(no subject)

[brooksmoses]

ritaxis was recently asking about winter weather in the Appalacians and what the land felt like and looked like, and it occurred to me that I usually take photographs when I'm home in Virginia for Christmas, and those might be useful. And that the rest of you might be interested in seeing them, too, since I was going to crop and upload them anyway.

So I went through my old digital photo albums, and pulled out a selection. I believe these were all taken from the front steps of my mother's house, over several years, in all sorts of weather.

So, in roughly chronological order:

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(2003-12-2?) A very typical sunny winter day. Probably somewhere around 50F, not too windy.

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(2003-12-2?) This isn't the best of pictures, but it's the best I have for showing what the mountainsides look like, and the color of the bare trees and the mountain behind them. There's a tiny patch of snow hiding in the shady spot on the left side of the picture, too.

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(2003-12-2?) Much like the first picture, but the light balance on the clouds is a bit better.

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(2003-12-2?) This is the same mountainside, about four days earlier when there was about six inches of snow on the ground.

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(2003-12-2?) And the same day, looking at the woods over to the left.

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(2003-12-2?) Snow! Flakes nearly the size of dimes, where the usual six-sided flakes had clumped together into plates that slowly fall, big enough to show up clearly in the photo.

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(2003-12-2?) More of the snow.

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(2004-01-05) Clouds at sunset. Winter sunsets seem to always be glorious, and the sun sets almost directly in the middle of the valley. This was only a couple of weeks after the snow in the previous pictures.

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(2004-12-13) This was after a heavy afternoon rain. The clouds were just beginning to clear, and the light through them made the distant meadows glow like gems &mdash the picture only begins to capture the effect.

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(2004-12-13) The same view as above, with the exposure adjusted to show the foreground more clearly.

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(2005-01-04) This is from a different place -- my mother-in-law's front porch, about thirty miles away. It's down in a valley rather than on a mountaintop, but the overall look of the land is about the same. The differences in greenness between mowed lawn and meadow are fairly easy to see.

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(2006-01-02) Finally, some heavy low-hanging snow clouds, just a little before sunset.

Comments

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Oh thank you, these are gorgeous. So what I'm getting is that it's not really that much colder than here: just enough colder to snow off and on, and to hold the snow for a couple of days after it falls.

Would you say that where these houses stand there would have been climax forest in the 1860s? Or was the forest interrupted by other ecologies? For example -- where the limestone is close to the surface, do you get karsty situations with meadows and/or maybe scrubby stuff like chapparal? I'll google this when I can figure out how to ask the question in a googly way.

Thank you thank you.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

That's a lovely landscape, Brooks.

Where in Virginia? I ask because I'm going to be directing a new theatrical adaptation this December of "The Homecoming," the play based Earl Hamner Jr's "Spencer's Mountain" (the novel about growing up in rural Virginia during the Depression, and the basis for "The Waltons"). Hamner hails from Afton, and I'm curious about how similar the landscape might be.

Where in VA

[suzanne.livejournal.com]

We grew up in Southwestern Virginia. Closest "big cities" are Roanoke and Blacksburg, and much closer to West Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina than to Richmond. Wikipedia claims that Walton mountain was based on Schuyler, which is over in Nelson county. (Man, I'm starting to drawl now.) Thats about 100 miles from where these pictures were taken.

So yes, very much the same landscape and weather patterns. If you'd like reference pictures for summer/fall/spring, those can be arranged. *is homesick*

Afton!

[suzanne.livejournal.com]

Oops, I didn't see the Afton! That's actually about 50 miles closer according to yahoo!maps.

Re: Afton!

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Way cool. Yes, I'd love to see some other-season photos! No rush - The show doesn't go into rehearsal till fall.