Feeling Small in the Outdoors

And an Asheville trip report

Hi, friends!

I’m just home from a trip to Asheville and wanted to share some thoughts. A few days before the trip, I saw a poem I thought you might like to see:

feel small
against the sky
around the ocean
and among the forest

but never again
feel small
in the presence of
another person

--Madison Gonzalez, Dear Mirror

I had this bouncing around my head as I was walking along the French Broad River Greenway and saw the bridge pictured above. The line “All feet stand under the stars” is from another poem, written by Asheville creator DeWayne Barton. (His is titled “Dust Won’t Catch our Dreams.”) So many of us feel small when we stare up at a sky full of stars. It’s easy to draw a connection between this stunning bridge and Gonzalez urging us to feel small against the sky.

People follow my blog for different reasons: trails, community building, coaching, and a shared appreciation for the outdoors. Whatever your reason, may you never feel small in the presence of another person, and may you have plenty of chances to be awestruck by the natural world.

A rotating art project in Asheville’s River Arts District tells us to “carry our hearts” this Valentine’s Day week.

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The trip to Asheville wasn’t work related, but I’m constantly filing away ideas while traveling. Visiting other places brings up a lot of placemaking inspiration. Asheville is such a great city. I love the scale and its Blue Ridge Mountains location. The place is just oozing with creativity in everything from art to the local food scene and how people paint their houses. Here’s some of what my wife and I did while there:

• We stayed at a cute little Airbnb in the Chicken Hill neighborhood, where people have done some really interesting things with residential architecture, built their own hillside walking path, and even painted murals on the sides of their homes (see below). The neighborhood takes its name from an old chicken hatchery’s location there. This heritage is carried out in everything from chicken-shaped mailboxes to a gallery space called The Hatchery.

• We spent some time in West Asheville’s sprawling, funky business district. It has lots of great murals, independent businesses, and quite a different scene from the busy downtown.

• We visited New Belgium Brewing, which years ago opened its second location in Asheville due to the city’s quality of life offerings. It was fun to be there and experience a favorite bike-y brewery. (I was told that Fat Tire makes up about a third of their sales nationally, even though they appear to have at least 20 different beers.) We also visited the Funkatorium (part of Wicked Weed Brewing and specializing in sours) and Burial Beer at Forest Camp (a converted CCC camp that once housed crews that were constructing the Blue Ridge Parkway).

• We checked out some galleries and studios in the River Arts District and also went to the Woolworth’s Walk and Malaprop’s bookstore in town.

• We ate some fun, creative tacos (tikka masala for me) at White Duck Tacos and I had a lobster roll with green chilis from Baby Bull that I won’t soon stop talking about - so good!

• We also ate fresh donuts, saw the Biltmore Estate, and spent a lot of time petting and walking our dogs (and did our best to take a selfie at Buffalo Mountain Park in Johnson City, TN on our way home).

Here are some photos:

The “Trash Trout” is filled with trash from the river.

This is someone’s house on Chicken Hill.

New Belgium Brewing near dusk

We were so excited to see the Dolly and RuPaul mural but found this work truck blocking the view.

The Hatchery, home to a neat pottery co-op and Baby Bull (lobster rolls!)

A Pisgah Coffee Roasters ghost sign in the River Arts District

The best selfie we could manage