fred

fred

Fred First holds masters degrees in Vertebrate Zoology and physical therapy, and has been a biology teacher and physical therapist by profession. He moved to southwest Virginia in 1975 and to Floyd County in 1997. He maintains a daily photo-blog, broadcasts essays on the Roanoke NPR station, and contributes regular columns for the Floyd Press and Roanoke's Star Sentinel. His two non-fiction books, Slow Road Home and his recent What We Hold in Our Hands, celebrate the riches that we possess in our families and communities, our natural bounty, social capital and Appalachian cultures old and new. He has served on the Jacksonville Center Board of Directors and is newly active in the Sustain Floyd organization. He lives in northeastern Floyd County on the headwaters of the Roanoke River.

Fragments Rises Again. Kinda

The blog was on the ropes. Then it was down for the count. The referee intended to stop the fight, the victim too far injured to rise again. But wait! Fragments has struggled to her feet, bloodied, staggering, but headed…

Dodd Creek Trail: Getting There

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll post short entries from the observations, images and thoughts that have come from two back-to-back early September visits to a local walking trail called “the Dodd Creek Trail.” In a few weeks, you…

Life in The Cloud

Ah yes. Now I remember. Life in the cloud. It was mysterious and eerie and the relentless fog lent a kind of drama to the aloneness that first year in Floyd County living, just me and the cat, on Walnut…

Simple Pleasures

We had 3 widely-spaced friends (read that as you will) over for a porch visit yesterday evening to become reacquainted as the good friends we had been before covid. And what we rediscovered was how interesting ORDINARY used to be,…

On Seeing Things

When is the last time you stretched out on your back under a sky full of clouds? Your mind literally cannot help but make sense of the seemingly random balloonings or smears or pulled threads of clouds. It is what…

So Where’s The Church?

Rock Hill Church Road was once a state-maintained road with a county road number (714 I think) that is now in VDOT limbo status of not abandoned but not maintained. There are three full time residences on a half mile…

New Ground

We walked through our tiny patch of forest (compared to Goose Creek) in the rain–of course, in the Monsoon of June–on our third full day at what I used to refer to as The Other Place. It is now This…

Why Not Do What Works?

Vietnam: How this country of 95 million kept its coronavirus death toll at zero – CNN Why can’t we learn to do what successful states and nations do that is working? Business as usual when usual threatens to wipe out…

Gramps Gets Night Cramps

I not uncommonly fall asleep on the love seat in the front room at bedtime, especially if the wood stove is glowing and radiating sleepiness into the darkness. As usual, last night I woke up after an hour or so,…