The past dies slowly back in the hills. Old ways and old customs still prevail. And there are folks with old memories and old tales.
There are hand-hewn cabins and slow ticking clocks, quilting bars and battlin’ blocks. There are split rail fences and log barns. And mules and horses, wagons and sleds. There are men who still know how to use an axe and a froe and crosscut saw.
Old timers who can notch and mortise and tenon, join and rive. There are places where the water supply still comes from a spring out back of the house.
Places in the dark wrinkles of the hills where the axe and the chopping block, the woodshed and the woodpile feed the fireplace and the wood burning cook stove.
To see and know these things, you have got to get off the beaten path. You have got to take the winding, twisting little dirt tracks that lead into the hidden valleys and into the high coves. Sometimes you have to do a spell of walking, cross a foot log, squeeze through a fence.
It is then and only then, that you come upon an older way of life. It is only then that the eye and ear behold something that was supposed to have died a long, long time ago.
Come to the wilds of the Snowbird Mountains, where there are streams to ford and footlogs to walk, where the country is high and peaceful and wind blows fresh and damp.