The beautiful Blue Ridge.

No one saves us but ourselves.  No one can and no one may.  We ourselves must walk the path. ~ Buddha

I grew up walking the paths of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  Little did I know how special that opportunity was.  Imagine growing up in this setting and not really recognizing that it’s gloriously beautiful.  I remember the hordes of tourists who invaded the mountains in the summer and fall.  I understood that it was cooler in the mountains so the summertime visitors made sense to me.  What I didn’t get for the longest time was that they came in October to look at the LEAVES.  Seriously?  Didn’t they have leaves where they lived?

In the NC mountains we have four very distinct seasons and each one is stunning in its own way.  I never really appreciated that fact until I left their comfortable rounded shoulders and moved away.  Do we ever?

When D and I met, we had the mountains in common.  I grew up in Boone, named for Daniel Boone.  D had spent most of his growing-up summers not far from Asheville.  His family camped there and then he started to work his summer vacations in the campground.  He loved the mountains almost as much as I did.  Early in our marriage, or maybe even before we married, I used to ask him if we could one day move to the mountains.  He promised we would and we did.  We spent a number of years riding up to those ancient hills on weekends looking at acreage sometimes and other times at houses.  We both knew immediately when we found what we thought was the right place, the perfect house.  And for a time we flourished there.  Well, I thought we did.  Now I’m not so sure.

It was a dream house for company and parties and grandchildren.  If life is like a box of chocolates, this house was the big fat truffle in the center of the top layer.  The county we were in had about nineteen peaks above 6,000 feet and we could see most of them from our deck.  Remember Cold Mountain, the book and movie?  We could see Cold Mountain from our house.  (Hope I’m not starting to sound like Sarah Palin. LOL)  Alas, things change, people change, grandchildren don’t get to visit as often as we had hoped they would.  D is spending more and more time away.  The house is large.  It seems we’re driving constantly to soccer and basketball and dance recitals and gymnastics meets and birthday parties and you get the picture.  So even before I was aware of the impending divorce, we had decided to sell the house and leave my beloved mountains.  Notice I said we.

You know the rest of the story.  Here I am and there he is and life goes on and mostly it’s good.

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