Backcountry Notes

Codes: Arts & Crafts: A; Folklore: F; History: H; Music: M; Outdoors: O; Photography: P

Appalachian History H, F
Appalachian Independent F
Appalachian Patria
Appalachian Treks P
Blind Pig & The Acorn F, M
Blog Asheville
Blue Mountain Music M
Blue Ridge Blog P
Blue Ridge Blue Collar Girl P
Blue Ridge Muse
Dark Chocolate Red Wine P, O
Follow The Quilt Trail A
Fragments from Floyd
Heritage Alliance H
Hillbilly White Trash
Holler Notes
Just Another Day In Roanoke
Northeast Tennessee Waterfalls P, O
Old Virginia Blog H
Poetry and Ruminations A
Rose Bowen M
Ruminations of a Country Girl M
The Southern Highland Reader
Southern Mountain Melodies M
Vanished Places of the Southern Appalachians H
Wythe Notes A

I am an ex-urbanite who escaped the city life and has lived for the past 28 years in a rural, mountainous area of Virginia that in colonial and early-American times was part of the "Backcountry." This is the true melting pot of the U.S.A., its culture and traditions dominated by "born fighting" Scotch-Irish immigrants and enhanced by German, Highland Scot, Dutch, Welsh, and yeoman English settlers. Having absorbed and inculcated the history, values and views of the Backcountry, I would like to share insights, information, and viewpoints from the place where America began. - - Jay Henderson

"My weariness amazes me . . . ." - - Bob Dylan ("Mr. Tambourine Man").

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - - George Bernard Shaw.

“The law often allows what honor forbids.” - - Bernard-Joseph Saurin, French lawyer, poet, and playwright.

"Work is the curse of the blogging class." - - Me.