Music Welcome to Snewscast, the podcast designed to help you fall asleep. Find us at snoozecast.com and if you enjoy our show, please share us with a friend. This episode is brought to you by Country Roads.

Tonight we'll read the opening too, a world of green hills, observations of nature and

human nature in the Blue Ridge written by Bradford Torrey and published in 1898. The Blue Ridge extends as far south as Georgia and as far north as Pennsylvania. From there it dwindles to hills. However, the band of ancient rocks that form the core of the Blue Ridge continues northeast. Through New Jersey and eventually reaches the Berkshares of Massachusetts and the Green Mountains of Vermont. This mountain range is known for having a blueish color when seen from a distance. Trees put the blue in blue ridge,

from the isoprene released by them into the atmosphere.

This contributes to the characteristic haze in the mountains,

and their perceived color.

Let's get cozy.

Close your eyes.

Relax your body into the softest of your bed.

Now, take a few Neil, breaths. A day's drive in three states. And a day and a night, I had come from early May to middle June, from a world of bare bows, to a forest clad in all the firture of summer, such as shine as the big, lusty leaves of the blackjack oaks had put on. I could have raised a shout in the day when all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. May I be somewhere in the Black Jacks neighborhood. Hour after hour, we sped along, out of North Carolina, into South Carolina, now through miles and miles of forest. Now passed a lonely cabin with roses before the door, white honey-suckle covering the fence, and acres of sunny, ploughed land on either side. Here a river ran between close green hills, and there the hills parted and disclosed the their evolving horizon set with blue mountains. Then, at a little past noon, the porter appeared with his brush. Senaqa's next, he said. I lighted in lonely state, was escorted to the hotel, did my best with a luncheon, cleaned bit by bit out of an outlying wilderness of small dishes, and at that earliest moment took my seat in a buggy besides a boy who was to drive me to Wallhalla nine miles away. At that point, I was to be met the next morning by the carriage that should convey me into the mountains. Senaqa is a small-ish place, but my driver was no countryman. Boston? Yes, he had lived there once himself. He had been a Pullman border. But you don't get to learn anything in that way. He added, a little distinctfully, just running back and forth. He had waited in Florida and had been to Jamaica, and never got where else, though he was only 23 years old. He liked to go around and see the world. Married? No. A man who didn't live anywhere had no business with a wife and children. I quizzed him about birds. Yes, he had noticed them. He had been hunting a good deal. This and the other were named. Partridges. Fezans. Doves. Metal-larks. Chats. nighthawks. Yes, he knew them. If not by the names, I called them by, then from my descriptions, to which in most cases he proceeded to add some convincing touches of his own. Once, I arrived, the rain very soon set in, and left me nothing to do but to make the best of an afternoon upon the hotel Piazza. With its outlook up and down the village street and its gossip and politics, as to the latter I played the part of listener in spite of sundry courteous attempts to draw me out. Tillman and the silver question were discussed with a welcome coolness of spirit, while I looked at an occasional passing horseman. It is the one advantage of poor roads that they keep an entire community in the saddle, or admired the evolutions of the chimney-swifts in the Martins. Roses and honey-suckles would have made the door yards beautiful, had that result fallen within the bounds of possibility, and China-Berry Tree, full of purple blossoms, was not only a thing of beauty in itself, but to me was also a sweet remembrance of Florida. Wohala itself, with an elevation of a thousand feet and mountains visible not far off, lays some non-unnatural claims to a climate, and in a small way is a health resort, I believe, in spite of its rather sinister name, both summer and winter. To me, indeed, it seemed a place to stop at rather than to stay in, but as the listener knows, I saw it only from the main street on a muddy afternoon, and was likely to do it, but foul weather justice. Even in its merits as a necessary lodging station, were lightly appreciated, till on my return I made my exit from the mountains on the other side of them, and put up for the night in another village and especially at another hotel. Compared with that, Wohala was, indeed, as in name, kind of heavenly place. It is well or not, that what is worse makes us have contented with what is simply bad. I was more than ready at any rate when a wall-haul boy brought me word the next morning. Your carriage has come. The sky was fair, and shortly after seven o'clock we were on the road. The driver and his one passenger in a heavy three-seated mountain wagon locally known as a

HAC. After 7 o'clock we were on the road. The driver and his one passenger, in a heavy, three-seated mountain wagon, locally known as a hack, drawn by two horses. Our destination was set to be 32 miles distant. So much I knew, but the figures had given me little idea of the length of the journey. It was an agreeable surprise, also, when the driver informed me that we were not only going from South Carolina to North Carolina, but on the way were to spend some hours in Georgia, the mountainous northeastern corner of this state, being wedged in between the two Carolinas. And short, to accomplish our ascent of 2800 feet, we were out for a day's ride in three states and over four mountains, an exhilarating prospect in that perfect May weather. My recollections of the day run together as it it were, till the root, as memory tries to picture it forth, turns all to one hopeless blur. An interminable alternation of ups and downs largely overshaded forest roads, but with occasional sunny stretches, especially as it seemed, whenever I assayed it to take the cramp out of my legs by half-hours climb on foot. A turn or two in the road, and we had left the village behind us. And then, almost before I knew it, we were among the hills, now aloft on the shoulder of one of them, with the numeral mountains crowding their horizon, now shut in some narrow winding valley, our distance and horizon gone, with a bird singing from the bushes, and likely enough a stream playing hide and seek behind a tangle of roadedodendron and laurel. While, as the country was, we never traveled many miles without coming in sight of a building of some kind. A rude mill, it might be, or more probably a cabin. Once at least, in a very wilderness of, we passed a schoolhouse as to which it puzzled me to guess, first where the pupils came from, and then how they got light to read by. Unless happy children, they took their books out of doors and studied their lessons under the trees, and so went to school with the birds. Little by little, very little, we continued to ascend, gaining something more than we lost as the road sea sawed from valley to hill and from hill to valley. So it finally appeared. I mean to say the changes in the vegetation, serving eventually to establish a point which for hours together had been mainly an article of faith. As to another point, the four mountains over which our course was supposed to run, that remains a question of fate to this day. There might have been two, or thrice two, for ought I could tell. The road avoided summits as a matter of course, and if I can make myself understood, we were so lost in the hills that we could not see them. When we had left one and had come to another, I knew it only as the driver told me. So far as any sense of upward progress was concerned, we might also as well have been marking time. By and by we forwarded a sizable stream. Finally, at high noon, we dropped to a hot and breezeless valley. Here was a farm. The farmer who lived here kept a kind of halfway house for travelers, but we could not stop at it. The driver said if it was all the same to me.

There was another house just across the river. He had given the people notice of our coming on his way down the day before, and the woman would have dinner ready for me. Both houses were very nice places to eat at. He added for my encouragement. I would happen that I breakfasted in South Carolina,

dined in Georgia and sucked in North Carolina. The dinner to which I sat down alone was bountiful after its kind. If the table did not groan, it must have been because it was ignorant of a table's duty.

And if I did not make a feast, let the failure to be laid to idiosyncrasy of a man who once cut short his stay at one of the most inviting places in all Virginia because he was pampered but not necessarily for five consecutive meals

with nothing but fried ham, fried eggs, and soda biscuits. It is never too late to give up our prejudices," says Thoreau, in one of his lofty moods. Wisdom uttered in that tone, is not to be disputed, but if it is never too late, I for one have sometimes found it too early. My bill of fare, here in Georgia, was by no means confined to the three southern staples just now enumerated. so much be said in simple justice. But they held the place of honor as a matter of course, and for the rest? Well, there's a kind of variety that is only another kind of sameness. An excellent dinner, said a traveler on a similar occasion, has knife and fork in hand, he hovered doubtfully over the table, and like ever since snowflake seemed nowhere to a light, a most excellent dinner. But then, you see, it is nothing but ham and eggs with variations. If this sounds like grumbling, it is only against a system, as we say in these days, not against a person. My generous hostess had spared no pains, and from any point of view had given me far more than my money's worth, stinging herself only when it came to setting a price upon her bounty. That unavoidable business she approached in response to the usual overtures on my part, with all manner of delicate interactions, holding back the decisive word to the very last moment, as if her tongue could not bring itself to utter a figure, so extraordinary. The truth was, she said, she had made nothing by giving dinners the year previous, and so felt obliged to charge five more cents than the present season. The new hour brought a sudden change in the day's program. All the four noon I had been asking questions, presuming upon my double right as a traveler and a Yankee. Now I was to take my turn in the witness box. My landlady's brother sat on the veranda mending a fishing tackle, and we had hardly passed the time of day before it became apparent that he possessed one of nature's best intellectual gifts and appetite for knowledge. With admirable civility, he had with no waste of time or breath, he went about his work, and long before dinner was announced, I had given him my name, my residence, my age, perhaps, but here recollection becomes hazy. My occupation, the object of my present journey and its probable duration, some account of my previous visit south, my notion of New England weather, my impressions of Washington, especially of the height of the Washington monument, as compared with other similar structures, a question of peculiar moment to him, for some reason now passed recall. And heaven knows what else. While on a thousand or two of other topics, I had confessed ignorance. He was at present engaged on a course of reading as it appeared, the best course of reading that he had ever seen he was inclined to think. Here again he had me playing second fiddle, or rather no fiddle at all. He was wholesome of mind, but it pleased me to notice that he too had felt the touch of the modern spirit, and was something of a specialist. Geography, or perhaps, I should say, climatology, seemed to lie upermost in. Once, I remember he brought out a ponderous atlas of the world, a book of really astonishing proportions when the size of the house was taken into account, though it may not have been absolutely necessary for him to bring it out of doors in order to open it. On the subject of comparative climatology, be it said without reserve, it did not take him long to come to the end of my resources. It is possible, of course, that his own concern about it was but temporary. The result of his before mentioned course of reading. There is no better, nor better understood, rural for conversation, than to choose the subject of the book. You happen to have had last in your hand. Two to one, the other man will know less about it than you do. Then you are in clover. But should it turn out that he is at a home where you have but recently peeped in at the window and so is bound to have you at a disadvantage? You have only to be beforehand with him by acknowledging with becoming becoming modesty that you really know nothing about the matter, but happen to have just been looking over with some interest Mr. So-and-So's recent book. In other words, you may pass for a special student or a discursive reader, honorable characters both of them, according as the way opens. I am not saying that my noon day acquaintance had practiced any such strategy. His attitude throughout was that of a learner, nor did he set himself to shine even in that humble capacity, as one may easily. And there are few safer methods in this day of discovery when the ability to ask intelligent questions has become of itself a badge of scholarship. His inquiries followed one another with perfect naturalness and simplicity. He simply wanted to know. Though we were at the halfway house, and in fact, had made more than half of our day's journey, the valley at this point lay so warmly in the sun that the aspect of things remained decidedly Southern. Roses and snowballs were in bloom in the door yard, and as I came out from dinner, a blue gray nat catcher, the only one seen on my entire trip was complaining from a tree beside the gate. My attention to it, and to sundry other birds of the smaller sorts. A blue golden-winged warbler, for example, was a matter of surprise to the men of the house. Both of whom were now on the veranda. My seeker after knowledge, indeed, asked me plainly, but not without a word of apology, what object I had in views in such studies. In short, when I stumbled a bit in my explanation, whether there was any money in them. In that form, the question presented less difficulty, and in my turn, I asked him and his brother-in-law how often they were accustomed to see Ravens there about. Their reply was little to the comfort of an enthusiast who had come a thousand miles more or less with ravens in his eye. Neither of them had seen one in the last five years. Something had happened to the birds. They could not say what. Formerly, it was nothing in common to notice one or two flying over.

Alas, this was not the first time it had been born in upon me, that my portion was among the belated. I have said nothing about it either too, but I had not driven five or six hours through strange woods and into the midst of strange hills without an ear open for bird notes. Even the rumbling of the heavy wagon and the uneasy creaking of the harness could not drown such music altogether. And once in a while, as I have said, I spelled myself on foot. At short intervals, too, when we came to some promising spot. A swampy thicket, perhaps. Or a patch of evergreens. I called a halt to listen. The driver making no objection, and the horses less than none. The voices, to my regret, were rather than to my surprise, where everyone familiar, and the single unexpected things about it all was the dorth of northern species. The date was May 6th, and the woods might properly enough have been alive with homeward bound migrants, but the only bird that I could positively rank under that head was a Swanson thrush, a free-hearted singer whose cheery white mountain tune I never hear at the south without an inward refreshment. From the ever-greens, none too common, and mostly too far from the road, came the voices of a pine moorbler and one or two black-throated greens.

And once, as we skirted a bushy hillside, I caught the sliding ditty of a prairie warbler. Here too, I think it was that I heard the distinctive, locations call of a summer for happy chances. As but for them, and the single nap catcher by the halfway house gate, my vacation bird list would have been shorter by five species. After all, the principal event of the forenoon was not the singing of the thrush, but the discovery of a hummingbird's nest. This happened on the side of Stump House Mountain. I had taken a shortcut by myself, and had come out of the woods into the road again some distance ahead of the wagon. When suddenly I heard the buzz and squeak of hammer and clancing upward, put my eye instantly upon the nest, which might have been two-thirds done from its appearance, and then upon its owner, whose reiterated squeakings, I have no doubt expressed her annoyance at my intrusion. In truth, both owners were present, and in that lay the exceptional interest of the story. Some years ago I had proved, as I thought, that the male ruby throat habitually takes no part in the hatching and rearing of its young. And for that matter is never to be seen, for about the nest in the five or six weeks during which that most laborious and nerve-trying work is going on. As to why this should be, I could only confess ignorance and subsequent observations, both by myself and by others, while confirming the fact of the male's absence had done nothing to bring to light the reason for it. I should hate to believe, as I have heard it maintained, that female birds in general cher cherish little or no real affection for their mates, regarding them simply as necessities of the hour. But it is certain that widows among them waste no time and morning, and it appears to me likely enough if I am to say what I think that the lady hummer, having her nest done, and the ex-laid prefers her mate's room to his company and gives him a walking ticket. We rested for an hour or more at the halfway house and then resumed our journey.

The morning story over again, upward and downward, and round about, with woods and hills everywhere, and two mountains still to put behind us. We should be in the highlands before dark," the driver said. But one contingency had been left out of his calculation. When we had been under way an hour, or some such matter, he began to worry about one of the horses. My own eyes had been occupied elsewhere, but now it was plain enough. My attention, having been called to it, that dog was leaving his mate to do the work. And dog was never known to play the shirk. The driver said, with a jealousy for his favorite's reputation, pleasant to see and honorable to both parties. It was growing dark, bird songs had ceased, and flowers had long been invisible, But indeed, for the greater part of the afternoon, we had been so taken up with working our passage that I had found small opportunity for natural history comment. I recall a lovely rose shrub, an endless display of pink azalea, set off here, and there, with the flat, snowy clusters of the dogwood. you you you