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You can stay at 4,000 feet at Greer’s Whitetop Mountain Cabin on Whitetop Mountain. (tel. 276-388-3477, www.wtmca­bin.home­stead.com, $$)

Visitors who require only the bare necessities can inquire at Mount Rogers Outfitters about space in their hostel across the street: $10 for a two-bunk room. (tel. 276-475-5416, $)

Information

Call the Town of Damascus at 866-DAMASCUS, or check their Web site, www.damascus.org.

Festivals

In addition to Trail Days the third week in May (tel. 866-DAMASCUS, www.traildays.com), the nearby community of Whitetop hosts several festivals celebrating the area’s abundance. The Maple Festival is the last full weekend in March; the Ramp Festival is held the third Sunday in May and features an eating contest for the pungent wild onion; and the Molasses Festival is the second Sunday in October. For more information about these three events, contact Grayson County Tourism, tel. 276-773-3711.

“Friendliest Town on the AT”

This anonymous letter sent to the Trail Days Web site sums up the character of this small town.

WHO WE ARE

(Used with permission from the author)

We are local business owners, doctors, lawyers, police officers, volunteer fire fighters, factory workers, senior citizens, and college students. We invite you over to dinner during the week and go to church with you on the weekend. We are there when you have a question. The person you call at midnight to help you with a problem. We help you plant your crops in the spring and harvest them in the fall. We let you borrow the car when yours is broken and drive you to the store when you can no longer see. We say hello when we meet on the street and call when we haven’t seen you for a while. We were there when your baby was born. We watched it grow and enter school. When they got their license we heard about how cool they were and how much they loved life. We were there when they lost that life and you cried all night on the phone with us. We grew up with you and you watched us grow up before your eyes. We watched you grow old during our lives, but listened with joy to stories from you that make you young again. We sat in the backyard and on the front porch swing with you on warm summer days. We shared plates of food and cold lemonade while we visited, didn’t matter whether it was homemade or store bought, it was the best food in the world. We loved you with all our hearts and cried when it was time to say good-bye and let you go home to God.

We spend time in the woods enjoying nature and God’s wonders. Some people call us hikers.

Most of you call us your friends and neighbors.

Big Stone Gap

Authors have built careers telling tales about this small Southwest Virginia town. Whether it’s the historical, coal-mining romances of John Fox Jr., or Adriana Trigiani’s best sellers, the real Big Stone Gap keeps popping up in books. And who wouldn’t be inspired to write after witnessing that panorama of Appalachian Mountains that encircle this town?

Residents take pride in this literary history. They count Trigiani (author of a trilogy of Big Stone Gap novels) as a native daughter (look for a pamphlet on store counters that points out places in her books) and John Fox Jr. as an adopted son. Fox, a native Kentuckian, featured many locals as characters in his many novels and short stories.

Around Town

Generations of locals have acted in Virginia’s official outdoor drama based on Fox’s Trail of the Lonesome Pine. The John Fox Jr. Museum (tel. 540-523-2747) on Shawnee Avenue memorializes his former home. Furnishings and memorabilia of the family give it an authentic touch. He’s most famous for The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, published in 1908, thrice a movie and now the longest running outdoor drama in America. Set during the rise of the local coal industry, it follows a mountain girl, June Tolliver, from her hill country home to Big Stone Gap. She was a real person, and her home is the June Tolliver House at Jerome and Clinton Streets (tel. 540-523-4707). It has a great gift and book shop, and makes a convenient