The BackWoods Drifter

What the hell is a treehugger? Is this supposed to be some childish attempt at putting a label on people that enjoy the outdoors. This has been on my mind for a while now so it is time for this blogger to clear the air. A month or so ago I was driving up the road and noticed a new billboard with an anti-mountaintop removal theme. The board had one simple statement… “Please don’t take my mountains.” A day or two later I drove past the sign again and someone had painted a big red line through the statement and had painted the word treehugger on the board. This pissed me off for a couple of reasons. First, everyone has a right to their own opinion. Even the person or persons that rented the billboard. Secondly, and mainly, it shows a severe case of childish ignorance. It is people like this that keep prejudices and controversy alive and well. I imagine this person was uneducated. He or she most likely wasn’t even smart enough to know that by writing treehugger on the board, they had firmly planted their feet on one side of a controversy and had lashed out at the other side in the most childish manner possible.

—
Adding to this post: The first part of this post and the second are only related in that they both deal with hate for another person because of their beliefs or their position on sensitive issues. I wrote the second paragraph because hate was what came to mind when I saw the word treehugger used in an obviously slanderous context. I have my opinions on the big coal companies and they usually don’t coincide with other West Virginians view. I don’t think the coal companies have West Virginia’s best interest at heart, both as a state and as a people.
—

Prejudice and stereotyping; two major weights that hold us back as a society. To the people that exhibit those signs of ignorance… please tell me what it is that makes you better than anybody else. Is it the color of your skin? The language you speak? Education? Money? The country you live in? Were you born on the other side of the tracks? Or were you just brought up that way? It is a shame that we get one lifetime and some people spend that time hating other people that are only living their one lifetime too. I guess I may be showing some signs of ignorance because I just don’t understand, and never will.

That’s just stupid…

.

A whole week and I got in two tag posts. I thought I was actually going to accomplish something with the blog this week but that didn’t happen. I did get the cool little temperature widget… aren’t you glad you can now see the temps on Bolt Mountain? But anyway, I’m getting ready to go on the road again. Maybe a couple of weeks this time. I’m going to come back with a lot of pictures from all over the southern part of the state.

Getting on track…. As the title suggests this post, is now, all about friends. Blogging friends to be more precise. I encourage you to check out a few of my blogging friends sites. To the people that author these blogs…. Thanks.

The Film Geek, Hunt Smart, Think Safety, Outdoor Bloggers Summit, Deer Camp Blog, The Process of a Miracle, Taj Wanders, Marian’s Hunting Stories, Troubled Child; Off-Road Adventures, Sue’s Daily Photography, Outdoors With Othmar Vohringer, Alpha Trilogy.com, Speedcat Hollydale Page

—

This is not a tag. It is simply a free link.

Have A Great Day!!!!

.

This is a tag that comes from Marian at Marian’s Hunting Stories. She actually tagged me with the Bolt Mountain site. I’m supposed to do a meme on what got me started blogging and how my blog has evolved since the beginning.

My blog actually started as a website 4 years ago called West Virginia Outdoors. I started that website just to put this area of the world on the map, so to speak. About a year after starting the website, I attached a blog to it because it was easier to display my photos and a heck of a lot less trouble to update. No coding….

My blog, in the beginning, was called West Virginia Outdoors Blog. It wasn’t really localized, like both of my blogs today are basically centered around Bolt Mountain.

The West Virginia Outdoors Blog pretty much stayed the same until earlier this year. I was beginning to have so much trouble updating it and accessing the site controls that I started looking for another blog host. That is when I found Blogger. I moved the blog here, renamed it BackWoods Drifter and it has been changing ever since. During the same time I registered the domain boltmountain.com and set it up with a wordpress blog as a place strictly for displaying photos. I take a lot of pictures. The West Virginia Outdoors site no longer exists, it is now the BackWoods Drifter and boltmountain.com.

I’m not going to tag anybody else at the moment although I do like reading tags like this one.

.

I have been tagged by Morgan, the author of The Process of a Miracle with this ABC tag. She was tagged by Diane.

Here are the instructions:

Each player starts with random habits/facts about themselves. People who are tagged need to write on their own blog about their things, as well as these rules. At the end of your blog, you need to choose some people to tag and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them that they have been tagged and to read your blog!

A - Age: 43
B - Band Listening To Right Now: Motley Crue
C - Career: Electrician
D - Drink or Smoke: Neither - Willpower hard at work…
E - Easiest Friends To Talk To: Dennie, Jeri
F - Funniest moment of your life: hmmmm
G - Gummy Bears or Gummy Worms: Neither
H - Have a Boyfriend/girlfriend: Most eligible bachelor in the state of West Virginia.
I - In love: With life!
J - Junk Food You Like: peanut butter candy
K - Kids: 4, 2 grandkids.
L - Longest Ride Ever: Oakland, California to Beckley, West Virginia on a Greyhound bus, 4 agonizing days
M - Man/woman you love the most: mom and dad
N - Names For Your Future Kids: I guess anything is possible…
O - One Wish You Have Now: everybody else’s wishes to come true
P - Phobias: spiders
Q - Favorite Quote: Hope is the dream of a man awake.
R - Reasons To Smile: Who needs a reason…
S - Sleeping Hours: During a work week - 10pm to 5am, at home - it’s anybodies guess
T - Time You Woke Up: 7am
U - Unknown Fact About You: TOO SENSITIVE!!! I have to change the channel if I see someone crying on TV.
V - Vegetable You Hate: green beans
W - Worst Habit: thinking, thinking, thinking and thinking, I had to agree with Morgan on this one
X - X-rays You’ve Had: too many to list, I definitely don’t lead a safe life
Y - Yummy Foods: broccoli and cheese, southern fried anything…
Z - Zodiac Sign: Sagittarius - Optimistic and freedom-loving

This is the hardest part of doing tags, figuring out who to tag next. If you are tagged by me you can either play or ignore the tag and consider it a free link. The choice is yours… Eric, Rex and Taj…

After all this time I have finally been able to capture the elusive rvnx11 in it’s natural habitat. All it took was a timer… imagine that. Here we see him in the company of giant oak trees. You can see why he is so elusive. He is wearing tan hiking boots and camo pants. Hell, I can barely see him from the waist down. If he is spotted, he is wearing a Dale Jarrett shirt which most people would naturally avoid. As a back up and if all else fails he is wearing a ballcap supporting the West Virginia Mountaineers, which basically means I come in peace. The sunglasses complete his wardrobe, not really having anything to do with his elusiveness but more to keep the sun out of his eyes.

—

FYI - I have a week off before having to return to work. Unplanned, but a cool thing. Maybe now I can catch up on some tags. There are a few tags and I hate that I have been unable to acknowledge them sooner. I hope everybody understands it was a time issue.

.

… if it took you a whole weekend to build this treestand and then you brag about it to your buddies for a week.

.

Thank God I’m a country boy…

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since writing the post Touched By An Angel. I’ve been thinking about the group Random Acts Of Kindness. I’ve been looking back at tragic events and how they cause people to automatically bond together as if it were the most natural thing in the world. No boundaries, no language barriers, no left or right, no recognition of color or creed… all bound by the desire to do the right thing, all bound by the heart. Bound by the heart we can accomplish anything. We can feed the hungry, we can help the homeless, we can comfort the grieving, we can change a child’s future, we can…, we can.

What I want to know is… Why can’t we be bound by the desire to do the right thing in other than tragic events? I have the answer for you… we can.

My friend Morgan and I have resurrected the community Random Acts Of Kindness on BlogCatalog. As bloggers we can make a difference just from the words that we write. It’s such a simple thing. Why not join us? By the way, you don’t have to be a blogger to join this community.

.

….and at such a young age. I have good news, I have a granddaughter. I’ve actually been carrying this news around with me for a couple of weeks but kept forgetting to post about it until I was no longer in front of the computer… as I said in a comment just call me the absent minded blogger. But anyway, I do have a new granddaughter and her name is Michele.

Songbird, Fleetwood Mac
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_JdKJQPS9I]

.