Xmas in Kentucky

Recently I drove up to Kentucky to spend Xmas with Momfeather, a Tsalagi (Cherokee) elder living in Marion, Kentucky. Marion is in extreme western Kentucky, near Paducah and the border with Missouri, Illinois and the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. It was a pretty interesting place and I continue to be amazed at some of the treasures I'm finding in my travels through rural America. One of the things I did while in Kentucky was visit Mantle Rock, a very unusual, natural sandstone arch near the town of Joy. Mantle Rock is famous since it was a stopping place for a large group of Tsalagi's who sought refuge there during the Trail of Tears in the terrible winter of 1838/1839, when they were forced to leave their homelands further east. During this winter, the Ohio river froze over and they were forced to camp at Mantle Rock. As many as 300 of them (out of perhaps 1500 who camped out) died at Mantle Rock due to starvation and freezing temperatures. It is both a beautiful and haunting place - above is a picture I took there, underneath the archway.

This wasn't my only interesting experience of the holiday weekend. I also visited one of the Amish communities in nearby Marion. A long time ago I used to think that the Amish were just plain weird, but I now have a new found appreciation for their way of life. They live a very simple lifestyle, eschewing modern conveniences like automobiles or electricity, something that doesn't seem so far fetched to me anymore. We visited a few of their stores and none of them have electric lighting, only a few kerosene lamps. This means you have to go around in the near dark looking through their wares. I tried to adjust my eyes and bought a few things including some great pickled vegetables. All of the Amish people I met impressed me with their character, especially a women we meet while my friend Peter was shopping for arthritis medicine. She was an older woman but kind of wise and rugged in a rural, colonial, Kentucky kind of way. We were talking about fear for some reason and she mentioned that in the Bible it says "Do not fear" 366 times (one for every day of the year, plus an extra for leap years). I don't know if that's true but it's a pretty interesting figure. Great advice too.

Momfeather cooked dinner on Xmas and made the most amazing venison (deer). It was marinated in rasberries and tasted unlike any meat I've ever had. Kentucky has a huge and healthy deer population and this one was caught wild and cooked with one of her many traditional Indian recipes - damn it was good, like supernaturally good...

Skiing in Colorado

The last couple of days I've been up in Winter Park enjoying some of the best early season skiing conditions Colorado has seen in the past 20 years. It's been a blast, but I'm definitely out of shape after living at sea level for the past few months. Despite having plenty of snow, this has been one of the coldest weeks ever. Thanks to an arctic blast, Winter Park saw temperatures as low as 38 deg below zero (F)! This is the coldest weather I've ever experienced, though thanks to the dryness, it's actually not all that terrible.

Winter Park is a great resort and offers one of the best deals around for a season pass. I bought their Rocky Mountain SuperPass for $329 which gives you a full season at both Winter Park and Copper Mountain ski resorts, plus 50% lift discounts at Whistler and other Intrawest-owned ski resorts, PLUS you get 3 days of skiing at Taos. Too good a deal for me to pass up even if I have to fly out from Arkansas. Lodging is pretty cheap too, I got a great deal on a studio condo through VRBO.com.

Anyway the skiing is great and I managed to catch some of the Paul Mitchell Freestyle competition on Thursday and Friday. The photo above is Sweden's Henrik Winstedt showing off his great form. I took a bunch more photos which you can see in my skiing photo gallery.