Scott Wilson

I am sitting in my $300-per-night room, enjoying a commanding view of the grounds of the Omni Park Hotel in Asheville and the expansive Appalachian Mountain horizon fading blue into a distant western horizon, reflecting on the Yadkin River property and strangely enjoying the contrasting images that play with my imagination.    The 'Omni' is a historic resort of huge proportions made of rocks and timbers and red roof shingles, sitting high up on a mountain slope above a meticulously groomed...

What is the first image that comes to mind when you hear the word chainsaw?  It may be a scene from 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' with Leatherface hysterically attacking his next victim. For those with a broader cinematic knowledge, it may be the scene in Scarface where the Colombian drug dealers dismember Angel in front of Tony. Reaching a more lighthearted view of chainsaw cinema, consider the scene in Fargo where the bad guy has quartered his captive with a chainsaw and is struggling to...

At my life’s current fulcrum, with the not-as-far-away-as-it-used-to-be future of empty nesting, retiring, and the eventual meeting with my maker in the balance, I have decided that now is the time to embrace a personal metamorphosis, rather than to remain cocooned in my established persona woven with the threads of youth, career, and family. Perhaps a bit rhetorical and contrived as a mission statement, but it will do for now. The prospects are exciting:  traveling the globe in the spirit of...