Family

Into the Woods: Southwest NC

/ JRLonas / 1 Comment

This fall has been one of the busiest seasons of our lives. Both Rachel and I are deeply committed on a number of levels, running on wisps of sleep and doing what we can to keep the plates spinning.

In the midst of it all, though, we were blessed to have a long weekend to ourselves (yes, her parents kept all three kids. Thanks!) to celebrate 9 years of marriage.

We got married in October at least partly because of the color scheme, capping off the wedding with a honeymoon in Downeast Maine back in 2006. Ever since, we’ve enjoyed timing our anniversary travel with peak foliage wherever we go to celebrate. We hit the weather/color jackpot again this year with a trip over to the Highlands/Cashiers area of North Carolina.

I grew up in the mountains of North Carolina, but never spent much time in the southwest corner of the state. We had plenty of opportunity to enjoy the sights there this month, though, and we hit the trail. Rachel hasn’t always shared my love of grueling hikes, but we both do enjoy being outside. She let me drag her up and down a number of hills on this jaunt, and I’m pretty sure she even enjoyed herself.

What a treat. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

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The hill behind our condo at Sapphire Valley.

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Whitewater Falls

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Several shots from Black Balsam Knob off the Blue Ridge Parkway. Rachel tells me I should just shout “Balsam” whenever I get stressed and think about this day up there.

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Graveyard Fields/Yellowstone Prong Falls is a one-in-a-million spot…unfortunately everyone knows it. We were tripping over other visitors, even on a Monday.

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We took this one from a Canoe on a rather windy lake.

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Whiteside Mountain in Highlands is something to behold. Quite a variety of terrain and views on a moderate 2.5 mile loop.

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Dry Falls on US 64.

Yep, I think I’ll keep her. =)

A Day Late and [Several] Dollar(s) Short: Film Reviews

/ JRLonas / 2 Comments

We have kids.

No surprise there if you know us or just read a few posts here. They bring many joys, and change your life in many ways. One of those ways, we’ve learned, is that we are no longer anywhere near the cutting edge of music, cinema, or culture. The last time we saw a movie on the big screen, it was Frozen, and that at the cheap theater 4 months post-release. But, as balm for entertainment-deprived souls, the public library comes through…if you are patient.

All that to say, over the last few weeks we’ve just now caught up with some of the popular films from late last year. By and large, we are glad we saved the money and waited. None of them were terrible, but it’s reminded us that well-done original films are such a rare treat. In the order we watched them, now, some brief reviews.

Selma
David Oyelowo as Dr. King was phenomenal. The supporting cast was great. The set design, costumes, etc., superb. The themes are clear, the story (small historical quibbles notwithstanding) doesn’t overly sentimentalize characters and events. This should have been a great film, but the pacing was so poor it struggled even to be a good one. I’d much rather have a film with layers of meaning applied so quickly that a few re-watches are required to get it all than one that drags out each scene longer than necessary.

Shorter Selma: Watch the 1987 PBS miniseries Eyes on the Prize.

Into the Woods
A well-made film adaptation, largely faithful to the dark-yet-playful vibe Sondheim pulled off so well. I’ve seen this performed on stage a couple of times, and, to Disney’s credit, they didn’t muddy it up with too many special effects, and chose a cast who could sing well. My beefs with the movie are the same I have with Sondheim’s original: there are definitely creepy and suggestive moments (including a child predator thinly veiled as the Big Bad Wolf), and the takeaway message is that people let you down, so you’ve got to trust yourself (“Witches can be right / Giants can be good. / You decide what’s right / You decide what’s good.”).

Shorter Into the Woods: Very Grimm, indeed. Well-done, but ringing hollow.

Unbroken
Slightly better than Selma in the “true story” category thanks to tighter editing. Great acting from a good cast, good cinematography, and very faithful to the parts of the story depicted. Therein lies the trouble. Louis Zamperini’s struggles against himself, his opponents on the track, Japan, hunger, thirst, sharks, his demons, and ultimately his sin is so much richer than a two-and-a-half-hour movie can pull off. Not a bad film by any stretch, but a clear case of “the book was better.”

Shorter Unbroken: Read Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand instead.

Many of these scripts suffer from gravitational time dilation...

Many of these scripts suffer from gravitational time dilation…

Interstellar
I admire Christopher Nolan’s ambition. Really, I do. When the dog catches the car, though, the results can be…interesting. This movie tried to say so much, and came so close. It bogged down not in the science, but in its lackluster development of characters. There is no one to really care about–even if you buy his premise that love is a force that moves across time and space (I found it good food for thought). If Nolan shaved 45 minutes to an hour off this bad boy, leaving more to the imagination and focusing on the action, it might have been great.

Shorter Interstellar: For the “leave the earth to save it, but only love conquers destruction” motif, watch Wall-E instead.

The Theory of Everything
Give the man his Oscar. Eddie Redmayne went the full Daniel Day Lewis, and was handsomely rewarded by the Academy. Feel-good mush? Perhaps, but Redmayne works it and it works. Felicity Jones and the supporting cast are quite good also, and the clash of worldviews features prominently. Even so, the film as a whole spends too much time lingering over Hawking’s incredible disability instead of plumbing the depths of his relational and intellectual (spiritual, really) tension with his wife. Again, pacing is everything.

Shorter Theory of Everything: Acting Oscars seldom indicate that the film is equally superb.

Maybe by this time next year, I’ll have found time to watch five more movies. Make ’em count, Hollywood!

Into the Woods: Domestic Appalachia

/ JRLonas / 9 Comments

Even as a lifelong Southerner, I wilt at the first signs of the heat & humidity our region is famous for. Fear not: there is an out.

When I was 14, our family managed to settle in the one place where Southeastern culture intersects Northeastern weather–the High Country of Western North Carolina. That July day we pulled out from the little Georgia town that had been home for the previous 9 years, it was 107 degrees. In our new driveway (500 miles later and 3,800 feet up),  it was a heavenly 62. Thanks to that move, I grew up with barbecue and blizzards, sweet tea and skiing, fried okra and fresh air.

After college, the need for employment opportunities and affordable living led to putting down roots in my wife’s hometown of Chattanooga (where we still live and which we still love). When days start nudging past 80, though, my thoughts head for the hills. Thanks to my folks’ ongoing homestead (they built a house in 2006 on 23 acres “down in the valley”, at 3,300 ft. in Deep Gap), we can act on that impulse and be feet-up in the front porch hammock in five hours’ drive.

The older two girls and I made one of our escapes from summer this weekend and were handsomely rewarded with perfect weather and the full array of spring flowers. Our kids don’t know yet just how blessed they are to have access to this as a routine part of life, but they do know how much they love to visit Grandaddy and B-Ma any time of the year.

Plants hold a special place in my heart, so visiting home means I also get to visit some amazing plants (weird perhaps, but we’re all a bit off at some level or another). I worked four summers at a nursery and landscaping business during college. One of the perks was getting all manner of amazing plants at a steep discount. When my parents built their house, they asked me (and my employee discount) to do the initial landscaping. Whenever we go back to visit, I love seeing how those few trees, shrubs, and perennials have filled in over the past 9 years (owing much more to my mom & dad’s ceaseless care than any work I did in picking and planting them). As they’ve grown in, covering the bright red fill dirt that first surrounded their place, the house looks more and more like it’s always been there in that little bowl.

This series is supposed  to be about hikes and assorted adventures in the wilderness, but sometimes a trip “into the woods” feels a lot like home. There will always be more to say about the vast beauty of the Appalachians, and people with more time on their hands than me have written and photographed enough to document every good hike around. This little corner of the world is all ours, though.

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A little corner of rhododendron varietals

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You can seriously grow everything up there…

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Mountain Laurel are everywhere

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Lupine is an old favorite

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They have several patches of Pink Lady’s Slipper around the land

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Even the weeds are pretty: Cow Parsnip

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And so are the grasses…

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This Bigleaf Magnolia (not native to high altitudes) moved with me twice, but it seems to be thriving in the last place I planted it…20′ tall and about to bloom

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The creek bottom down the hill from the house is covered with Skunk Cabbage and Cinnamon Fern

Twin Tail

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Having a twin is a fearful business, sharing so much for so long.

He and his sister were precluded from the usual mischief of identicals, so their bond and boldness brought new imaginings of misbehavior. They were without guile, merely sharing together the last of five births. Two surviving elder siblings, likewise sister and brother, already carved roles as dutiful firstborn and budding black sheep. To the twins in those early days, then, fell blind love and none-too-watchful parents. The farm meant work, and neither keeping up nor getting in the way was open to them.

They had adventures lavished on them by the land. Tadpoles needed snatching, blood-red clay needed molding, dogs needed chasing. Someone invariably wound up locked in the smokehouse, stuck on the sandbar inHay! the creek, or dangling from that lowest pecan limb just high enough to make the ground too far away. Getting caught meant a wink and playful smack; a switching and dinnerless bedtime awaited discovery of more grievous transgression. Most of these were concealed by the unspoken pact between them to which all children subscribe, that the silence of both was to be preferred to the punishment of either. Eighty years hence, hints of those mutual secrets (embarrassingly innocuous) were ever visible in the mirth of their meetings.

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