High Lonesome Timber

About High Lonesome Timber

Mount Mitchell stands at the top of the eastern sky over Yancey County, and when rime ice coats the spruce up there, everyone below knows what sort of week is coming. High Lonesome Timber takes the high, wind-scoured places — plowing drives, cutting through drifts thrown across a lane, shoveling steps and treating the spots where meltwater refreezes by afternoon. Elevation makes its own weather here: sun on Main Street and a whiteout two thousand feet above it. The good part of the job comes at the end of a run, engine idling, looking back down a road that was closed an hour ago. Then the next one.