Making Ripples: post-corporate adventures in Floyd County Virginia

Floyd, Virginia, a county full of good ideas

I fell in love with Floyd county on my first visit. It has a lot of scenic vistas, but it is the people that made me feel that I had finally arrived where I was meant to be.

There is a hospitality here that I have not found elsewhere. There is also a creative spirit here that inspires one to join in and do things that don't seem possible elsewhere. Talent is encouraged, rather than stifled.

Hard work is also encouraged and one finds many talented people holding several jobs and still managing to create with music, clay, fiber, or paints.

There are other people working harder than you could ever imagine to raise money for the local library, or food for disadvantaged children, or to provide art training for seniors and for children

There is an attitude here that it is OK to major in Art or to work instead of going to college, or to move to Alaska and homestead, or to spend a year volunteering in Africa.

Success for most is not measured by high paying jobs and extravagant lifestyles. There are some here who enjoy both, but you would not know it by their dress or by their speech.

This is supposedly one of the fifty poorest counties in the US, but it has a richness of spirit and a bounty of creative ideas that more pro$perou$ locales might envy.

This creativity attracts still more creative people who want to contribute to the motion. The lack of jobs and local industry seem to stimulate the ingenuity of those who see in Floyd the answers they have been seeking. They come and create small businesses and in the process they enrich the county with new ideas and new services.

Not all share in the bounty, but grumblers who resist change are to be found everywhere. In Floyd County, the grumblers can be heard if you listen hard enough, but their influence diminishes every year.

The people with positive ideas who are willing to work for the good of the county seem to be growing in numbers. I meet more of them every month. As I said at the beginning, Floyd Virginia is a county full of good ideas.

They even encouraged me to hang my photo of the Blue Ridge Parkway in the Chamber of Commerce office. I am happy to contribute to the Floyd community and there were no barriers to my participation.

More localities could benefit from this approach.

Rhododendron Glory - but not in our yard

We have dense thickets of Rhododendrons within sight of our front door, but none have bloomed yet.  Meanwhile, up at Peaks of Otter these Rhododendrons are showing off in grand style.

We saw them when we stopped for lunch at the Peaks of Otter Restaurant on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Further south on the parkway, Flame Azaleas and Mountain Laurel dominate the landscape. If you keep your eyes open you will also see wild turkeys and deer.

I spotted this flock of wild turkeys with two males vying for the attention of several hens. The male in the middle has not raised his tail feather yet, while the one on the right is showing his colors.

It is a beautiful time to travel on the Blue Ridge Parkway.