“Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though;   He will not see me stopping here, To watch his woods fill up with snow.”

The woods Robert Frost wrote about were no doubt in his native New England, not Beech Mountain, North Carolina. Still, I think his poem describes the experience of stopping to look at snowy woods everywhere, don’t you?

Although there’s been scarcely a flake yet this winter in the eastern part of the state where I live, the weather is a different story in Beech Mountain. I was lucky enough to be there briefly and capture these early January photos.

Here in the coastal plains, there are sometimes mild winters with no snow. While that helps avoid high heating bills, makes it easier to get to the grocery store and, pre-Covid, kept the kids in school, I always feel a winter without snow is somehow lacking.

It’s good to know that there’s at least one mountain location in the western part of the state that can guarantee snow multiple times throughout winter. True, Beech Mountain is a five hour drive for me (that’s factoring in a Chick Filet stop), but for a dose “of easy wind and downy flake,” it’s sometimes worth it.

“The woods are lovely, dark, and deep.” Yes, Robert Frost, they are indeed.