Day 4. Wednesday May 2nd.

Heading to Asheville. On the way out of Boone I got gas at a pump before you pay. The cashier knew everyone and was smacking gum, wearing red lipstick, and flirting it up. Very distracted, very faithful in the trust system of paying. The diner in the gas station was serving more livermush and all flavor chitlins. Then I set in for the drive, heading into the thick woods and mountains of Pisgah National Forest, in which the drive from Boone to Asheville is almostly entirely contained. I was behind trucks and a motorcycle for hours, left to jealously imagine myself with no baggage, no bicycle, and a smaller gas tank. And to be frightened that the trucks would topple off of a cliff. The nerves and envy got to me, so I pulled off at the only stop I'd seen for miles, Linville Caverns. I drank a soda on some rocks, wrote a postcard with a lizard at my feet, contemplated going underground to see stalactites and mites, and talked to a country boy who worked in the gift shop. He filled me in on the political landscape of Marion, NC. A lot of furniture manufacturing plants were closed about eight years ago due to outsourcing, and the area had been through some truly rough times. Many residents had been forced to move away from the land where generations of their family had born and died. But going on welfare is not seen as an option by most in a town with an old time mentality like that of Marion. So eventually with a little innovation, new industry cropped up...literally hehe. He said that tourism farms were now big in the area. They capitalized on peoples' interest in buying and growing locally, bringing folks on tours to see how they do things in the country. Linville Caverns didn't always have such an extensive gift shop. They had expanded it to something of a convenience store and art gallery. And as the one-time Christmas tree capital of the world, Marion had also created an attraction of the remaining giant evergreen forests. They couldn't profit as much as they had in the past, nor produce such volume as to keep their old title, but at Christmastime people like to spend a lot of money doing extravagant shit like driving far distances to see megawatt wonderland forests. So they capitalized on that, too. When I questioned whether anyone had looked to the government for help back in when times had been really rough, he explained the very reason why they were living somewhere so remote with such limited business opportunity: Marion folks just wanted to be left alone. They would as soon ask for help as they would build skyscraper and a white house in downtown Marion. In fact. They need to be left alone! He told me the craziest Marion practice which sort of needs privacy to be able to continue in tradition. ugh sick of typing