I like to explore and tell descriptive stories about places. I also make jewelry, music and mixed-media art.
SAVANNAH, GEORGIA, April 2025 Spanish moss, hanging from old oaks, dances in the breeze. Bright, warm afternoon sunlight streams across stone statues as I enter the garden of memories. Azaleas bloom as tourists walk along rows of beautiful and historic graves. I’m amazed; like at Père Lachaise, I could spend here all day. Morning started […]
Read More Gardens of Good, Ages of EvilSomewhere 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 CarbontonPANGAEA is splitting slowly but not neatly. Forces pull apart land masses, and the water flows into the open space of the rift. The largest spaces eventually become part of the Atlantic. Smaller spaces become long, shallow lakes, swamps, and other wetlands, giving a habitat to large and small reptiles, insects, palm trees, and other […]
Read More Deep River Triassic Basin: A Grandmother of IndustriesCamping near Pungo, Virginia Beach, with my parents, loblolly pines stand over us, offering little shade in the bright, humid air. A small canal encircles the campground, connecting water to Muddy Creek and the shallow Back Bay. A mile or so from here, Grace White Sherwood lived, farmed, and probably swam, 300+ years ago. Grace’s story is famous in Hampton Roads, an herbalist and farmer in colonial Princess Anne County known as the “witch of Pungo” and the only* person convicted of witchcraft in Virginia, surviving her “ducking” trial by swimming to the shore.
Curvy 2-lane roads take us through floodplain and forest, with watery ditches on both sides. Occasionally there is a church, horse training center, or boat landing. Our campground, North Bayshore, is at the end of such a road, adjacent to the Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge. We rent a canoe from camp and float down the canal to Muddy Creek, in the Refuge. It would be very easy to slip out into the network of waterways and spend a day out there exploring…
Dates of travel: August 2019, June 2020, July 2022 JULY 2022, GREAT DISMAL SWAMP Yellow flies surround me as I walk through thick, humid air and sunlight, to a picnic table to write notes on the way to a gig in Elizabeth City. I’m near the North Carolina-Virginia line. Beside me is the yellow silt-tinged […]
Read More Great Dismal HospitalityEstuaries and wetlands of Virginia Beach, in summer, fall, and winter Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge, on the inland side of Sandbridge island (Atlantic coast) The refuge is known as a habitat for east coast migratory birds, and on a cold January visit to the barrier island section, there are several photographers out along the […]
Read More Marsh Music – Back Bays
arianna's creative travels 