First glimpse: Early sketches for a new magazine serving the Toe River Valley

Life and times of Tryon's Daily Bulletin

Thanks to Jeff Byrd, publisher, for his support of our work for him, and Ron Zisman, my long-time design partner.

Along the banks of the Arno, 2006

Early sketch: Some initial thinking about a trades directory for Mitchell County

Something intimate and lasting.

(A fictional introduction to following pages.)

For Page McKinney, bark siding brings something both intimate and lasting to the idea of forest living. For Wade Saunders, stacked-stone border walls are a matter of shape, color and intuition. For landscaper Betsy Winters, it’s not simply what looks good together; it’s what creates a world of comfort and beauty ten years from now.

These entrepreneurs, and many others who work in construction, landscaping and décor in Mitchell County influence the look, comfort and “big joy” of living in these mountains. They know the land, they hand pick the materials they use, they treat every client like a neighbor (which is exactly what many of their clients are).

So when you have an artful, important project you want to imagine or create from a simple idea, ask a Mitchell County landscaper, builder or artisan to take a look at it. Chances are nobody will care more, bring more to the job, or create something more essential, useful or beautiful.

The Building Trades of Mitchell County.
Creating a legacy of beauty and function.

For a Directory of Services: Telephone • Website Address

Dreamscapes from down under: The imagination of healing

Scribbles for Heidi Hayes, surrealist artist.

Beaver Lake in the ice age

Happenings thirty years ago recede now, not only into another time but into another era, an era that’s “back there,” on the other side of the frontal edge of a warming earth.

In 1978, Beaver Lake froze over, not a light freeze, but a freeze so long and robust that people in Volkswagons drove out onto the surface and spun around in 360’s. Neighbors, especially people from northern states, rummaged their dark cedar closets for ice skates and, overnight, whole hockey courts appeared, defined by branches, shoes and soda cans. At night, you could hear conversations on the ice that would ricochet around, between old houses and ancient border trees.

One night the police showed up in dark uniforms and shouted out to a group of boys, “Get off the ice. Stop foolin’ around. Get off the ice.” The boys yelled back, “Come out here and get us,” and they yelled and screamed with laughter, full of night air and the clearness of stars over a frozen lake well south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Beaver Lake will probably never freeze solid again in my lifetime, in the lifetime of my girls or in the lifetimes of their children. The very notion of it is a phenomenon to be captured, in these days of evaporating ice caps, only by memory.

Poem from a week on the Buffalo River in Arkansas, summer of 2008

Two kingfishers

Half a dozen brim

Two blue gill

Nineteen spiders

Two water snakes

10,000 sycamores

562 bluffs

Three thunderstorms

Six black-eyed susans

One tent wasp

40 x 11 no-see-ums

62 short rapids

Five camp fires

Nine hanging gardens of maiden hair ferns

One “Little Niagara”

Three tents

49 Great Blue Heron

Three canoes

6 x 12 stories

One beginning, in a glass of blueberry wine.

The Baker Center, University of Tennessee

On a scouting trip for planning.

On the road to Tryon

A single outdoor board, part of an integrated campaign for new subscribers of the paper and its online version.

School choice in Illinois, a pro bono project

A thinly-staffed non-profit in Chicago needed an overview report of its first two years of service with the mission of opening up school options for all families in the state. Ron Zisman, my art director partner, responded to the call and we carved out a piece we feel good about.

Journalist, Terregona, Spain, 1972