Into the Woods

Mabry Mill, running on water from former Hurricane Ida

The last week of August felt like the hottest, most humid, and most miserable week of the summer. Late Sunday, Hurricane Ida hit New Orleans. The levees held, and the storm moved north. On Wednesday, what remained of the storm passed over central Tennessee, bringing rain (and much cooler weather) to western North Carolina.

Having felt housebound by the heat, I made a little road trip to Meadows of Dan, Virginia, to enjoy the highlands weather. The high temperature up there was 67F on Wednesday. Though I had a rain jacket with me, I walked some in the rain without the jacket and intentionally got wet.

I don’t know when the mill races at Mabry Mill were repaired, but they have been repaired, were full of water, and the water wheel was turning. I had been afraid that the impoverished U.S. Park Service would never have the money available for the repairs.

In the video below, note that the wheel is turning very slowly. If the mill actually was in operation, the volume of water sent onto the wheel would be much greater, and the wheel would spin much faster. The mill and restaurant were closed when I was there, and there was nobody around but me.

The low temperature tonight will be 55F. It seems possible that September actually has arrived on schedule this year, after several years in which everyone was saying that September is the new August.