burning off the fog

I found this photo from September 2006. It was taken at the end of an early morning hike in the Smokies, back when I lived in Tennessee. In the picture all the smoke is burning off from the sunrise, and light is coming back into the trail, making things clear again. Earlier that morning there was so much fog that when you took a few steps down the path, whatever you left behind you vanished within moments. You could tie a bright red bandana to a tree and then watch it disappear as you backed away from it. All you could really understand was what was right around you. Everything from the past fell apart, and you couldn't see a thing ahead. I suppose that's how it always is though. If you only knew how often I thought of Tennessee... That state changed my whole life.

I used to have another blog, it was called Dogcoffin. I named it after a small wooden box with a latch I found on the side of the road when I first moved to the South. It was such an odd box—too small for a chest and too big to be a breadbox, so I called it a dog coffin. I still have it, my foot is on it right now since it currently resides under my kitchen table. Like me this random object has traveled all over, never sure what it was or where it was going. So I thought that was a good name for a blog about a person in the same condition.

Now I rarely update it. It was kept from 2005 on. Everything about Tennessee, Knoxville, the move out to Idaho, and starting Cold Antler Farm was recorded on that other blog. When the book was coming out I made it private since it was far more personal than this one is. But I think I'll be posting pictures and stories from it here from time to time. I'll let you know when the proper dates are, like this one. I just think a lot of the things you read from Scratch started on that blog and you'd be interested to see photos of those first chickens in the northwest or hikes in the Smokies that gave me this homesteading infection in the first place. Let me know if posting older content bothers you, since it wouldn't be "new" technically. And new updates are really what blogs should be about, no?