{"id":28434,"date":"2025-06-07T23:49:44","date_gmt":"2025-06-07T23:49:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/?p=28434"},"modified":"2025-06-07T23:49:44","modified_gmt":"2025-06-07T23:49:44","slug":"a-love-letter-to-the-mountain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/?p=28434","title":{"rendered":"A Love Letter To The Mountain"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I just returned from Grandfather Mountain in Western N.C. \u00a0This year was the 39th Annual Nature Photography weekend, an event, I helped start 41 years ago!! \u00a0Why the differents of two years? \u00a0They did not hold the event during the 2 Covid years! \u00a0But with the help of a great team of workers it has been a great event near selling out very year for all that time! \u00a0Hugh Morton and the original team including Don Nelson and Tom Payne and myself, \u00a0 managed it for many years! \u00a0Upon Hugh’s passing in 2006 the Mountain, privately owned by Hugh, was transferred into a long term lease to the state of North Carolina when it was made into a State Park.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Going back this year was a wonderful chance to see a lot of old friends made through the years! \u00a0It was made tougher since on Tuesday of this week in the hospital I was diagnosed with Pneumonia and was virtually without my voice but somehow God got be through it and I as able to open the evening talk on the first evening! \u00a0It must have gone o.k. because I found no tomato stains on my clothes! \u00a0What a heavenly place “The Mountain is!!!” \u00a0 My thanks to all those great folks!!!!!<\/span><\/p>\n

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Blessings,<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

the pilgrim<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just returned from Grandfather Mountain in Western N.C. \u00a0This year was the 39th Annual Nature Photography weekend, an event, I helped start 41 years ago!! \u00a0Why the differents of two years? \u00a0They did not hold the event during the 2 Covid years! \u00a0But with the help of a great team of workers it has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28434"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28436,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28434\/revisions\/28436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}