So, why do I call my corner of the internet Beyond the Blue Ridge? Well, the short answer is that I live out beyond the Blue Ridge now. More importantly, though, I grew up in the foothills of the mountains and my life once revolved around family visits and events in that area and in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. No matter where I roam, that is my center.
My current town actually does feel like home and I have no immediate plans to leave, but there will always be something about the Blue Ridge that will pull me back. After all, this is the place where my earliest memories were formed, where my parents and their parents grew up. It's actually where many generations of family lived - all the way back to the first ones who moved in from another part of Virginia in the 1760s! My grandmother's sister still lives on property purchased by a forebear of mine in 1853 and even though many in my family have travelled away for various reasons, this region never truly stops being home to us.
So, no matter where I move and no matter what I do, I tend to think of myself in relation to my home mountains. And coming from a world that looks like this, is it any wonder?
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