Pocahontas County, West Virginia

     I'm just back from visiting my mother in Shinnston, but also several days doing workshops and presentations in Pocahontas County, which is an extraordinarily beautiful, rural, and national-forested-section of my home state that I had never visited before.
    I did a writing workshop and reading at the 18th annual Allegheny Echoes Bluegrass Music Summer Workshops and heard really good banjo and fiddle and guitar and all the rest of it.  I worked at a special camp for young women from three West Virginia Counties called High Rocks:  what great girls!

And I gave a talk on my old home girl  Pearl S. Buck.  Well, she was born in West Virginia anyhow.  The town of Hillsboro  had a festival with a tractor parade.  The view down in that valley is just stupendous:

 

So I learned a lot about parts of West Virginia I hadn't seen-- would love to go back soon for the hiking and biking on former railroad right-of-ways.  And stay at the excellent Old Clark Inn Bed and Breakfast in Marlinton!