Today's Features

Editor’s note: The Courier profiled Kristen Moeller and David Cottrell, who lost their home in the Lower North Fork Fire, at the beginning of April. We have checked on their progress six months after the disaster.

One step forward and two steps back.

That’s the best way to describe the past six months for Kristen Moeller and David Cottrell, who lost their home in the Lower North Fork Fire. Moeller says they still have good and bad days after the devastating fire, which started six months ago today.

Favored with a vast store of infallible opinions and skin of purest alabaster, I don’t get out of the hermitage that often. But if my prudent seclusion helps ensure a creamier complexion and more temperate foothills social climate, it tends to leave me in the dark about many of my neighbors’ diverse and interesting activities.

Elk Creek firefighters spent two days recently practicing rope rescues in anticipation of the October opening of Staunton State Park.

The park will be home to several rock-climbing routes near Staunton Rocks, and firefighters anticipate calls from park users, said Alex Parks, the department’s technical rescue coordinator and a firefighter/EMT. Crews have been familiarizing themselves with the park’s layout over the last two years, including at the Aug. 18-19 training session.

The thought actually hit me earlier in the week that 19 years before, as a mere 21-year-old in Craigsville, Va., of all places, I stepped into a professional wrestling ring for the first time as a referee. But that's not where my love affair with what is now more prominently called sports entertainment began.