We had a cold snap a few days ago with lots of wind and icy streets.  When the weather is like that around here, we don’t go anywhere.  We stay home, build a fire in the fireplace, read books and wonder if the lights will stay on.

At last, a warm front moved in, melted the ice and confused a few of my flowering plants into blooming.  With seventy-degree temperatures outside and a gentle south wind blowing, it was time to get outside.  I grabbed my camera, hopped in the car and started to drive.  But where to go?  

I wanted someplace different than my usual haunts, someplace I could see and experience for the very first time.  And then it came to me; I would drive to the House in the Horseshoe.  I’ve wondered about it for years, seen signs pointing in its direction, heard other people talk about it but had never been there myself.  It was time to pay a visit.

I drove for about a half an hour through the North Carolina countryside down roads I’ve never been on before, following the signs to Alston House, better known around here as the House in the Horseshoe.  I turned up one last dusty road, traveled past a small  visitor's center and there it was - a white, two-story low country treasure perched on a hill where the trees are tall and the grass is green even in the middle of January. 

Miraculously, I was all alone, free to roam and take my pictures.  I got out of the car and leaned against it, listening to the quiet sigh of the wind through the trees. I studied the house and the grounds for a time and at last took off to explore. The ground under my feet was soft from the recent wet weather and the grass was that dazzling new green of early spring.  Little violets had popped out everywhere with a dandelion or two lending a splash of color to the winter landscape. In other words, it was a perfect, beautiful North Carolina afternoon.

The land around the house is sweet.  I can find no other word to describe it.  It is well kept, tidy and gently rolling, full of tall dark trees, low bushes and sleeping flower gardens. Split rail fences zigzag over the property in what seems like a random pattern, fencing things in - or maybe out.  It was hard to tell which. There are several out buildings scattered here and there and even a dusty corncrib with nothing more in it than a few cobwebs.

Even rural North Carolina is well populated, so it was no surprise to find a double-wide trailer at the front edge of the property line.  But keeping civilization to my back, it was possible to imagine a North Carolina from long ago.  The house was built high on a hill more than 200 years ago with broad fields falling away to a bend in the Deep River below.  The house itself is simple and unadorned save for wide covered porches both front and back, ideal for sitting on a hot summer’s day, rocking fussy babies, snapping beans, or churning butter.

I strolled down to the visitor's center and met Roy Timbs, Historic Intrepter for the House in the Horseshoe.  He walked back up the road with me and let me inside the house.  As I wandered through each of the large and yet simple four rooms, he told me some of the history of the house:  how it had been built on to and changed with each successive owner; how it had been the site of a Revolutionary War battle and that bullet holes still pocked the outside of the house;  how four-term North Carolina Governor Benjamin Williams had lived there and was in fact buried in the small cemetary out back along with his wife, Elizabeth, and his son and daughter-in-law; how the house and surrounding land were acquired in the mid-1950's by the Moore County Historical society and then the state, and how thousands of people - many of them school children -  come each year to tour the historic site.

After Mr. Timbs left me to my own devices again, I decided to pay a visit to the small and very old graveyard off to the back and side of the house.  It is a quiet place, shaded by tall trees and fenced all around with white pickets . I paused there for a while, thinking about the generations of families who had lived and loved and died at the House in the Horseshoe.  I know that if I had been the one to come upon this beautiful piece of North Carolina ground, I, too, would have put down roots and stayed right there on the high hill overlooking the Deep River.

Here’s a little history of the House in the Horseshoe, if you would like to read more.  I’ve taken it taken from the North Carolina History Project at www.northcarolinahistory.org:

The story of the House in the Horseshoe, and the men who fought there during an American Revolution skirmish, reveals the nature and influence of the war in the North Carolina backcountry. One of the first “big” houses built in the frontier lands of North Carolina, the House in the Horseshoe still has bullet holes from the fighting that took place in 1781.

Named for its location in a horseshoe shaped bend in the Deep River, the House in the Horseshoe was built in 1772 by Phillip Alston. Alston bought 4,000 acres of land and likely enlisted the work of a Scottish contractor named McFadden to build his home. A slave owner and a prominent political figure in the area, Alston served as a colonel in the Revolutionary war

On July 29, 1781, Alston and his men were camping at the House in the Horseshoe when a larger group of Tories led by the infamous David Fanning attacked the home. During the skirmish, the Tories rolled a wagon full of burning straw against the house in an attempt to burn it down. Eventually Alston and his forces surrendered to the Tories after both sides suffered numerous casualties. Mrs. Alston negotiated the terms of her husband’s surrender to Col. Fanning.

In 1790, Alston sold the house to Thomas Perkins. Eight years later Perkins sold the 2,500-acre plantation to the future Governor of North Carolina, Benjamin Williams, who served four terms (1799-1802, 1807, and 1808). An aspiring planter, Williams accumulated 103 slaves who were managed by a paid overseer and produced up to 300 acres of cotton annually.  Williams’ additions to the home (a master bedroom and a kitchen) brought the value of the home to $30,000 dollars in 1803.  Williams passed away at the plantation in 1814.

The Moore County Historical Association purchased the House in the Horseshoe in 1954 and the state acquired the property the following year. Named a North Carolina Historical Site in 1971, the home now host reenactments and craft demonstrations.

Learning to be a Photographer

Seven years ago, all I wanted to be was a photographer.  I burned with the idea that I could portray the beauty of the world around me in pictures. I had a fancy new camera and no idea how to use it.  Oh, I could put it on automatic and take pictures but if I had a success, I didn’t know how to repeat it.  After listening to me whine for what must have seemed a very long time, my husband gave me a trip to a photography retreat in the mountains of North Carolina.  That week at the Kanuga Conference Center just outside of Hendersonville changed my life.

At first, I was awkward and shy with my fellow “campers,” sure they knew so much more about photography than I did.  I couldn’t even speak to the talented professional instructors – they held a place on a pedestal I knew I could never attain.  When Lydia, my first teacher, told me to take my camera off automatic and click it over to the manual settings, I almost fainted!  But under her sweet and gentle guidance, I actually progressed, soaking up her generously given knowledge as fast as I could. 

We rambled through the Blue Ridge Mountains that week, soaking up the experience and “making” both memorable pictures and enduring memories.  We spent our days with our cameras in our hands and our evenings sitting in the gathering twilight, laughing, talking and teasing, sharing our love of photography.  I made friends too, many of whom remain dear to me all of these long years later.

After my week in the mountains, I went home and practiced my craft, making the pilgrimage to Kanuga each spring to learn more, learn more, learn more.  This blog and this website exist, in fact, because of all I’ve learned there throughout the years and put into practice in my life. 

I’ll go back to Kanuga again this spring to learn even more, renew old friendships, and make many new ones.  Come to the mountains with me.  Start or enhance your photographic journey.  I guarantee you will love it and that your life will be changed, too.

Follow the link below to get to the Kanuga website and see what they have to offer.  See you in April!

http://www.kanuga.org/conference-calendar/conference-calendar-details/kanuga-photography-retreat

There are hundreds of ponds in North Carolina, and one of them, a three-acre marvel, is in my backyard. I’m a city girl and have never lived on a pond before or even contemplated that one might be in my life someday.  Now that I live on one, it has become a living, breathing being to me, something that I consider every day, almost as if it were one of my children. 

The pond is a thing of rare beauty.  It is a deep emerald green, ringed with lush trees of every sort, and full of largemouth bass and the occasional turtle.  If there are snakes, they keep themselves scarce, something I’m very glad of.  Water lilies, wild iris, azaleas, beauty berries, rhododendrons, wild roses and other flowers I have yet to identify grow in happy profusion.  Dragonflies glide along the water’s edge while birds swoop and dart overhead.

Geese and ducks fly in and out of the pond, chasing one another in a noisy game of presumptive ownership.  The daily winners are, in turn, chased by our three Labs and one yapping Bichon, so that no one has yet to claim the pond as it’s own.  I am hoping for duck or geese babies someday, so I do hope that a brave pair will decide to stay, ignore the dogs and get down to business. 

My husband, daughter and I stroll with our dogs around the pond at least twice a day.  While the dogs sniff and hunt and burrow, we assess the pond.  Is the water level going down too precipitously considering our current drought?  Are our fish healthy and happy? (Yes, I know I said “happy.”  It’s a clear indication of my pond obsession.)   Are there too many aquatic plants and if so, how do we handle that little problem?   Should we plant wild rice around the shore to attract more waterfowl?  And, so on and so on.  I often scurry back to my computer to search for answers to these and dozens of other pond questions, grateful for the North Carolina State University Pond Management website. (Who knew there was a website devoted to this topic! But then again, I guess there is a website devoted to just about everything these days.)

As often as I can, I sit at then end of our dock and watch as wind moves over the pond like wind over a Kansas wheat field. The water ripples and sways, catches the light and then lets it go in an ever-moving dance.  Fish jump and frogs splash while bees and wasps drone through the wildflowers.  As dusk falls each evening, a small band of white tail dear steps out of the surrounding trees to drink and then flee at the smallest sound, tails up like white flags in the gathering dark. In the still of the night, the pond is pricked with the light of overhead stars.  We listen while frogs croak and call, and whippoorwills sing us to sleep.

The pond is so busy, so brimming with life, so endlessly fascinating that I cannot imagine ever living anywhere else.   When I do travel, I long to be home again, sitting on the dock with legs swinging and nothing much else on my mind save for the pond and its abundant life.  Believe me when I tell you that everyone should have a pond. It is the heart and soul of our little piece of North Carolina.

(To see images of our pond, just click on "The Pond" in the drop-down menu under Thoughts Along the Way.  Play the slideshow - it has some great music!)