Artists, Chestnuts and Mississippi

 Over and over again on this journey I have encountered images that beg for interpretation by an artist. I am thankful that there are poets, painters and song writers, who can create and thereby illuminate my world. A tree caught my eye as Dan was driving in the Blue Ridge. It had a delicate vine working its way up and around the trunk. I am pretty sure it was poison ivy, it had those "leaves of three". Within a day or so of when I saw that tree and vine, my childhood friend Susan Beery shared this poem on FB:

there is an evergreen tree across the     

      fence from me

a wild grape winds its way up in a perfect 

      spiral

who says that magic has been lost on 

      this

planet of the universes. 

Magic is seeing a tree, a vine and a spiral

magic is that it has all taken place across 

     the fence 

in a broken down yard. 

I saw a vine and knew I regretted not taking a picture. She saw a vine and created. 

Do you know about Amercan chestnut trees? 

Chestnut trees once filled the forests from Maine to Georgia and west through the Ohio River Valley -- some 9,000,000 acres. One out of every four hardwood trees was a chestnut in the 1800s. They were straight grained and rot resistant. Mature trees could have a trunk 30' around. In the 1920s a blight came from Asia and killed almost all of the chestnut trees. In Shenandoah NP we learned a bit more about the story... A ranger showed us a young chestnut tree, about five inch diameter, she told us that little tree is doomed. The chestnut roots are still alive; sometimes they send up shoots for new trees but these trees rarely grow to maturity before the blight kills them. I find it amazing that the old chestnut tree roots are still alive. There is some good news - scientists have developed a new chestnut that has 99% American chestnut DNA and it is blight resistant. Now they are looking for places to get them growing. Wouldn't you like to grow a chestnut tree?

This is Meriwether Lewis' grave marker. He died and is buried near the Natchez Trace Patkway. We camped nearby last night. 

Today we visited the Shiloh Battleground. I am reading this book about the battle; Dan finished the book a while back. It is interesting to see the actual landscape of the events. 

 It is pleasant driving on the parkway with no trucks and commuters. Tonight we are in Mississippi near Bay Springs Lake. 

Some how camping in Mississippi in late October was not ever on my radar of things I might do! But look where I shopped today:

The store that changed retail forever~ as big a revolution as online shopping. 

G'nite ya'all!!!