I like to explore and tell descriptive stories about places. I also make jewelry, music and mixed-media art.
Happy harvest moon from the Northern Atlantic Woodlands! While the sky was cloudy enough last night to almost obscure the moonlight, I was able to spend an evening in its glow over the weekend out at Drekheim (and we howled!). With pleasant weather amid an eventful month (in good and bad ways), nature time has […]
Read More Occoneechee Mountain, a Piedmont side tripSpruce Pine Mining District, North Carolina, July 2025 At the access to the mica mine stands a sign, “area closed to storm damage/not safe to enter.” Fallen trees and rocks rolled by nature can be seen. This is my first trip to western NC after Hurricane Helene. IT’S A SHAME ABOUT RAY I came for the […]
Read More GEMS OF THE BLUE RIDGE, GOING THROUGH CHANGESAt 9:40 am, May 27, 1925, there was an explosion inside the Carolina Coal Mine, Farmville, Chatham County, North Carolina; as a result, 53 men lost their lives. This remains the deadliest industrial disaster in North Carolina history, but it is unknown to many in the state, but for a historical marker along US 15-501 […]
Read More Coal Glen Mine Disaster MemorialSomewhere in the middle of the Piedmont, a rocky river becomes silty and muddy and changes direction. Called the Deep River, it gives its name to the southeast’s largest Triassic rift Basin. The name “Deep River” is a translation of an indigenous name, sapponah (sappony), which, beyond this, has vague (conflicting?) sources but most likely […]
Read More The Deep River and its Triassic Basin: Cumnock to CarbontonCold Moon, December 2024 As the final full moon rises before winter solstice on a cloudy night in the North american eastern woodlands, I look back through the past solar year and then to the path that lies ahead. Earlier this year, I decided to update the name of this blog to “Arianna’s Creative Travels” […]
Read More Creative Travels: observations of a cycleDanville, Virginia to Eden, NC, Sept. 2024 “You can take all you want. It’s all rock around here.” -ABC Store operator, Pelham, NC SHALE BE COMING ROUND THE MOUNTAIN I’m standing on a multi-colored rock field between an ABC store and a visitor center near the North Carolina-Virginia line, looking downhill at what I am […]
Read More Dan River Rift Basin: Piedmont Geology and CultureJubilee Park, Ivanhoe, Virginia, mid-April 2024 Ivanhoe, the Fair now this is glamping true Revival, handling of the Serpentine embanked New (Kanawha) river The diva waters Still rush past this old railway, blast furnace and mine shaft left to history A fairground in the off-season, nearly empty Jubilee A small town that doesn’t need much […]
Read More Ivanhoe, the fair (a return)Years have passed…life got busy, a pandemic came, and I stopped traveling for a while. For 2022, a goal of mine has been to travel again and tell stories of the land, if only to a quiet section of my current state. Little is hidden forever, and much can be recovered, including this blog.. So […]
Read More New River Valley calm, old mining towns, and a return to writingOak Flat, known as Chich’il Bildagoteel in the Apache language, is a beautiful place, where the Pinal Mountains rise out of the Sonoran Desert to the west, a plateau of oak forest, spring water, and shallow canyons guarded by standing boulders. For hundreds of years the local Apache would gather acorns and other food and […]
Read More THE BEAUTY & POWER OF OAK FLAT, APACHE LAND, ArizonaOriginally written April, 2010 Travel dates: March, 2010 It’s been two weeks since the latest coal mining disaster in West Virginia, and this one has received considerable media attention. This being an explosion inside a mine in the town of Montcoal, about 30 miles southwest of Charleston (the link just above has a detailed map […]
Read More COAL, INTERRUPTED: Coal River, West Virginia
arianna's creative travels 