Spruce Pine is a little town in the mountains in North Carolina.
They have Oak St, which is the main street.
But off of Oak St is Low Street, which is just what its name implies, lower down the mountain slope.
And even lower than Low Street is the Riverside Park.
We were there in Riverside Park on a Friday, and stumbled upon a drum circle. I guess they were inspired by the famous one in Asheville. I have seen the Asheville one once, years ago, but I didn’t really like it, actually. It was super crowded and loud and it was quite late at night. At least, this is true if the big commotion I saw actually was the drum circle, and not some other frantic conclave that Asheville likes to do.
The Spruce Pine version, on the other hand, is just a group of people, sitting on wooden beams, in a gentle park, on sunny afternoons, and tapping out rhythms. Everyone brings their own drum; or actually, some people brings lots of drums, so they have extras to share if passersby want to join in.
Everyone just drums to their own beat, but it still sounded really nice! I think their ears are all attuned to listening to each other, and they seem to moderate and speed up all as a unit.
They call themselves the Riverside Rumble, and they asked me to share my photos on social media. So here I am!
Riverside Park in general is very nice. There’s a very high thin bridge over it — you climb a giant staircase to get to it, and then it takes you across the valley with the river and the railroad station, and when you get to the other side, you are “high” enough to be on level with “Low” Street 🙂
The bridge is quite romantic. But we also thought that maybe it could benefit from some of Biden’s infrastructure funds.
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