As author Thomas Rain Crowe discovered during his own long journey from Western North Carolina to California to Europe (and with due respect to another Western North Carolinian, Thomas Wolfe), you can go home again. Crowe did.

While I’m sitting and looking out the window of the local laundromat here in West Waynesville, I notice how dirty my rusty, musty, trusty pickup truck has become since I last washed it, which, I think, may have been last winter or so. One year’s worth of dirt along endless miles of unforgiving roads, both geographically and spiritually. 

In the midst of eating my third hard-boiled egg of the morning, I overheard the young couple at the next breakfast table mention to their server that they’d gotten married this past Saturday. 

Taking a sip of my second cup of coffee, my gaze went from the newlyweds to the nearby roaring fireplace, then out the big glass windows onto the picturesque pond on the side lawn of the majestic property. 

Every fall, Becky and I leave Moses Creek for a week to go to Isle of Palms in South Carolina, and we stay on the beach there in a complex called the Sea Cabins. I make sure that two canoes go with us, a tandem we use to explore the quiet inland waterways together, and, for ocean surfing, a small solo canoe that I paddle here on our mountain rivers. We also rent bikes, and we walk the beach. 

The title of this week’s column is a lyric from a song by rising singer-songwriter Angela Autumn. The melody, “Electric Lizard,” is an incredibly haunting number, especially the solo rendition (just her and guitar) on the EP under the verbiage “Live from NYC.”  

Autumn is a beautiful — but busy — time in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Visitors should plan ahead and be prepared for incredible fall colors, but also crowds, traffic congestion and limited parking throughout the park. 

Hello from Cabin 152 at the Tryon International equestrian center on the North Carolina/South Carolina border. It’s Monday. Labor Day. And I’ve just spent the last few days attending and covering the annual Earl Scruggs Music Festival. I’m exhausted, but the gratitude remains.  

The signs are still there lining the fragile bank separating Interstate 40 from the Pigeon River — chunks of jagged asphalt, wayward pipes, rusty cables bent into submission by nature. 

Just 11 months ago, as Hurricane Helene mercilessly swamped the whole region, the river, now low and calm, was force-fed by its tributaries and swelled to the point it carried away 10 sections of I-40’s eastbound lanes over about a five-mile stretch near the Tennessee border.

Hello from the Cantina Laredo in Terminal T of the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. It’s Sunday, 8:29 p.m. I’ve just consumed two overpriced Michelob Ultra drafts and one giant chicken quesadilla (hadn’t eaten all day). In this moment, I decided to use my layover time to write this here column for you readers (yes, you).  

Hello from 30,054 feet somewhere above rural Missouri. The Delta flight is currently holding steady at 517 miles per hour. And here I sit once again. In motion, in real time. Onward to the next adventure.