Pinky Falls

There are very few places from my past that I get to revisit. The houses that I grew up in were sold long ago and I live a long way from the northern cities that I associate with "home". But there is a place down here that still makes me sigh with the comfort of returning to the well-loved and known. It is a small city on the top of a tall mountain - Highlands, N.C., where my grandmother and father both used to own homes. It was the fairy land of my childhood. In my dreams, I have a thatched cottage there, where we go with friends and family on weekends, or even for months at a time.

One of my favorite spots in Highlands is a watering hole known to the natives as Pinky Falls. My brother and I played there a lot when we were visiting my father, jumping into its icy water after a blackberry-picking walk down the curving street from my father's log cabin.

It was so sweet to watch Gillen and Jesse playing there a few weeks ago.

Jesse is playing his ongoing game "Fight to the Finish" on his private sand island:
A sign of fall: