I did it again. It’s 9 a.m. last Saturday at the starting line of the Cashiers Trail Mix five-mile backwoods race. I knew I should have gotten more sleep the night before, should have at least had something to eat that morning. Shouldn’t have overindulged in the libations of Friday night, nor said the things I now regretted to my girlfriend.

How do you do it? I get asked this question quite often. Folks, whether friends, family or strangers, approach me and wonder how I’m able to write, day in and day out, about anything and everything. 

They were stuck. Sitting around the bar at No Name Sports Pub in Sylva, the members of rockabilly band Rumble Seat Riot were wondering if they’d make their upcoming show in St. Louis, if their broken down van in Greenville was salvageable, or if they’d even be able to make it back home to Des Moines. 

What to do?

That was the question I posed to myself when I found out my girlfriend was visiting from Upstate New York. She is someone who has never been to Western North Carolina, never been to Southern Appalachia, let alone anywhere in the South for that matter. 

When he was just five years old, Michael Turco knew what he wanted to do with his life

“All I wanted to do was be a magician,” the 29-year-old said.

Now a professional magician, Turco tours across the country and around the globe, mesmerizing and astounding audiences every night. Currently a performer with Six Flags Magic Mountain (right outside of Los Angeles), he will be one of the many world-class magicians going on tour with Masters Of Illusion — Believe The Impossible, which will hit the stage on Aug. 23 at Harrah’s Cherokee.

This sucks. 

One of the finest actors, comedians and pop culture icons of our lifetime, Robin Williams, gone, just like that — a bright flame, snuffed out.

For all the naysayers, rock-n-roll is alive and kicking — especially in the hands of Rich Robinson.

Guitarist and founding member of The Black Crowes, he has circled the globe for the last 25 years, spreading the mighty word of six-strings gone electric. With the Crowes representing the musical crossroads of Led Zeppelin, The Allman Brothers and The Band, Robinson is a beacon of light in a modern music industry, where real musicians seem to fall by the wayside in favor of pop idols and instant gratification from a guy onstage hitting buttons on a laptop.

When the camera bulb flashed, it hit me — had it really been that long?

Standing in the Belhurst Castle, a Great Gatsby-esque property situated on Seneca Lake in Geneva, N.Y., I realized it had been around a decade since my childhood friends and I had been in the same room together. And yet, here we were, drinks in hand, smiles plastered across our faces, as family members and dates for the wedding stood in front of us, eager to capture the moment we all were huddled as one.

There’s no place like home. Amid my first few weeks living in Western North Carolina, there were times I got homesick. Though I have bounced around the country for many years now, I, too, have moments where I start to miss things familiar to me.

I am the human sponge.

As far back as I can remember, into the early days of my youth, I have always wandered, wondered and wished. My senses have been my guide, with maps thrown out the window as I follow intuition and head in the direction my heart leads.