OldPappy - Posted - 02/14/2023:  09:11:53

I am saddened to report that my dear friend Dwight Diller passed away this morning.

Dwight spent his life in preservation of the old time music of his region. His contributions were great, and his passing is a great loss to many of us.

janolov - Posted - 02/14/2023:  09:29:44

That was sad to hear. I hope he will be remembered for ever.

banjo bill-e - Posted - 02/14/2023:  10:19:41

Bandcamp   Link to  the essential Just Banjo 99 collection.  Abe's Retreat and Yew Piney Mountain are two tunes that nobody plays like Dwight.   

Edited by - banjo bill-e on 02/14/2023 10:22:10

jenorma1 - Posted - 02/14/2023:  11:07:24

Oh no this is awful news!

I've found Dwight's playing hugely inspirational - you could tell that he valued groove above all else. He cast a wide net of influence as well - I met a bunch of Old Time players in the UK that had learned from him in person.

And yes, no one played Yew Piney Mountain like he did!

OldPappy - Posted - 02/14/2023:  11:16:51

Never heard anyone play anything like Dwight could play it.

Some may have come close, and some claimed to play "just like him" but nobody I ever heard play a banjo came anywhere near to his powerful rhythm and syncopation.

His son Caleb is perhaps the best banjo player I ever heard, and I thought he was technically better in some ways than Dwight, but Dwight put spirit into his music like none other.

OldPappy - Posted - 02/14/2023:  11:45:04

Well, just got word that they removed the ventilator and he is still breathing, so what I heard this morning may be premature.

banjo bill-e - Posted - 02/14/2023:  12:42:14

Is it Covid?

OldPappy - Posted - 02/14/2023:  12:49:16

Not Covid.

He had a fall on Sunday hitting his head, was taken to the hospital where they determined he had a brain bleed. He underwent surgery Monday to relieve the pressure, and was responding to stimuli that evening but apparently had another brain bleed this morning.

banjo bill-e - Posted - 02/14/2023:  13:01:13

Oh, so sorry to hear that. He is a good man who has not had an easy life.

Ron Montana - Posted - 02/14/2023:  13:09:53

Great loss to music. He has had a huge influence on “the music”! He will be missed.

OldNavyGuy - Posted - 02/14/2023:  13:11:46

quote:

---

Originally posted by OldPappy

Well, just got word that they removed the ventilator and he is still breathing, so what I heard this morning may be premature.

---

carlb - Posted - 02/14/2023:  14:30:27

Saddened

Don Borchelt - Posted - 02/15/2023:  05:55:29

Brooklynbanjoboy

kwl - Posted - 02/15/2023:  08:20:51

So sad. My sympathy goes out to his family and friends.

Lone Walnut - Posted - 02/15/2023:  10:28:14

This saddens me deeply. He has been a huge inspiration to me.

OldPappy - Posted - 02/15/2023:  11:01:51

He was a huge inspiration to many, and in many ways besides just his music.



Without Dwight's efforts to preserve their music none of us would have ever heard of Lee Hammons, nor Burl, Sherman, and Maggie. They would have taken their music and stories to the grave without us knowing of the treasures being lost.



Thankfully Dwight, after several years of nagging from friends, finally agreed to have the bulk of his recorded music made available on the Bandcamp sites, and there are scores of Youtube videos of him playing.

This tune was perhaps his favorite, it certainly is mine.

youtube.com/watch?v=rDsL0FcZD2k

OldPappy - Posted - 02/15/2023:  12:06:46

Dwight passed away around 9:00 PM yesterday, with his son Caleb, and "his friend from England" Catherine with him.

He passed peacefully, with those he loved around him, and one can't ask for a better ending than that. 

Here is a tune he played to Catherine most nights for the last dozen years. 

youtube.com/watch?v=mx3L1QRoYw...p;index=1





 

banjered - Posted - 02/15/2023:  12:32:52

So sad, he will be missed! It was a fall that took out Doc Watson too. I don't know how much or even if Earl's step off the stage contributed to his demise, but ya'll be careful. Peace to you too, Dwight. banjered

malarz - Posted - 02/15/2023:  15:15:40

Sorry to read this news. i spent a week with him at his retreat about 20 or so years ago. Great music, great conversation, great amount of bats flying around at night! I still acknowledge his influence.

hoodoo - Posted - 02/15/2023:  16:16:04

I’m so saddened by this news. I emailed Dwight a few years ago, just before the pandemic and to my surprise, he actually responded to me. We exchanged emails for a few weeks, and he invited me to travel down to West Virginia to meet him and whatnot, but then, the pandemic hit and complicated things big time. I’ll always cherish the advice he gave me and I am thankful that he shared some of his time with me.

OldPappy - Posted - 02/15/2023:  16:45:03

Great pile of bat guano directly under the window of the upstairs bedroom I usually slept in too. It was right under the bat door into his attic. That pile was at least 3 feet tall.

A few years ago me, Matt Evans, and Michael Brooks installed soffit and facia boards on his house and found a number of shed snake skins up in there. I guess the snakes were feeding on the bats. While up there we shoveled the bat dung off the roof and he spread it around some rose bushes he had planted. I think the roses died.

He found a big timber rattler under the propane heater in his living room last Fall. A big black bear sow has been on his front porch a few times too.

The place is a regular wildlife refuge.

I will certainly miss him, but he wouldn't want folks to be sad at his passing, though it is hard not to be. He would want folks to remember his life, his music, and his ministry. He would want us to remember the stories he told.

I once used a .348 Winchester cartridge case head as an inlay on one of the banjos I built him and told him when anyone asked about it he had to tell the story about the "Civet Cat" in his uncle's boots. There are no Civet Cats in WV, but that is what a lot of folks up there call the Eastern Spotted Skunk.

Bart Veerman - Posted - 02/15/2023:  17:47:17

Sad news indeed.

R.D. Lunceford - Posted - 02/15/2023:  19:55:28

Rest in Peace, Dwight.

Bless you for all the good you did and lives you enriched, and for saving the music for yet another generation.

OldPappy - Posted - 02/15/2023:  20:31:39

Amen to that R.D.

I have spent the day listening to many of the videos out there of his music.

I cannot put into words the way he enriched my life. He was a good friend in my darkest hours, a mentor, and a brother. He could read people better than anyone I ever met, he always encouraged me to find my way, and pushed me to do things I didn't know I could do. Hard to believe he has gone on, but I am at an age where many I have known are falling away, it is just the way things are supposed to be.

Brooklynbanjoboy - Posted - 02/16/2023:  04:11:45

We all feel this loss significantly, and in very personal ways.

I'm no longer on Facebook, but I am plugged into Banjo Hangout, at least occasionally, and Fiddle Hangout as well. You folks are talking about and remembering Dwight as a great influence, a teacher of significance in your lives, a masterful and powerful banjo player, and a deeply committed custodian of the old fiddle tunes and the stories about the old fiddlers.

Some talk about how Dwight's words and Dwight's friendship helped them through tough days, helped them manage challenges that had caught up with them - how the power of his example gave many folks confidence enough to muscle on through whatever they were facing.

I like to think of Dwight as the eternal teacher, intent on getting people to understand what he is saying, and what they themselves – the students – are thinking. As a teacher, he was intent on getting folks to appreciate all the space and time, all the opportunity before them, for learning whatever the world might have to offer, and for coming to understand everything in themselves, too.

I last spoke to Dwight about ten days ago. As I’ve told some friends, I told him that I was having some problem deciding on my next writing project.

Why don’t you just write another book about me, Dwight said, with an easily discerned twinkle in his voice.

I might just have to.

Stay well, all. Make great music,

Lew Stern

JanetB - Posted - 02/16/2023:  10:08:11

You were a great friend, Old Pappy. Dwight was a person of faith, wasn’t he, so this end is not the true end. I appreciate his music and sincerity and dedicated an on-line “jukebox” to him and the music he shared. I’ll probably never finish learning from Dwight’s contributions to old-time music, but will keep trying.

Strumelia - Posted - 02/16/2023:  11:07:51

I attended a weekend long Dwight Diller workshop about 24 years ago, when i was just brand new to banjo playing. Dwight's teaching and words that weekend stuck with me all these years, they contained deep meaning and inspiration for me far more than any subsequent banjo influence I experienced in all the years after.
Dwight liked to size up his students and make up little catch phrases for each person. That weekend of my workshop, he said a few times to me "Are you mad yet?" I wasn't quite sure what it meant exactly, but he saw something in me that i didn't see at the time. Well, he didn't actually get me mad that weekend, but he sure lit a musical fire under me. I'm so happy he left behind so much writing and videos and recordings that we can continue to learn from and take to heart.

What a powerful teacher and defender of traditional music and folk wisdom he was. He was practically a force of nature, yet he never forgot his debt to the Hammons. He credited them for saving his life. It was way more than just about the music to him, and he emphasized that always. I really admired that he was dedicated to it body and soul. And he did not for a moment suffer any fool's superficial approach to the music.

SO MUCH wealth, beauty, and wisdom he left behind for all of us to benefit from, and for those who will come after us as well.
Rest in peace Dwight Diller.
-Lisa Sullivan

OldPappy - Posted - 02/16/2023:  12:05:31

Janet,

He was indeed a man of faith, and viewed his music as a gift from God to enable him to be in contact with people so he could spread the word.

OldPappy - Posted - 02/16/2023:  12:27:06

Lisa,

I know exactly what you mean. He could read people so well and always looked for something in them he could connect to what he was trying to teach.

You aren't the only one he tried to make "mad". He made a lot of folks mad, and had to get me good and mad before something finally clicked about what he was trying to teach me about RHYTHM. I was a slow learner, but he eventually got me there.

I first met Dwight when I signed up for one of his camps 13 or 14 years ago. We conversed via email before I went to the camp and he had asked me what tunes I was playing. I had a long list of tunes I thought I could play, he told me to put all but Liza Jane back on the shelf for a while. I was a little upset about that, but I wanted to learn from him so I followed his instruction. At that time I thought Liza Jane was a simple beginner tune, but when I got to that camp he and his son Caleb played the tune together with Caleb on banjo, and Dwight on fiddle. I never have thought of that as a simple beginner tune since then. Dwight said it was one of those "Deceptively Simple" tunes that weren't really simple at all. They played it with the kind of harmony only kinship brings, and played that tune with depth I had never heard in it before.

A student in one of the camps I participated in years ago compared his teaching methods to Mr Miyagi of the movie that had came out that Summer. I had to watch that movie after I went home before I understood the analogy.

BanjoLink - Posted - 02/16/2023:  18:15:08

My college roommate’s son was Diller’s daughter’s boyfriend. I think they are now married. His death, resulting from a fall is indeed sad.

OldPappy - Posted - 02/16/2023:  18:22:51

Had not heard that Susanna had married.  

Edited by - OldPappy on 02/16/2023 18:27:14

Don Borchelt - Posted - 02/17/2023:  05:19:01

This is very sad news. I did not know Dwight as well as some of you, but I am a great admirer of his wonderful banjo picking and fiddling. I got to know him some when he would visit Ralph and Charlee Roberts at Clifftop, up at their camp on Geezer Hill. I would camp next to them, and most of the ten years I was there, Dwight would come visit sooner or later, driving up in his big old car- I think it was a Chevy- that he had repainted himself with a brush, a military green color, if I remember right. After a long conversation with him at Clifftop 2018, he asked me to send an email to Catherine. It seemed important to him, though I don't know why, but when I got home, I wrote it up and sent it. It took me about an hour to find it buried in a remote corner of my hard drive. I don't think Catherine would mind if I shared it with you, now.

- Don Borchelt



Catherine, earlier this month I attended what I think was my tenth Appalachian String Band Festival at Clifftop, West Virginia, and camped as I have the last few years right next to Ralph and Charlie Roberts, from Frametown, West Virginia. Ralph is a real old time fiddler, who- as his wife Charlie told me when we first met- is kin to the Hammons. Sitting in their camp, socializing one afternoon, I had a nice conversation with someone who I understand is a good friend of yours, Mr. Dwight Diller, and he gave me your email address and asked me to share a reminiscence of mine with you.



It goes back to 1998, to the second Maryland Banjo Academy, a conference/seminar put on at an old Catholic retreat center by the folks who publish the Banjo Newsletter, who were friends of mine. I had been widowed for six years then, and my two young children and I were taking in the academy as the first stop of our family summer vacation. Nancy Nitchie, who co-founded the BNL with her husband back in 1974, strongly recommended that I listen to a presentation one evening to be given by a West Virginia banjo player I had not yet heard of. She said I would really appreciate it. It was held, if I remember right, in an old stone chapel. When I arrived, Dwight was already setting up an overhead projector, looking very earnest, and maybe even a little nervous. He had a thicker beard back then, but though it was greying, it still had a lot of dark in it. Truth be told, he was a little bit heavier then, too. He was arranging his rough, hand written transparencies that he was going to use, and, being used to slick, fancy presentations made with all the latest graphic tools in the course of my government job, I felt an immediate flash of condescension. I learned an important lesson that evening.



So I expected that when he got started, I would hear the usual story, how he had grown up in such and such county, and up the road lived a man who played the banjo that his daddy knew, and he used to go up and sit on the fellow's front porch until he had learned all of his tunes. But that's not how Dwight started his talk, not at all. He talked instead about how he had left his home in Pocahontas County as a young man to attend West Virginia University up in Morgantown. Away from home, he had thrown in with the wrong crowd, and had gotten too familiar with drugs and alcohol and found himself in a very dark place, what my own mother used to call a lost soul. In some desperation, he made his way back home to Pocahontus County, and it was then that he eventually found his way to the Hammons' front porch, around 1969. He had already taken his first banjo lessons from a local man named Hamp Carpenter, but it was Lee Hammons, and the children of Paris Hammons, Burl, Sherman, and Maggie Hammons Parker, who truly illuminated his path by showing him the beauty, the elegance, and the wonder of the old way. For the remainder of that Maryland evening, Dwight shared with us all that he had come to appreciate, as we listened to recordings he had made on a reel to reel machine of the music and the stories of the Hammons family, and viewed very compelling black and white photographs he had taken of them in their home, playing music, at their chores. I understand that Dwight subsequently became an ordained minister, and that does not surprise me, for his careful and thorough attention to the details of the Hammons music is certainly as rigorous as any Biblical exegesis, so he was well prepared for it.



Dwight's whole presentation was an epiphany for me. Growing up in Cincinnati, I had been drawn to old-time music by older friends who had left the coal fields of eastern Kentucky to find work and settle in "the big city," and raise their families. But they were as influenced by the popular country fiddlers like Tommy Jackson, Howdy Forrester, and Chubby Wise as they were by the old-timers they knew growing up in eastern Kentucky. What Dwight showed us that night was that the music could give us a view, however brief, into a distant past when folks did not expect the impossible from life, just contentment. That music, like life itself, is as much or more about the rhythm as it is the notes.



I watched the YouTube video of you and Dwight at Vandalia last year, playing the tune I know as Pretty Little Dog, and Elzic's Farewell. Wonderful music.

Don Borchelt - Posted - 02/17/2023:  06:33:29

I forgot to mention, I believe that is an Old Pappy banjo Ralph is playing in the photo above. He loves it.

Edited by - Don Borchelt on 02/17/2023 06:34:44

Adam Harr - Posted - 02/17/2023:  07:43:58

I was very fortunate to attend one of Dwight's boot camps in Pocahontas County in 2010 when I first started playing. It was, to put it mildly, a challenging and incredibly rewarding week. Most days started at sunrise with Baldy Bob and ended sometime after midnight with Dwight. Almost thirteen years later, I think about something Dwight said or did every time I pick up my banjo to play it. His music, his teaching, and his deep approach to the music will live on for a long time through his recordings and his many students.

OldPappy - Posted - 02/17/2023:  08:08:43

Yep, that is actually the very first banjo I ever built. Dwight sort of tricked me into building banjos after he looked at a "Frankenbanjo" I had at my first visit with Dwight at one of his camps. The interesting thing about that Frankenbanjo was I had built it by adding a 5 string neck to an old Langstyle III tenor pot, it was almost exactly like the banjo Dan Daggett had made for Dwight in 1972, which he played for the first 27 years of his "Career". Dwight called that coincidence a "crossover", something he felt meant we were meant to become friends.



The banjo Ralph is playing resulted from Dwight asking me to try and build a short scale banjo for him. He said he couldn't get anyone else to build one, which is how he "tricked" me. I had bought the neck I used on that old Langstyle, and could have bought a standard scale neck from the same source, but he knew I could not find a ready made 22 1/2" scale like he asked for.



 

OldPappy - Posted - 02/17/2023:  08:15:43

Adam!



I remember you from that camp! I remember how you got attached to Dwight's little dog "Peg", and how she would always jump up in your lap.



Do you remember the trick we played on Dwight's son Caleb? It is a story worth telling that shows something of the sense of humor Dwight had.



Caleb wanted to learn "Sail Away Ladies". So Dwight told him we would work on it the next day. Caleb left and Dwight taught all the students how to play it. Everybody but me learned to play it, but I was the only one who knew all the words so Dwight got me to sing it along with him. When we sang "I got a gal in Tennessee" I said I was the only one who really did have a gal in Tennessee and Dwight winked at me and said "Yeah, but I can think of it can't I?"



Caleb showed up the next day, and sat down beside his father with the whole group in a circle around the room. He showed Caleb the chords for the tune and when they started playing everyone joined in. The look on Caleb's face was priceless. It was grand fun!

Edited by - OldPappy on 02/17/2023 08:19:55

Strumelia - Posted - 02/17/2023:  11:13:01

Such wonderful stories. :)

AndrewD - Posted - 02/18/2023:  04:44:18

Sad news indeed.
This thread would not be complete without mention of Dwight's influence on old time American music in the UK. Dwight ran annual workshops here for 5 or 6 years from about 1999. I attended all except the first. I'd had a banjo for 30 years but didn't know anybody who played traditional styles and had rarely seen a banjo played in those styles live. I'd worked my way through the Seeger book, the Burke book, the Rosenbaum book, the Perlman book.... and had more or less given up playing banjo and switched to classical guitar. One day I saw an advert for a gig by a banjo player called Dwight Diller in the folk club upstairs a pub a couple of miles from my home. I went to see him and was blown away. I got talking to him afterwards and discovered he was off the following day to run a workshop in a village hall in Lincolnshire. My wife was very surprised when I told her I wouldn't be around the following weekend as me and my banjo were going away. That weekend and the workshops that followed for 4 or 5 years are a treasured memory. There are not many clawhammer banjo players in the UK. But most of them have now been at least influenced by Dwight and the 20 or so regular attendees at his workshops. In a few hundred years some PhD anthropology student will make a strange and false connection between the folk music of England and that of West Virginia assuming that the traffic must have gone east to west.
As well as learning (I think) a pretty solid clawhammer style and some great tunes I also have fond memories of the evenings after the workshop, Dwight with a hardly touched half pint of shandy, most others with quickly downed pints of beer or two, discussing music and everything else. Dwight's faith was obvious in his opinions but he was never preachy or dogmatic (except about how to play the banjo). A conservative Mennonite and a socialist atheist got on pretty well. The hours spent going chunka-chunka on muted banjos ? Well that's all forgotten now. I'll never again hear Dwight saying "Andrew - yer not double thumbin' ".

Rest in peace Dwight

Brooklynbanjoboy - Posted - 02/18/2023:  05:06:10

Andrew - and his colleagues - deserve great credit for The Tab Book, a collection of Hammons tunes in tablature form, with an accompanying CD, photographs and narrative, compiled by three of Dwight Diller’s students: Andrew Diamond from London, UK; David Dry from Barnard Castle, County Durham UK; and Stewart Seidel from Vancouver, BC. Dwight wrote an introductory note included in the PDF book endorsing the effort, perhaps the first tab book about which he had good things to say.

AndrewD - Posted - 02/18/2023:  05:30:11

quote:

---

Originally posted by Brooklynbanjoboy

Andrew - and his colleagues - deserve great credit for The Tab Book, a collection of Hammons tunes in tablature form, with an accompanying CD, photographs and narrative, compiled by three of Dwight Diller’s students: Andrew Diamond from London, UK; David Dry from Barnard Castle, County Durham UK; and Stewart Seidel from Vancouver, BC. Dwight wrote an introductory note included in the PDF book endorsing the effort, perhaps the first tab book about which he had good things to say.

---

It took quite a time to convince Dwight that a book of tabs that had been played to him for his critical comment and fine adjustment was better than the well intentioned but not great attempts by the feverish tabbers in his workshops that were available online. He finally conceded that the battle against tabs was lost, so they'd better be good tabs. I remember long discussions on things like the tune (Shelvin Rock if I remember) where the correct rhythm could only be achieved by pulling off and then pushing off on the 4th string. 

OldPappy - Posted - 02/18/2023:  05:44:25

Yes, that tab book is a treasure, not only for the tablature, but for the pictures and commentary from Dwight which I valued more than the tabs.

I commissioned an artist (my brother) to create a large sketch we named "Shaking Down The Acorns" and he used some of the pictures in that tab book as reference. The sketch has Edn playing a fiddle under an oak tree, and along a path winding down from the oak are sketches of Lee, Maggie, Rui, Burl, and Sherman with acorns rolling down the path to a where Dwight sits playing a banjo.

Some of Dwight's later students may have seen the sketch while it hung in his lodge.

Brooklynbanjoboy - Posted - 02/18/2023:  05:46:17

Worth mentioning here: the tab book, by Andrew Diamond et.al., is available as a downloadable PDF on Dwight's website:

dwightdiller.com/wp-content/up...rrect.pdf

Edited by - Brooklynbanjoboy on 02/18/2023 05:47:23

OldPappy - Posted - 02/18/2023:  07:47:43

Here is the sketch I mentioned.

 

Shaking Down The Acorns

 

Adam Harr - Posted - 02/18/2023:  12:06:48

Andy, I remember that joke on Caleb well! I believe Sail Away Ladies was also the very last tune we all played together, and it really kindled a fire in my heart. My mom passed away not long after, and memory of the power of that tune, and the phrase "Sail away lady, sail away" was a help though that time.

I also remember Dwight taking a keen interest in your Frankenbanjo. Good to learn the backstory on why!

Peg really was a Pretty Little Dog.

OldPappy - Posted - 02/18/2023:  12:43:36

That tune was long my favorite, probably because it was so much fun that day.



I was tickled to see you respond to this discussion, and good to know you are still at it.

Yep, Peg was a pretty little dog, and a good little dog too.

After Dwight had the stroke in 2011 he was confined to a wheel chair for about a year and little Peg went to live with someone else. Dwight sure missed that dog, and when he and Catherine came down here for a week long visit in 2013 my old Chihuahua mix named "Chubby" took to Dwight right away and would jump on the couch to lay on Dwight's lap every time he sat down.

He said he wished he could find a dog like Chubby. A few weeks later my wife saw where someone had posted something on Craigslist about a little dog they needed to find a new home for and were going to have to take him to the pound if nobody took him that day. She contacted the people and they brought the dog down to her office. Soon as I saw that dog I knew he would be the right dog for Dwight, so he rode along with me to WV, and that is the little dog Dwight named "Pug" in memory of "Peg", and became his constant companion all these years since. Pug is still alive and doing fairly well, but I imagine it will be a while before he quits watching the door waiting on Dwight to come home. 

Edited by - OldPappy on 02/18/2023 12:54:02

cmooreruns - Posted - 02/18/2023:  14:56:27

I had the pleasure of spending 5 days with Dwight and Pug in late February 2022. We spent those days all over Pocahontas County visiting where he grew up and where “the old folks” were buried. So many stories. I went to learn his style, but learned much, much more. Several nights I videoed him playing and talking about the music. One on banjo and one on fiddle. He felt, after so many years he finally “got the fiddle”.
A search on YouTube for “Dwight Diller Arkansas Highlands Folk Project “ should bring up the two sessions. I hope this search works for you. He was one of a kind and I feel honored and blessed to be able to share these. God bless Dwight.

OldPappy - Posted - 02/18/2023:  15:31:42

For many years he was saying "The lord finally gave me the fiddle". I think he said that ever time I visited him for the last decade.

I always liked Dwight's fiddling but it really got good, took a leap sort of, after he started playing with Ralph Roberts. Dwight was teaching Ralph banjo, but he learned some fiddle from Ralph's bowing technique, which put that real old time edge to the music. For the last several years Dwight's fiddling was as good as any I ever heard.

OldPappy - Posted - 02/18/2023:  18:31:30

Anyone who would like to can post something on the tribute wall.

lantzfuneralhome.com/obituarie...ationWall

 

OldPappy - Posted - 02/18/2023:  20:58:33

Found a picture of the 2010 Banjo Camp Adam mentioned.



I am the big ugly guy on the bottom row far left, Adam is the fine looking young man top row second from left.



Funny story about this. The picture was taken right before Dwight took us all up on the mountain top for a tour. On the bottom row to my left is a young man named Corbin, and his father next to him. When we were up there on the top of the mountain, and had walked out to the overlook, there were a bunch of rocks which had been torn up from the ground and the dirt all dug up and scattered. Corbin's father said indignantly "Now who would have done something like this!". He thought it was vandals, me and Dwight looked up and said at the same time "Bear", and that man nearly panicked asking "Where's Corbin?". Corbin had went to the rest room, and was not bothered by a bear.

Edited by - OldPappy on 02/18/2023 21:01:08