The Mountain Institute – West Virginia. We spent three weeks there, in the fall, staying in a little wooden yurt, migrating to a huge wooden yurt for meals and to hang with TMI staff. One of the best working-vacations (those are really the best) I’ve ever known.
I came from our massive western landscapes, with alluvial fans that would swallow small countries, to the intimate gullies and runs of Appalachia. I felt like I’d come from the uncurated surface of mars straight into a japanese garden. In the forest, each rounded stone, perfectly nested – all the scraps and rough edges carried away millennia ago. It was hard not to look for the architect.
…and full of limestone caverns and sink-holes, which adds some *ominous* to any landscape.
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