Ridgepath Reflections

Joe Liles, standing next to the cupola on top of Watts Hall.

Ridgepath Reflections

1992

My family’s farm outside of Wadesboro, NC was named Ridgepath Farm. This was because a high ridge separated one part of the farm from the other. A road called Ridgepath Road ran along this ridge. When the cows would eat most of the grass in the pastures on one side of the ridge, we would open a gap (or movable fence) and drive the cows across the road to pastures that had plentiful grass. Strange thing, though, the cows were scared to cross the white center line painting on the road. We would have to convince them that their fears were unfounded and persuade them to embrace the lush grass in the pastures on the other side of the road.
This ridge drained a large swath of land with three creeks that meandered through the pastures and thickets of trees in the valleys or draws. My father always had a dream to build an earthen dam at the lower end of the pastures and create a large lake using the three tributaries as a water source. Toward the end of his life in 1989, he accomplished this dream. The result was a beautiful 10-acre lake that became a fishing, swimming, and canoeing haven for our family and friends, and for my younger brother to build a home.
“Ridgepath Reflections” shows this lake and its watershed in twenty colors, the most colors I have ever printed on one print.