Earlier today I drove into town for a roll of film.

The white rhododendron (pink laurel) are almost bloomed out. Just before dark yesterday I saw a picture of them in flower among the trees, in their world.

This would be when the sun is down and there is still light in the sky. The dark places are darker and the light places lighter in contrast, and no glare on the leaves.

It requires a tripod for a long exposure. That too will make the darks darker and the lights lighter. I'll let you know next week how it worked out. It will either be just right or not. Like shooting at a tin can, if you missed it by a frog hair you missed it.

At the grocery store's film rack, there was Mildred Torney pushing her cart toward the register. We stopped and spoke, talked about we haven't seen each other in awhile and concluded, "Take care of yourself."

Sometimes when I'm passing by on the highway I see her outside with her dog. I've seen her get a new white car not too long ago after the old blue one she drove for many a year gave out.

Tom Pruitt and his nephews were the first people I became acquainted with when I shifted my life to these mountains. Knowing them my first year here was a good schooling. I learned first-hand where I am.

By the end of that year one of them had gone one way, another one another way and the third another, leaving Tom and me working together from then on.

It was at about this time a maxim to live by came to me: Anybody too good for a Pruitt is too good for me. I was visibly nose-straight-up snubbed one day for knowing certain Pruitts. My maxim has served me well over the years without fail. I've only failed when I've gone against it.

Mildred Sturgill Torney is not and never has been too good for a Pruitt. There's probably nobody on this green earth Mildred believes she's better than. If so, I've not seen nor heard a sign of it. She knew Tom and assured me I was in good company having him for my teacher.

She was probably the next person I became acquainted with. After the gas station, grocery store and bank, the library was next, where the books are. Mildred was warm and welcoming. When she makes your acquaintance, she's genuinely open and receptive to who you are. By the time I left the library the first time, I felt I knew that about her.

She kept a square of pegboard on a wall in the library for people to hang their paintings or photos on. Every month it changed. Mildred showed the pictures of anyone living here who would care to decorate the library for a month.

The best part was the absence of judgment. Anybody who wanted to hang art there was welcomed whole-heartedly. That's how Mildred was with the library. Everyone she met was welcomed whole-heartedly into her world. It was because of Mildred doing this that the library now has an added-on whole room for the purpose of showing art by area artists without judgment, except for arts council occasions.

I think it must have been in the late 1980s that I saw a small notice in the paper of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross speaking at Radford University. I didn't even have to think about that. I went to the library to find whatever was available about or by her. What little I already knew about her told me I wanted to know more before hearing her talk.

Mildred found a biography right away. She had seen the notice and talked of how she'd like to hear Kubler-Ross too. I told her I'm going and my passenger seat will be empty if she doesn't go, so it wouldn't put me out a bit. In fact, I believed I would enjoy the ride there and back with Mildred, and did.

In my crayola blue 78 Toyota 4-banger pickup with red driver's side door we sailed smoothly through Jefferson National Forest between Independence and Wytheville before dark and on up 81 to Radford. We arrived an hour early, because of a misprint in the announcement, with forty or so others who had seen the ad in papers outside Radford. They let us all in free. Mildred and I had our choice of first and second rows, and chose the middle of the second. Kubler-Ross's talk was highly inspiring, much of it about reading in children's drawings what the children are feeling.

The Mildred I saw today is the same Mildred I first met a quarter-century ago. We've both matured some, but the Mildred within, who you see in her eyes, continues the same, awake, attentive and caring.

It was good to see you, Mildred.

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