Big shoes to fill

The North Carolina Writers' Network held its spring 2025 conference in Asheville this year. We were supposed to meet there in the fall of 2024, but a terrible visitor named Helene devastated western North Carolina first. Much of the city seems to have bounced back, but the retail/restaurant area known as Biltmore Village very near the hotel hosting our conference still looks abandoned. The River Arts District won't be the same for a while, with some buildings completely washed away, but some artists' studios had finally reopened the weekend before our visit.

I can never visit Asheville without making a pilgrimage to the childhood home of one of my favorite authors, Thomas Wolfe. Dixieland, as the yellow boardinghouse run by his mother, Julia, was known, was closed on the day I finally got to visit, but I hung around outside, peeking in the windows and taking photos with my daughter, Michele. There's a painting of the 6-foot-6 Wolfe boarding a train and another of an angel in homage to his most popular book, Look Homeward, Angel. But the most poignant sight to me was the display of an old pair of his lace-up shoes preserved the way proud parents once did baby shoes. "A large man, both in stature and accomplishment, Wolfe left big shoes to fill," reads the plaque beside the footwear. Amen to that.