We spent last weekend in Asheville, NC. When we invited my son and his girlfriend to come along, Eric said he’d heard that Asheville was a hangout for hippies. I said, great, I still have a few tie-dyed and fringed items stashed away somewhere.
These days tie-dye is made in China and shipped around the world. Except, maybe in Asheville. Like Boulder, Colorado, Asheville is an anachronism, an eddy in time where children of the 60s and 70s might feel at home. Except they’d wonder about the cell phones. And the iPad we saw in a coffee shop.
Asheville has good intentions—there are green remodeling companies and a food co-op, dog-friendly stores and restaurants, and signs in all the store windows downtown—Thank you for buying local.
There’s money in Asheville—the woman in the yarn store said people move there from San Francisco and New York City and build mansions and castles in the mountains. But it’s still laid back and frayed around the edges enough to suit me. Even if some of the fraying is factory-applied, like the jeans you buy already faded.
It is an odd mingling of commune and company town. When George Vanderbilt chose the area for his “country estate,” it was just a little crossroads. He put up the largest private home in America, then constructed Biltmore Village, with houses, a hotel, a church, and a hospital, so when his friends got off at the train station they wouldn’t be in the middle of nowhere. The Vanderbilt descendants still own the house and are the number two employers in the area. They are also major real estate developers. Everyone we talked to had only good things to say about the family.
We stayed in a condominium in the former hospital in Biltmore Village. With its rollerskate-worthy hallways and oversized public spaces, we felt like guests in somebody’s mansion.
While we were in Asheville, the town was abuzz because President Obama and his wife were visiting for the weekend and staying at the Grove Park Inn. Everywhere we went we heard reports of Obama sightings.
We walked into Malaprops Bookstore, and found a small shrine of Obama-related books near the front door. Likely, they’d heard about his visit to indie Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City, where he bought books for his daughters.
3 Comments on Back In the Hills, last added: 5/2/2010
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我的痛苦會停止，但求我的心能征服它。..................................................
That is so cool! Maybe the mountain and waterfall you visited can inspire something in your Seven Realms Trilogy! :D I can totally picture the scenery on Hanalea or something.
We drive through Asheville on our way to Kentucky every Christmas and Easter. My dad hates the highways in Asheville. Too confusing, he says.
I've been to Chimney Rock and have a postcard to prove it. It made me lightheaded looking down and everything was a speck. Made me feel like a giant, or God. XD
I prefer the nice trimmed edges of Charlotte, though. The city where history is smack-dab in your face and yet everyone remains oblivious. *sigh*
I have a relieved feeling knowing that it's not just a random abnormality of mine that the mountains inspire a story to be told. It happens to professional writers, too. :) Another worry washed away for me.
Vacations are great.
-Amelia