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Autumn reflections

It's Terrific Tuesday again! What's new in your neck of the woods?

Breckinridge Elementary School will hold its fall carnival this Saturday. It's also Red Ribbon Week--just say no to drugs young people! Family Fall Festival is at Greenfield Recreation is also this Saturday and it is free.

Fall festivals are among my favorite activities. Many people have told me they don't have the time or money to go look at leaves, so I am doing all of you a favor. Most folks seem worried and blue. Not that I am not, but, I believe the cup is half full, so I am looking for the brighter side no matter how hard it is to find. Welcome to the fall slide show.

I took a little trip up to Arcadia this morning for a fall tour. Just click for the slide show and I'll attempt to add more this week as I travel. I am supposed to be at Camp Bethel this Thursday and that should offer a good opportunity to add a few more. We also have pictures from our photo contest and a big Huzzah! to Dennis Deacon of Blue Ridge, our winner, whom I met at Ikenberrys' Apple festival on Sunday.

Back to the Botetourt View rambling road trip to Arcadia. What did I see in Arcadia? People, ironically for a normally serene and lonesome stretch of road. Three different men stopped and asked me if I had seen the trout stocking truck and I had not. Another, Coach Hamm from CAMS, stopped and chatted a minute. We were at the PTA Pep Rally last night so we chuckled over the event. I also spotted three Great Blue Herons who may have been looking for trout as well! (If you have never been to Arcadia go north of Buchanan to the Shell Station Exit-- I think it is 167 or there abouts and go up Arcadia Road on your right. A bit of heaven at the foot of the Blue Ridge Parkway.)

Jennings Creek is pretty low as far as water flow. I stopped by the James River earlier and the sycamore giants by the river are just brown and nothing colorful. I brought along my breakfast and watched the river run. Nothing is more peaceful in the early morning chill than the James in all her glory. Last year was the 400th anniversary of her founding by the English and she is nicknamed, "America's River. The headwaters of the James are located in northern Botetourt near Iron Gate.

So after breakfast, I decided Jennings Creek was a better bet, you bet. Isn't that a song lyric by the Who? One of you rock gurus out there tell me what the song is. For some reason it has been in my head this morning.

Anyway, I digress. The sun flitted in and out of the nooks and crannies of the "hollars" near by the creek. A handful of Sassafrass leaves had fallen. I bent and picked them up. I crushed the leaves between my hands and smelled the sweetness. When I was a child growing up in Fincastle, I used to keep Sassafrass leaves as a sachet in my bureau drawers along with my pj's and "unmentionables." Funny how an odor can bring back memories.

Suddenly I was a child again walking through the woods with Daddy. He'd point out various trees-- sassafras among them, andI remember when I was sick as a child they brewed sassafrass tea to cure me. The oaks were watched closely for the mast of acorns. He was likely to predict a bad winter if the acorn crop was bountiful. Hickory's and their bright goldeness were among his favorite trees in the fall. Our farm had a lot of walnut trees, too. We'd fill our pockets with fallen black walnuts. Often the next day, my parents would come back with buckets and we'd pick them-- all up to the song of angry squirrels in the trees above. Momma would make applesauce cakes for friends and relatives for Christmas and those walnuts fit the recipe nicely. Have you ever had the green hulls of a black walnut stain your hands? Almost impossible to remove-- it has to wear off. And, unlike sassafrass, walnut hulls stink.

So drive along in you mind's eye with the TT autumn slide show trip to Arcadia and recall memories of your childhood autumns. In these trying times, nature's beauty and memories are worth a pound of cure for what ails your heart and mind!

See ya next week.