybe that will help with my Internet service, though I’ve not seen any improvement yet.

Mr. Hicks and I talked a while under the shade of a huge oak tree. His view is the same as mine: It wasn’t this hot when we were young. Weather like today’s reminded us both of how summers used to be.

Butterfly weed on Pitzer Road

Mr. Hicks and his tractor

Mr. Hicks

Moratock Park on the Dan River near Danbury

A classic Jeep near Sandy Ridge

Brandon, who was skate-boarding on Moir Farm Road

Brandon

Brandon’s dog Spud

Self-serve pumpkins and hay

I wish more farmers would put out self-service roadside stands. This one is near Sandy Ridge, five miles or so north of Acorn Abbey. I bought a bale of hay, but I’m not yet ready for pumpkins. Next month, when the weather is nice and cool, I’ll make pumpkin soup and pumpkin pie.