Pictures of a More Natural Habitat

The perpetually cold, wet weather and the dense populations here in the UK has made me wistful for America's scorching hot rural summer-times. That means it's time to get out the photos. These are pictures I took at my old university, a small number of students (~2000) in a big, natural campus (~30,000 acres) nestled in the southern Appalachian Mountains. There are plenty of things I don't miss there (like racism and rampant homophobia, for example), but I'll always miss the land.

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Horses playing in the rain, near the gravel road west to Possum Trot.

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Cypress knees growing by Mirror Pond

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The view from Berry Hill, looking north-east towards Lavendar Mountain

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A cypress grove near the edge of Victory Lake. The chorus of frogs here in the summer is deafening.

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In the fields and hills east of Frost Chapel, looking north.

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Victory Lake

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The Lavendar Mountain Reservoir on a cloudless summer day. Or a champagne glass.

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The Old Mill grinding corn on Mountain Day. This is the largest overshot waterwheel known to exist, built by students in the 1920s. Many of the surrounding pine trees are Longleaf Pines, an endangered tree that forms the Longleaf Pine ecosystem, home to 33 threatened or endangered species.