Day 1/365 Middle of Nowhere

365 days in Franklin County, Virginia - a photo a day - the first is of a remote creek over in the western part of our county, actually, truely, the
real-McCoy, moonshine-ers' creek. Moonshine was a huge part of life from the earliest Scot-Irish settlers up until probably this morning.

What I like about this creek is having a picnic on the banks, and wading in it to pick up huge perfectly round "pancake" rocks to lug back to my garden. The bigger boulders are rounded and shaped by thousands of years of water and look for all the world like a giant dropped a bag of marbles in the creek.

This time of year, many of these creeks have shallow water - less than a foot - and you can still see rock piles placed by the early Native Americans to help the fish breed. Not too far away, we can walk a old section of the original Carolina Road, the same road my ancestors walked down in the 1700's when they came to southwestern Virginia, and the same road the Native Americans walked before them.

This time of year you have to wonder how they did it: on foot, in long heavy dresses with long sleeves, no bug spray and no air-conditioning at the end of the day.