"a concentrated and nutty kernel"

[eldritchhobbit]

Huge thanks to the_cornettist, fory_san, sithdragn, and valancourtbooks for the lovely cards!


* FYI for those of you in the United States: my university's holiday special, "Christmas at Belmont," will be airing nationally on PBS again this year, including performances by 400 students and faculty from our School of Music, and hosted by alumna (and American Idol finalist) Melinda Doolittle. The program is scheduled to air across the country on December 23 at 9PM Central/10PM Eastern.

* Today is cool and grey, so I thought it was a perfect time to take some pictures of a place I find strangely atmospheric and eerie, an abandoned "company town" in eastern Burke County on the Henry River here in North Carolina.

Here are a couple of the photos :





You can see more pictures from this set here.


"Hear! hear!" screamed the jay from a neighboring tree, where I had heard a tittering for some time, "winter has a concentrated and nutty kernel, if you know where to look for it."
~Henry David Thoreau, journal entry

Comments

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

Lovely photos!

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[abbie (from livejournal.com)]

That town looks like a fun time! Did you see any abandoned "people"?

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Ha! No abandoned people, live, dead, undead, or otherwise. That would have made the day more interesting, to be sure.

[nakeisha.livejournal.com]

It is very atmospheric.

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

I thought so too.

[(Anonymous)]

So, it's like a ghost town? How weird. When did the folks finally disappear? It looks so recent!

[divadianes.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

Oh, by the way (that was me up above) - the pictures are wonderful. You caught the empty atmosphere beautifully!

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much!

The plant and the houses built for the workers were probably abandoned about 50-60 years ago, when the mills (either furniture or textile - I'd guess furniture, considering the location) started to close. It's a rather odd place, as it takes up only a little more than seventy acres or so, and then all around the area are homes and farms, etc. It's like a little pocket of the past in the midst of the present.

On the whole, the county is quite beautiful. Many of the scenes from the 1992 film The Last of the Mohicans were shot there.

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

The pictures are amazing, gloomy and sad at the same time.

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Gloomy and sad pretty much sums up how the place felt to me.

[maidoforange.livejournal.com]

Lovely pictures. What a cute house!

[maidoforange.livejournal.com]

A cute ghost town house. LOL.

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

LOL! Hey, ghost houses can be cute too, right? Thanks!

[maidoforange.livejournal.com]

Sure they can. I had in mind the little white cottage I lived in with Mom, Grammy, etc. from ages 4-10. It was and is the oldest house in Covington (built in 1821) and there were definitely ghosts. I heard footsteps up and down the stairs at night and stuff happened like the locked front door banging open in the wee hours.

It is inhabited. The people who Grammy sold it to have been renting it. They still haven't fixed the fence from Katrina! I should take some pics...

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I would love to see pics! It sounds like an amazing place.

[agentxpndble.livejournal.com]

Gorgeous. It's a shame they were left to rot... Such cute houses! And with a lot of land/space around them.

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

You're right: they are very nice houses, and it's a beautiful place. (Much of the film The Last of the Mohicans was shot in this same county, as a matter of fact.) It's rather sad to see them in such disrepair.