Communing with nature

I got out of the house and enjoyed the outdoors today. I do a monthly freelance travel piece for the magazine I used to work for, and today’s journey took me to Pickett State Park on Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau. This park is located next door to the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area, a unit of the National Park Service. The area is filled with gorges, limestone cliffs, natural arches or natural bridges like the one pictured below, and caves. Even though it was bloody hot today, as I descended toward one of the caves in the park, I could feel the wonderful cool air. The path toward the cave’s opening was lined with verdant green ferns, rhododendron and the endangered Cumberland sandwort. When I stood at the sandy interior of the cave, I didn’t want to climb back up to where I’d left my car in the blazing sun.

After I finish this article and send it in, I’m going to start some preliminary plotting and characterization work on a new young adult idea. Hopefully this one will garner more interest than the YA that’s been languishing at the final three publishers it was sent to more than a year ago.

This entry was posted at 5:10 pm | Print This Post