* * Holiday greetings from The Spine of the Virginias

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas.  Like most places throughout the Appalachians and into New England, we had a major snowstorm a week before Christmas.  The temperatures stayed cold enough to keep most of the snow around.  I have taken advantage of the rare December snowfall to do some cross-country skiing on the nearby Huckleberry Trail.

The evening after Christmas, my wife Jane, my daughter Whitney, and I attended a party held by our friends Tracy Roberts and John White at their home situated along The Spine of the Virginias in the Sinking Creek Valley in Craig County, Virginia.  Tracy is an old friend and one of the people I profiled in my book.  She is a beautiful woman, tall and slender, with a beautiful expression.  She shot several of the photographs I plan to use on the cover of my book on a trip we took together to McDowell County, West Virginia, last spring.  In addition to being an outstanding photographer, she is a great writer and an avid horsewoman.  John is a pulmonary physician with an office in my hometown, Christiansburg.

The house they live in was constructed prior to the Civil War.  It was made from bricks that were manufactured on the site.  The house has a magical, warm and enduring feel to it.  Tracy and John decorated it beautifully for the season with many inside and outside lights.  Several people in attendance were already familiar to me including a surgeon who recently checked on me for the condition of a hernia repair done by a since retired doctor three years ago and had operated on my father to remove his gallbladder since then.  I also saw an old friend who is a retired Aerospace Engineering professor at Virginia Tech and now works full time on his farm.  We also met many new people, one of whom was familiar with and complimentary towards the writing I do for the New River Current edition of the Roanoke Times.

Tracy, John, and their friend Rodney had built a bonfire on a small knoll up the hill from the house.  Warm air radiated from the fire and lit the faces of a dozen people standing around it in the cold evening air.  A nearly full moon shone through thin clouds and sent a diffuse light onto the neighboring hillsides.  In an area along The Spine of the Virginias renowned for beautiful, linear valleys, the Sinking Creek Valley is one of the most appealing.  Sufficient moonlight struck the white hillsides to illuminate the entire scene.  The view back towards the house was picture postcard wonderful.

This was an evening to remember, one that makes living along The Spine of the Virginias so special.

We will have entered a new decade by the time I write my next entry.  Good luck to the Virginia Tech Hokies in their bowl game against the University of Tennessee and Happy New Year to all!