Enchanted Asheville

Check out our latest youtube video celebrating the beauty of Asheville and the Blue Ridge Mountains.

When the Dew is Still on the Roses

The sweetness of watching the flowers is like watching children change day by day. A couple weeks ago these flowers were closed with beautiful shoots revealing their beauty. Outside Carolina Day, they are like the kids, blooming day by day.

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Hot Fun in the Summertime!

Hot fun in the Summer time. It's glorious at sunset here, the City Building bathed in pink, the fountains, and lots of cooling off!

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Play Misty for Me

When the storm hit the other night, we huddled together as it seemed the lightning was just outside our window crackling and crumbling the trees around us. In the heat and the storms, it's easy to forget that just as night slips into light, the mist and the morning are just giving us a peak into their inviting beauty.


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Come to the Quiet

Last night, I was reminded that Sunday for me is a time of coming to the quiet and re-energizing my soul with silence. At sunset, Lake Susan in Montreat reminds us that we are joyful creatures who want to live in beauty and love. And an inner quiet. My friends, Kirk and Deby Dearman, create beautiful calming music that uplifts the soul and brings us to the space of calm and quiet (Come to the Quiet) - just like Lake Susan.

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When all You Can Do is Crawl, Smile

What is so amazing about Asheville is the people, many who came from farms and factories to become a people so strong and yet so tender.

When I was 6, my father became disabled, starting 40 years of when he said his legs felt like sticks. When I was 10, he crawled to bed - with a smile on his face. And in the morning he arose with pure joy bubbling over. 

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Splash Down at Sliding Rock!

Splish Splash I was taking a bath - or cooling down at Sliding Rock!

Yesterday he was in mid slide and today ready to splash in. You all need to go - when it's 98 degrees the water is always cool, no it's cold there! 

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Hot fun in the Summertime at Sliding Rock

There's so much joy to be found in the mountains here - and cool (literally) fun! Sliding Rock in Brevard will certainly cool us off as the temperatures reach 90 today.

It's really Hot fun in the Summertime here!

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Blood Red Sun

Last night, the sun in Asheville was a red ball of fire. It felt at once as remote as it could get, like something from the Twilight Zone and yet as friendly as a 3 year old's bright shiny red ball.

Sunsets here remind me that the mountains are like me, ready for bed but the sky has not finished with the day yet. They have one more spectacular show to put on for us.


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The Wow of Clouds

Transcendence is supposed to be this big event, perhaps occurring in meditation or in some ashram. But for me the most amazing moments happen sitting on the porch or walking out of Ingles. Last night, we walked out of the Ingles on Tunnel Road and this display of beauty in color and light took my breath away.

Too often I have squandered the beauty of nature - either totally ignoring it or treating it like a backdrop to my life. But doesn't nature ignore me? And even if I exist for nature, am I not secondary to its mighty show of glory and force. If I drink in Nature, I feel peace, sometimes distress, sometimes indescribable joy but always alive.

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Looking Glass Waterfalls, Majestic Joy

Looking Glass Falls, in our backyards, was created to manifest glory and Joy.

It's like a reflection of our souls, joy and light pouring out. I am reminded of the song "This Little Light of Mine." Odette did a wonderful version in which she recites Marianne Williamson's poem, "Our Deepest Fear." In it, we are reminded that  "We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some; it is in everyone." 

When I saw Looking  Glass Falls, I had a momentary pang of fear. That I am playing small.

                               Your playing small does not serve the world.
                               There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
                               so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
                               We are all meant to shine, as children do.

As, the poem says, we are all bright shining lights of joy, just like Looking Glass Falls, right in our backyard.

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Asheville Skyline from Grove Park Inn

I love visiting the Grove Park Inn and seeing the huge fireplaces, listening to the live music and looking at photographs on the wall of all the famous people who have visited here over the past 100 years. One of my fondest memories is of taking my father on year just before Thanksgiving to see the Ginger Bread Houses, he in a wheelchair. But the irony is that my favorite part of the Grove Park Inn what encircles it. It is the skyline of Asheville and all the mountains that circle our peaceful valley. While in earshot of all the hustle and bustle of the patrons eating and laughing on the patio, you can separate yourself off and drink in the beauty of nature and the vision of man.

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Vance Monument at Night

Asheville on Friday - a huge party. But this was taken early one morning just before 5am, my favorite hour when all is quiet and still before the world wakes up, the hour before the birds sing, when the blackness of the night seeps into your soul, giving you peace and the air just barely wakes up, refreshing you for another day.

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Click here to contact the artist for available cards, prints and gallery canvas wraps
  

Waiting for the Night

From the yellow house to the side porch, at night, there's a sense of longing and waiting. There's nothing like sitting on your porch at night, watching fireflies and feeling the darkness as if it were a being, an old friend, comforting and peaceful.

This one was taken a while and I had another picture in mind, but an overwhelming urge to put this one on took over. Tomorrow is the girl's 13th birthday and there's a sense of her waiting - impatiently and brooding.


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You Can Go Home Again

It's funny how life goes. As a kid, I remember reading Thomas Wolfe and being told by my parents about places mentioned in the book. Some that had changed, some that were gone, and some that were exactly the same. When I came back to Asheville after many years away, it snowed. I stood at the intersection of Carrier and Salola just a block from Rumbough where the park is and I listened to the quiet. Gone was my grandmother and my grandfather at 94 had just had to move from his house. Now 15 years later, parents, grandparents and aunts and uncles have gone on.

But you can come home again. The intoxicating smells are there, the comforting quiet of an early morning at home and old and new memories waiting.

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In the Valley of Love and Delight

Every morning as we got ready to go to school, I saw these two chairs and trees with a backyard that invited me in. I photographed it at different times of the morning to get the light right. Whenever I saw the two chairs beckoning me, I was transcended. To what I don't know. Maybe it's that lingering memory of my grandparents, born in 1902 and 1903, both sitting in their backyard together, he in is railroad overalls and her in a housedress and straw hat. They sat in lawn chairs together.

The story is that my grandfather was one of nine children who lived way out in Franklin and one day he laid down his hoe and started walking to Detroit. To join all the boys who migrated to make cars when cars were new. But he couldn't stay away. One day when back home he saw my grandmother, a woman with big bushy hair. He fell for her and eventually took her back with him to Detroit. My mother was born there but not long after they settled back home, in Asheville on Salola Street where they lived for 50 years.

These two chairs carry me back to a memory of a backyard where I saw my grandparents evening after evening for many years.

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Asheville Enchanted

 
I live in one of the most beautiful places on earth. Often, I have criticized people who live in the shadow of the Mountains here who bitterly complain about life - if they just looked up, they would be inspired and grateful. But recently I realized I've been doing the same thing. Moaning about being a single parent, bills piling up, laid off and then hired only to have the position eliminated before I start. All those are real concerns, but...

But here's the big but. This morning as I prepared for the day I started doing exactly what I criticize others of doing - complaining with the backdrop of the most gorgeous mountains in all of the world. I have stood and listened to a friend in North Turkey Creek complain about things that don't matter to a hill of beans and behind her laid a garden of fresh vegetables and a mountain of green that rose as majestically as any in Switzerland. And lately I've been doing the same thing.

But today, I meditated and heard the birds sing and the streetlight illuminate a patch of trees, a sweet kiss of green light. That's what this photo does for me, reminds me that the sun I saw when I took this photo is bending down to light our day and show us how beautiful life can be... if you only see it as it really is. So today I choose joy and choose Asheville Enchanted.


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From Whence Cometh My Strength

At home in Asheville, this glorious, magical place

One bright morning last week, I looked up to the sky and thought about that beautiful verse all of us from Asheville were taught as kids - I lift mine eyes to the hills - and as I remember it - From whence cometh my help. 

I am not the deepest spiritual person, but in this area where we see beauty all around, it's hard not to remember how joyful we are and how great and mighty life is.

Here in this place honeysuckle and jasmine mingle and greet you with sweetness. Here we wish all the world can experience the same beauty and peace. 

This is Warren Wilson in Swannanoa on a bright and magical morning in June.

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