Amy Ward
Reflection #6
Urban Trail
Downtown Asheville, NC
(3.75 pages)
Wow. I brought my mother along
for this one. She’d been studying lots and
needed a bit of a break and change
of scenery. Besides, I wanted the company. Miss
Grace was our guide and she was quite
a character with a lovely personality. I could tell
she really enjoyed what she did and
had a wonderful way of including us with her knowledge.
While it may be true that the trail
can be walked from any point, I think that when I bring
Marc, I’m going to start at the beginning
in Pack Square.
I wasn’t really sure what to expect for this “urban trail”,
but images from elementary
school field trips floated around in
my mind’s eye. I was very glad to find three guides who
split us up into more personable groups.
They had a lovely bench for us on our first stop.
The bench might have been more appreciated
had we been half way through the walk, but
it was neat to see the footprints and
the little pigs and turkeys. Miss Grace told us how when
they were driving the sheep and goats,
etc, they could only walk 9 miles each day and this is
where they’d stop to rest, up on the
hill. I didn’t know that goats and such could only walk
9 miles a day. I also had a hard
time imagining the hill without all those huge buildings but
with large mud puddles and streams
running all over, as Miss Grace explained. I don’t know
much about Asheville, and certainly
not a lot about it’s history, so I found this a pleasant
beginning to my education. I
was a bit worried of how easy/hard the walking would be, and
we hopped over the road to stand outside
of a little café to block the wind while she continued
explaining her story to us.
That’s when a lovely citizen of Asheville broke in to
tell us that he didn’t have teeth any
more! Caught a little off guard,
Grace replied, “Okay” then ushered us off down the sidewalk
and on to our next stop!
I really really liked the herbal bench on the sixth stop
honoring Elizabeth Blackwell.
This dude, Tucker Cook, is really on
the ball for designing all these sites. I’ve noticed he has a
preference for iron worked sculptures.
So I wonder if he designs them and then gets someone
else to do the work, or if he does
the work too. Miss Grace said that because everyone in her
group was female, that we’d appreciate
the fact that Ms. Blackwell was the first in her graduating
class at Geneva Medical School in N.Y.
And was the first woman physician.
My favorite stop was the one from the department of transportation.
It moves! And it
doesn’t make any noise (even the noise
it’s supposed to make). I would love to have one of those
thingies in my yard, or somewhere. And they
put it right on the last stretch of brick-paved road.
How very cool. I like driving
up and down that street just for the very reason that it makes me
feel like I’ve slipped through a time
portal into another era. But I think that all of the stations
did a really good job of taking you
back in time to another era. You can just sit there and
watch the piece and, in a little time,
you start hearing the sounds and smelling the aroma of the
time as the piece comes to life.
With all the sponsors for all the different stations, I thought it
was extra special to have had the Department
of Transportation to offer this one for the city.
Miss Grace says that they will be “remodeling” the space
in front of the Civic Center
and, in the process, will be tearing
down the station with Guastavino’s monument. She said
that if we came up with any ideas for
what to create when they replaced it, to let YOU know.
So I’ve been thinking about it, and
I’m not the best for creating things like that, but I think a
gazebo would be cool. It could
be a little imitation of the chapel dome and could have cool
carvings n stuff all around to decorate,
there could be flower boxes off the railing, letting the
original vision of beautification with
flora continue, and then it would be functional too.
I think that one of the most difficult stations to create
must have been the one honoring
Thomas Wolfe. I know that the
trees etc line up with the crescent now, but what will it look like
many years from now when the trees
have grown larger, or disappeared, when the community
changes again. How neat, to have
three layers of history there. When I go back, I will definitely
be standing in his footsteps.
The weather was rather cold and windy, some of the students
in our group were not
dealing well with it, so Miss Grace
decided to cut the tour short and get us through so we could
get out of the cold. On the way
back to Pack Place we passed by my car, and a little farther
up was this really neat little Bistro
(whatever that is) so Mom took me in for dinner. There was
supposed to be a guitarist coming in
about 30 minutes later, so we sat downstairs to listen to him.
We couldn’t decide what to get, so we picked out
two and decided to share them. Let’s just say
HOT...Wow… really spicy. The
musician was late, and then when he finally got around to playing
he sang songs from a wide variety of
genres. I had thought about writing him up for one of my
critiques, but I wasn’t sure it would
count. Besides it was getting really late and we didn’t get to
stay long after he started. The whole experience
was really nice though. I thought maybe my
uncle could take his guitars and start
singing in little restraints, telling stories, etc. Why not?
Miss Grace did tell us of your intense distaste for the
original artwork by the ACT, and
I really have to agree, it was a bit
lame – much like the reaction I got from my art teacher when
I handed in the assignment for designing
a cover for the school cookbook. I could have done
something much more creative, but I
settled for a basic, over-simplified design. Now that they
have the sculpture up on the walls (and from UNCA
no less!) I am kind of glad they left a few
notes in the sidewalk.
I think this should definitely stay on the syllabus for
an event at the end of the semester.
It was a great stress relief to get
out in the fresh air and walk around. I’m seeing this guy who’s
all about hiking and he was in Bhutan
during this time, hiking in the Himalayan Mountains. It
helped a bit to think that we were
both walking at the same time, though I didn’t kid myself
about the difficulty of his hike compared
to mine, but I thought that when he gets back, he
might like a nice easy hike to “cool
off” from that all day trekking. So, for effectiveness, I give
this day an A+ because I’m going to
take other people on the trail, and recommend it when I
hear of someone who needs something to do.
With a hike of only 1.7 miles, who can complain?