Pretty great tho huh?

It does indeed seem to have been a reckoning.

Love that!

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day to all who feel at home in these ancient mountains.

It’s true. The similarity is in the undulations of the hillsides, the lush greenery, the rocks that feel as old as time itself.

When Tim and I visited Ireland 7 years ago, he kept saying to me…”this looks just like home…except there’s an ocean. And more sheep. And less trees.”

Many of us here in Southern Appalachia believe this is why our Scottish, Welsh, and Irish ancestors settled here centuries ago…and never left, hemmed in by a landscape that their very bones recognized as home.

Now divided by an ocean, I still believe these mountains call to one another.

Geologists believe that before the continents split off, Appalachia, the mountains of Western Ireland & Wales, and the Scottish highlands were all part of a single mountain range.

Same at our park. I kept wanting to go up to all of them and whisper, “you know he’s actively trying to annex Canada right???”