Lying in wait, behind the veiled beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, lie dirt roads that makes one want to be impulsive and turn his car onto them to discover what things of wonder have been hidden out of sight for perhaps a long, long time. Twisting routes wind through beautifully peaceful and benign seeming places, but just off to the sides of these not-so-beaten paths are remnants of old homesteads; long abandoned and grape vine-captured, hinting to the passerby that though the mountains take us back to a non-hurried, simpler kind of life, they also offer difficult winters, isolation and hardships that come from not having as many of the creature comforts and conveniences as those living in larger towns and cities.

 I’m an idiot when it comes to social media.  But, maybe I’m just being too hard on myself… No, I’m an idiot.  I’m always afraid I’ll post something to everyone when it was only meant to go to someone, or that I’ll open something that looks perfectly innocent only to have my computer flip me the finger and melt down. I’m learning that there all kinds of social media predators out there; trolls, hackers, and many others who I just don’t know the names for. 

In 1916, my grandmother, Nell Hurst, was 14 years old when she traveled by train from her family’s farm in Thomasville, Georgia, to Miami, Florida. Making the long trip with her was her 18 year old sister Norma, (who I called Auntie), and their mother, my great-grandmother, Ludie.  My great-grandfather Charlie had passed away and Ludie decided that her small family needed a fresh start in life.  So, packing up her daughters and enough food for a couple of days train travel, the three left Georgia behind.

I lost my dog on Friday. I don’t mean we left the gate open and he wandered away. We lost him because we took him to the vet, held him and cried as the doctor sent him to a place I hope to go someday, too. It has left a hole in our hearts as big as his heart was.

When I was a little girl living in Miami, Florida, my family would go to Lake Weir, which is in north-central Florida, not too far from where my only sibling, Kathy, and her family now live. We would stay at Johnson’s Fish Camp, which was made up of tiny stucco cabins all prettily perched on the shore of the lake. It was nothing fancy, believe me, and making it even more rustic was the fact that the faucets spewed out sulfur water.

I just returned from a four-day trip to New York.  What a city it is!  If I was asked to describe it in one word, that word would be “indescribable,” or “alive”, or “BIG”.  Okay, okay, so that’s three words, but New York deserves at least that many.  It’s a world all its own, and yet, it encompasses the whole world within its massive city limits.  People from every corner of every nation on Earth reside there, and you can see it, hear it and smell it on each street and avenue of that glorious town.

I don’t watch the news very much anymore.  At least I try to avoid it.  My husband, on the other hand, is obsessed with it.  He even watches it while he’s sleeping.  If I walk into the room while he’s taking a nap and find the news blaring away, I tip-toe over to the remote, which is still being held in his vice-like grip, gently pry it away from my husband and turn it off, which wakes him up immediately, of course.  

Winter is wrapping up, so we’re unwrapping ourselves from thick winter coats, gloves and knitted caps.  We’re sweeping out fireplaces, throwing open windows to refreshing spring breezes, and hanging faux flower wreaths on front doors.  And we do all of this in great expectation of what the warm weather months ahead will bring in their usual busyness. 

  I was asked about my hobbies and interests recently, and I have quite a few, but they all revolve around the same thing: anything old.  And I mean OLD.  I love to do stained glass work, having been inspired by old church windows, and I enjoy needlework; the same kind the ladies learned to do by working on samplers hundreds of years ago.  I also love hunting for antiques.  My house is full of them. 

I lost a friend last Thursday, though I only found out about it today, which gives you some kind of idea about how close we were.  No, I didn’t know Keith very well, and, no, we had not shared an endless list of important times, holidays or similarities, but he was a friend, just the same.

Today, as I was sitting in the middle of my family room, surrounded by Christmas wrapping materials, and the many gifts that needed to be wrapped in them, I thought back to the bomb shelter my dad had built in the fall of 1962, as a direct result of the Cuban Missile Crisis. As crazy as that sounds, every year when I wrap presents, I think back to that time for the bomb shelter had an indirect link to Christmas.

Looking through Norman Rockwell paintings, one can expect to find one of an ancient country couple, sitting in rockers on the front porch of an old log cabin. I always looked at it as such a mountain cliché, until I moved out to the country and into my own log cabin, and suddenly realized what this picture of such solitude and serenity was inspired by.

When I was in the fifth grade, in 1969, my school in Miami, FL, was integrated. I remember standing in front of the school on that first day and seeing parents picket with signs that read “GO HOME!”, and “GO BACK TO YOUR OWN NEIGHBORHOODS”. These signs were referring to the African American children who had been bussed in just that morning to “our” neighborhood.

I was at my Rotary meeting yesterday and talking to a good friend of mine who is also a Floridian by birth but not by heart. Both Bill and I agree; we should have been born in the mountains. He was talking about drinking his coffee in the morning, enjoying the country-quiet, with his dogs sitting on his chair with him (another thing that connected us as friends), and how grateful he was to be in this beautiful place.