The hills are alive with color
looking east from Rt. 16 toward Gilmer-Ritchie County
October 2003
By Bob Weaver
While we embrace the beauty and richness of fall, the inner voice often "rages against the dying of light." Autumn is the season of the pilgrim soul, of comfort sought and shared in the coziness of the cold nights to come.
Cool nights and warm days warn of winter, those short days when Calhoun people tend to go home early and close their doors behind them, not to wander again until dawn. "Be home before dark," my mother would say, even when darkness would come at 5:30.
For most people the autumn season is the very best, and here in the backwoods of West Virginia, it is an awesome sight.
Hubbard once wrote about nature being the unseen intelligence which loved it into being.
The death of living things, the plants withering to the ground and the leaves falling from the trees may be a simple warning of the temporal nature of human life. For us, spring will hopefully arrive, but it may not.
Still, it is in that excitement called hope, we have our joy in these beautiful days of Indian Summer to come.
Horses beside pumping jack on Bee Run, Millstone
Old power house at Cabot Station, a relic of pump station and possibly survivor of 1945 Thanksgiving explosion that killed workers
Weather beaten barn on Morris farm, Town Hill, Grantsville
Three-sided county-line marker at Calhoun-Ritchie line,
once used as mileage markers along the way
Store building, once operated by Ershel McGill in the 1950's
Rt. 16 near Calhoun-Line
Jones' still runnin' 1953 Ford tractor just keeps on tickin'
Mail Pouch barn, familiar during most of 20th Century,
now fading relics, along Phillips Run
Big Springs Hill, looking down toward entrance to Yellow Creek Road
Hills between Yellow and Leading Creek,
tromping grounds of Five Forks Mayor, the late Willard Jones
Rustic "cabin" home along Rt. 16 north of Big Springs
Water hole at the mouth of Phillips Run on Little Kanawha River, a "hanging out" place for generations of Calhoun High School students
Looking south on Route 16 near Calhoun-Ritchie line
Fall comes to country farm along Route 16 | 
