Lawrence F Holmes Paintings: February 2016

Friday, February 19, 2016

Horse Cove Creek

The Saga of Horse Cove Creek

I remember the day well. In fact, it was exactly three years ago today. I had been missing my granddaughter who was in her first year at Brevard College working toward a degree in vocal performance. She had set aside the weekend so we could do some hiking in her beloved mountains in Western North Carolina. She had decided to show me the view from John Rock, in the Pisgah National Forest.

We had done some hiking together in the past. She knew that I had been an avid hiker when I was young, and she had even heard the family story of how I had taken her grandmother backpacking up on Mount Rogers in Virginia when we were dating. She knew that story well. She knew that it had been raining in Roanoke when we left for the mountain, and that I had optimistically predicted that we were driving two hours south to Mount Rogers and it would be a beautiful weekend there. Oh, trust can be so easily lost when you are young and just getting to know someone. My only excuse is that this was before we had smart phones that can instantly give you the weather forecast anywhere on the face of the earth in a nanosecond. In fact, this even predates the Weather Channel, but that too is just another excuse. Sometimes forgiveness is even hard to come by when you take your future wife off backpacking for the first time in a constant down pour. But Leah was planning this hike and she had a smart phone and she declared that all the weather satellites were predicting a great weekend. And she was right.

We packed up some snacks and water and off we went. It was a well-worn trail which crossed a couple of streams in the first mile or so. One was especially pretty. I learned later from a USGS topo map that it was called Horse Cove Creek. We both wanted to get a picture of it, so Leah used a series of stepping stones to reach the ideal position to take a picture of the water as it came out of the forest and tumbled over and around a series of rocks before spilling out into a shallow pool at her feet. We must have taken hundreds of pictures that day including many from the top of John Rock with its spectacular views, but none of them equaled the beauty that Leah captured in her picture of that little stream. For me, that picture will always be the touchstone to remind me of the glorious weekend that I spent with my granddaughter in her mountains.

It is hard to believe that that hike was three years ago. As I am writing this, I know

that Leah is hard at work preparing for her senior recital scheduled for April 1^st. Even at my age, I did not realize how fast these years of college would pass for us. And what a remarkable young woman she has become.