I've lived here in WNC for the last ten years in the same house, and in VA before that, but I've never heard this sound before. It was like a higher pitched wolf keening/howling, almost -- but with a strange edge to it. Strangely ethereal, a bit spooky, and I'd love to know what it was! I was reminded of the calls of indri lemurs in Madagascar, though obviously I knew that couldn't be it.

I heard it faintly from inside my house (I live in a wooded area but still very much a neighborhood, not super rural) and then several more times much closer. I went out onto my porch to listen, and tried to record the sound, but my phone wouldn't pick it up. I kinda wanted to go out farther and try to figure out where it was coming from, but it's freezing cold and I was in my slippers. Then later I heard it again, again from inside, but it was fainter again like it was moving away.

Weirdly, I came across this post (https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureIsFuckingLit/s/H83VyagZLm) of a particularly eerie-sounding elk bugle, and it sounded a LOT like what I heard. (EDIT: Apparently there are elk in WNC! But it still seems really weird for one to be in, basically, suburbia?)

The sound was just so aching and strange that I can't stop thinking about it, and would love to know!

As a proud resident of Southwest Virginia and a former recipient of the prestigious John Fox, Jr. Award for short stories and poetry, I have navigated many of the challenges faced by emerging authors from the southern Appalachians. While we contend with obscurity, poverty, disabilities, and more, our resilience, honesty, and authenticity define us—even if others perceive us as melancholic, unfiltered, or backwards.

The world could learn much from us!

In that spirit, I wish to share my recent successes with you by offering a selection of poems from my book.

False Mirror, my poetry collection, was released on January 7, 2025, and has already become a best-seller in multiple categories on Amazon, including #1 in Contemporary Poetry. The book is free to download until January 11, 2025, as part of a promotional period and is also available through Kindle Unlimited.

Poems listed below:

• - Z.B.S & M.F.S
• - L.B.S
• - Sons Without Fathers
• - Human Factories for Mental Faculties
• - Desert Lamentations

Desert Lamentations

Human Factories for Mental Faculties

L.B.S

Sons Without Fathers

Z.B.S & M.F.S

The calm before the storm.

In Salem, Virginia. The statue reads to the Confederate soldiers of Craig County 1861-1865.

M20 looking for a job in warehouse or trade

It's gotta be 72° in the high tunnel today in Southwest Virginia.

May Justus, Author & Teacher

On the mountaintop of Monteagle, Tennessee, in the Southern Appalachians, lived a woman named May Justus. She was a successful writer of children's books, most of them based on her experiences growing up in Del Rio, in upper, upper east Tennessee, a stone's throw from North Carolina. (And, as a side note, one of the areas devastated in the recent flooding related to Hurricane Helene.) In addition to being a writer, May Justus was a schoolteacher, in her home county, in the coal fields of Kentucky as an inland missionary, and on Monteagle Mountain. Monteagle was the unlikely site of the Highlander Folk School, where leaders of the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement went to teach and to train. Dr. Martin Luther King was at Highlander, along with Rosa Parks, John Lewis, Septima Clark, and Stokely Carmichael.

I am writing a May Justus book, a work of historical fiction based on real people and events. You can get more information at www.mayjustusbook.com

Why May Justus, and why now? May Justus was far ahead of her time as a woman who controlled her own destiny, supported herself, and navigated life with her partner, Vera Campbell. Her story of self-determination is one that young girls need to know, even today. As America increases its efforts to suppress or even erase its own history, especially in regard to racial segregation, this is a bit of history that should be preserved.

How you can help. If you have any knowledge of May Justus, her family, inland missionaries (especially Presbyterian) in Kentucky, Cocke County, Tennessee around the turn of the 20th Century, please let me know. You can leave a message via my website (above). If you'd like to follow along with the book's development and related historical details, you can also sign up for my e-newsletter there. One more thing: will you like my FB page at www.facebook.com/mayjustusbook ...? I would be so grateful.

Snow is waiting around for more to fall tomorrow.

I was fortunate this fall to get 1.5 days of the falls all to myself. Going on a Tuesday, during the fall, it pays off. This waterfall is one of my favorites in Georgia. What you might not know, the trail doesn’t end at the falls. If you keep going, it gets wilder and more beautiful.