Here is a short story/blog that Cynn Chadwick posted on her blog and sent over to Ask Asheville. Moody Cove is in the Reems Creek Valley (Community) of Weaverville NC, which is about 20 miles from Downtown Asheville.
Up Moody Cove
My walk up Moody Cove takes me past a wide swatch of what used to be a tobacco field; soon it’ll corral some horses and a barn, and that makes me happier than the development it had once threatened to become years ago. On my right is the fast rising ridge of a piney covered mountain that walls the holler like a fortress, making it night at the end of the cove before it goes dark anywhere else. After I pass the seven acre field, I come to Jerry’s. He’s my neighbor with the two pretty black horses. They are especially stunning against a snowy pasture. He also has about a half a dozen beagles, hunting dogs, out in their pens who howl as we approach, and stop when we go by, but the rounds of their barking echo up and down the cove for a long time after we’ve passed. Jerry and I always wave and often chat, sometimes about the weather, the prospects of the tobacco field, his horses, and my books. Jerry doesn’t know what kind of books I write, but somebody’d told him I was an author and so he always asks how many are ya up to?
Eugene's barn
It’s another few acres of fields before I get to Eugene’s place. Eugene’s family has owned the land for generations, and Eugene lived here with his mama and granny till they both passed away, back to back, within weeks of each other. He lives there now with other family members and his girlfriend. I didn’t meet Eugene on the cove road, though, I met him at the Ingles grocery store where he’s been a bagger since he was in high school. We didn’t know we were neighbors until we realized that Eugene went to high school with my son Sam. When I learned he lived up the cove in the house whose barn I like to paint pictures of, I gave Eugene a painting of his barn. Once, he stopped his car in the middle of the road and talked to me for a long time while we waited for a stranger (unusual out here) to pass; I’d told Eugene that the shady looking fella had seemingly come out of nowhere and had been following me since I’d turned back toward home. Eugene stayed right there on the road till the fella was well out of sight and before I continued on my way home.
Snowball Mountain
I’ve lived where I live for over twenty years now. I have watched Snow Ball Mountain change every color of every season right before my very eyes as I swing on my porch. I know which bunnies huddle in which part of the hedge that circles my yard. I know when a raccoon has been in my cherry tree. I know when Rodney’s goats are hungry, and when that crazy gal who sees dead people comes along the elbow of our road from the other neighborhood by the way Doug’s dogs start barking and won’t quit till she’s made her round with her tubby black Lab in tow. I know the different pitches of the coyote family that lives along the ridge above me, and I can hear the old couple all the way across the creek yell at each other on Saturday nights, and then go off to church every Sunday morning. Where I live, I can tell you what time my neighbor Lyda goes to bed by which lights go off in her house. I know when Bryson, up the way, goes to milk his cows by the sound of his old truck squeaking and huffing by my house. I know every car that pulls up my lane because there’s no way out, and so if you’re not from around here, you’re either visiting or lost.
...Read the rest of the story HERE
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