This is the Clinch River on the Western face of the river, South of Tazewell, TN. This is a place that has a lovely 4-lane highway that they insist you go 55 miles per hour on, for miles and miles and miles! By the time you get to this place and wind your way up the hill and over the Clinch, it is an absolutely fabulous vista that you wish you had gotten there an hour and a half sooner!
In my parents' generation, during and after World War Two, President Franklin Roosevelt put into play a series of dams and reconstructed waterways to produce hydroelectric power in Tennessee. Early in 1942, when the effort reached its peak, 12 hydroelectric projects and a steam plant were under construction.
By the end of the war, TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) had completed a 650-mile (1,050-kilometer) navigation channel the length of the Tennessee River and had become the nation’s largest electricity supplier. (Thank you Wikipedia). You can see by the pictures that I have included that it did change the face of the landscape but nearly 70 years later, it is still providing electric power, recreation and conservation, as well as beauty.
I spent the weekend in the little town of Rogersville, TN which happened to be picked out from numerous points of interest on the map by my cousin's wife; who tired of the New York state tax base, researched all things considered for a good life and threw the dart at Rogersville, six years ago.
She has integrated herself and heart into the local township and has acquired two business partners who opened a yarn shop (Sunny Side Yarns dot com) last April. During the town's fall festival, I went down to sign up knitters, crocheters and people of tactile interest, and OK, tried to get a bowl of red beans and rice from a vendor but they were sold out. No shortage of funnel cakes and LAW, LAW, LAW, such delectables as deep fried Snickers and Oreo confections. OMG, how awful is it? Please give me a green bean that is not deep fried!
The crowning moment was while I was handing out business cards (Sunny Side yarns is for everyone, go in and visit!) swagged in a flouncy knitted neck covering that I had actually knitted myself, a rather large woman, holding an even larger sandwich while on the street covered with food stuffs, asked me if I knew of a diet center in town that was rumored to be around. "Not on this street" I said, but she did not get the joke.
Well, just let all that flow around you; add in the noise of the uniform dance troops from age 3 to who knows what, and like a toddler arriving home from a birthday party, I was on total OverLoad of sensory input.
Pullease let me slink home up I-75 and into my little cottage garden where today, it has begun to rain. I seek peace!
My friend whose husband got the job in Florida has packed up nearly all of her house. I will miss her so much, and her little Sheltie, Rudy as well. I never knew dogs knew people, before Rudy.
All I know is that the River of Change keeps on flowing. Sometimes it brings welcome change, sometimes, detritus of our pasts that we would rather have anchored to the bottom of the sea that should stay shipwrecked, sometimes new information and processes that we just don't quite want to tackle yet which bobble before us like a red and white fishing bobber on the pond, waiting to be overcome.
However, it also brings hope, that river of change; the thing not yet seen but believed for, that could happen, yes, it could.
Cowboy called. Son found a house, daughter is deciding what to do about college.
I will yank some old stuff and buy some bulbs. That always is a harbinger of hope. In spite of the squirrels who eat them unless I cover them with pepper, in spite of rot that saturates them from the rain, I hold harmless the ways of the Universe and plant them anyway.
We all want hope, until The Hope is accomplished here.
