Tim Jon

By Tim Jon Not to start a story off with a double negative, but my advice is: don’t enter a graveyard if you don’t want to bring home some of the ghosts. Now, while I hesitate to believe I have free-ranging spirits floating around in my house, I will say that I’ve felt a bit…

By Tim Jon  I don’t remember making it down to the water that morning—or the way back, up onto solid ground, either; in looking at my camera shots from this adventure, I must have, somehow half-walked, half-slid from the bluffs above the River—descending all the way into the muck and mire—and, at the time of…

By Tim Jon I kept telling myself that if I didn’t slip and break my neck on the rocky slope, and if I didn’t slide all the way out into the moving water, and if I didn’t run into an early-rising copperhead snake along the descent, I’d most likely be okay. That’s what I kept…

By Tim Jon After decades of unexpected upheavals in my life, I’ve actually come to appreciate the surprising travails that keep popping up as long as I’ve been above ground; many times, my little forays into our natural world serve as a microcosm of these larger dips and peaks. My first reaction on pulling into…

By Tim Jon “It has a new name,” I thought, “so I’ll take another look.” See, ever since I’d moved to Loudoun County in the late 1990’s, this place had been called the Blue Ridge Center for Environmental Stewardship; a mouthful, I know, but the actual site was even bigger. Much bigger. Weighing in at…

By Tim Jon You can rest assured: you will never see me enjoying full use of this local facility, at least not in the present lifetime. Having been diagnosed with what appears, now, to be a lifelong case of vertigo, I became noticeably dizzy just navigating my way ‘round the place, and taking a handful…

By Tim Jon “Well,” I remember thinking, “I’d better make this quick.” You see, as I turned into the drive to seek a parking area for the main character in today’s drama, I noticed a sign indicating official displeasure at my presence therein; now, when I’d looked up the available information on these geographical coordinates,…

By Tim Jon There’s more sky out there, distance takes on a new meaning, and even time seems to last longer. You may think this is a reference to a trailer for an upcoming science fiction thriller, but no—it’s just another fascinating feature I’ve come to enjoy about Loudoun County, Virginia—a locality of physical, intellectual…

By Tim Jon  I remember the blackberries; it was ‘high summer’ when I visited this little piece of local history, but I could almost feel the winter wind that must have howled in coming down the steep western slope, which leveled off a few, mere feet from the building. That towering hill at the back…