varjohaltia | “The mountains are calling and I must go.” [1]

I returned Sunday night from my long weekend in the north Georgia mountains. It was a good and therapeutic vacation, although I am beginning to think I need a longer relief considering how full of ideas and energy I was on the way back.

The weather was absolutely gorgeous, just on the cusp of warranting long sleeves. The cabin was your run-of-the-mill luxury affair, set on a cutesy Care Bear mountain.

I finished the first and second books in Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar saga and got started on Jon Courtenay Grimwood's End of the World Blues. Both were refreshing in being well written, if not masterful; with more polishing and work they could have been better than they were, but even so they stood out from the generic paperback fare. Grimwood's worlds, non-linear story telling and characters begin to seem repetitive to me -- he has some tricks and tools he uses well, but seeing the same things in every book is getting a bit old. That being said, the things he observes in places and cultures are interesting in that they are quite different from the observations I would have chosen to enumerate on my own.

I also visited Tallulah Gorge and Minnehaha falls, and just the time spent at the completely deserted Minnehaha laying on a rock and looking at the blue sky through falling leaves was worth the nearly two hour drive on its own. While the rest of the region was beset by a drought, obvious in all the stranded boats and piers now laying on red clay lake beds, Lake Rabun seemed pretty much unaffected -- whether there's a natural reason or whether it was due to the amount of rich and famous living there I can't say.

I also managed to drive all the way from Blue Ridge to Rabun/Tallulah, through several towns on a large highway, and through some three counties: at no point had I any cell phone signal. Thanks, T-Mobile, for giving me my peace.

Without further ado, pictures.

[1] John Muir.