What a great thread. I'm sitting here unwinding from the last few days of traveling around in Virginia and North Carolina. I had a wonderful time but the days were full.

I spent my teen years in Virginia so we drove around seeing all the places I used to know so well- Staunton. Waynesboro. Greenville. Fishersville. Some of them were so changed - so built up and busy or just plain gone - that it was only by lining them up with the mountains and the rise and fall of the nearer landscape that I could hope to pinpoint where a house had been 50 years and more ago or where an event had transpired that had helped form me all those years ago.

In Floyd, Virginia, on the way up to the Shenandoah Valley, for a few hours I visited a beloved friend and her husband. I last saw her 6 years ago but previous to that it had been much longer a separation. As I told other friends later, it had been 43 years since I'd last seen her but within five minutes I remembered why I had loved her so. She is sweet and witty and coltish and wise. And she'll turn 70 this year! The spirit needn't age.

Came home today through snow for the last 100 miles. Apparently the rains that came up from the Gulf of Mexico earlier in the week have reached us as a snowstorm. Practically everything is cancelled for tomorrow. And it's still snowing. But it's very pretty- and the brilliant red of the proud cardinals at the bird feeders in the snow is breathtaking.