North Carolina-Home Sweet Home

When I look at this picture I feel at home. There's something about the mountains that calls to my soul. The dense woods surround me when I walk down the road toward my small piece of land. Junior my dog is sleeping in the sun.
It's beautiful and we hope to build a small home there soon. The cabin is the place we rent when we go up there. It's just below our property on the mountain. I hope I have a view even close to these.

North Carolina-between Bryson City, and Cherokee I feel closer to heaven!
More pictures soon!

Why I love and write about Lake Champlain, Vermont

Writing for me is cathartic. I get to put my moods to use. I don't know about other writers, but I like to use familiar places for my stories. The places you grew up in. The places you visited that left a memory so strong you use it. I spent most of my childhood growing up in Burlington, and South Hero, Vermont and in Port Washington, and Wantagh, on Long Island in New York, and a year in High School, in Ottawa, Canada. Despite spending more time here in Florida, as an adult, then in any one of those places, I still feel more at home in one of them. What makes a place feel like home. There are people in all of the places I've lived that are important to me. But the one I have always felt closest to is Lake Champlain and South Hero, Vermont.
Maybe it's because I had cousins to hang with, maybe it was childhood itself, maybe because it was a time where I had less to worry about. I never had to worry about the mortgage, the FPL bill or how to pay for food. Everything was there for me.
But I think it was the lake. I remember being under water and opening my eyes to see a fish swim by. It was crystal clear and I'd watch the stones on the bottom go by as I swam. And I had imagination. I think that was the beginning of my love for Lake Champlain. I always had imagination, I could be whatever I wanted. A pirates captive, a mermaid, a girl pretending to be a boy so I could fight in one of those old forts on the lake shore. The lake was magic. And it is still in me. Now that makes me smile.

My Mountain

We own a very small piece of property on the top of a mountain in North Carolina. It's beautiful there. Lush green trees cover the winding roads that lead up to the top. The first time I was there it had nearly impassible, narrow, overgrown, weedy and we had to use a four wheel drive vehicle to get there. But when I got there I was hooked.

Off in the distance there are more mountains. The colors change the farther away it is. Way, way, in the distance they were almost a deep purple. All around me the sounds and sights of nature flooded my senses. The deep earthy smell of fallen branches and leaves released with each step I took. My big black dog sat there like the king of the mountain, now tired from chasing rabbits or whatever other wild creature he found. I knew then and there I was at home. It just hit me, the beauty, the quiet, the isolation, and the feeling that I was a small part of all of this overwhelmed me.

I felt a sense of stepping back in time. I wondered if I had stepped on the same soil that someone years ago had walked. They must have walked because I doubt that a horse could get up the steep inclines. Or maybe they followed trails made by animals. Had anyone ever had a cabin up there? Possibly a trapper lived there with his wife. Gnawing a life from from the land, having children, loving, and living. I was awed at the thought of it.

Of course anywhere in the mountains of North Carolina is like stepping into the past.

So that's when I knew it. I was home. Someday god willing I will be able to build a home there, living with the ghosts of the past and hoping they will share my mountain and let me make history too.