Inhaling North Carolina Mountain Air

Two Canadian geese flew overhead. That was exciting. I stop to take a shot but I’m not fast enough. All I see are their behinds.

Lowering the camera, I continue walking down from the high meadow, my running shoes making squishing sounds in the wet grass. I’m breathing as instructors tell you to do when you show up at yoga, Pilates or water aerobics – inhale deeply through your nose, expand your abdomen then let your breath out slowly through your mouth, with a long “hahhhhhhhh”

It makes me giddy, like drinking wine. Sipping North Carolina mountain air isn’t the same as drinking your garden-variety house wine. This is rare, fine wine, the kind you need to treat with respect.

Up here, away from the toxic wastes of carbon monoxide from cars, away from busy lives demanding life be faster, quicker, sooner, demanding in a shrill voice making a sound not unlike cats howling on a garden fence, well, up here, away from all that, the air has a different taste and a different sound.

It is clear, sparkling, quiet but robust bordering on bold, containing echo notes of mission bells ringing the liturgical hours, a deep, resonating reminder that the world is bigger than our individual selves.

Inhale, exhale. Ahhhhhhh.

This mountain air, where I’m standing, has an aroma particular to this place – the Hawk & Ivy Bed and Breakfast, a 24-acre holistic country retreat in Barnardsville owned by old friends of mine, Eve and James Davis. They do sometimes wonder if they own the Hawk & Ivy or it owns them. Either way, it is a spiritual and deep relationship.

The mountain air at Hawk & Ivy is infused with the odor of pine trees and wet buttercups, balanced with delicate overtones of rosemary and forget-me-knots growing in Eve’s garden at the bottom of the slope.

I’m alone. Breathing deep. Everyone else is asleep. The sun is rising from behind a ridge to my right. Secretly, I’m pleased. Shangri-La is mine, all mine, at least for a little while. Yep, that’s selfish. Early risers get to be a little selfish.

The pair of Canadian geese honk then begin banking in a huge U turn. Hold the phone! They’re coming back. I fumble with the lens cap and get it off. First rule of picture shooting. Take the lens cap off. It makes a difference.

Walking quickly, I know where they are going. The geese are banking sharply now, gliding on to land on a small pond to my left.

Time for stalker mode, especially since I only have one, short lens and need to be close. I move from tree to tree, trying to blend in, become part of the landscape. I shoot, move on, try not to fall flat on my face as all of this maneuvering is downhill over semi-rough terrain.

This drill also gives the digital camera time to digest all those pixels from the last shot. Nope, this is not one of those zillion frames a second and just-how-much-did-you-pay-for-that-speed cameras. I’m praying the ducks will stay a while so I have time for a good shot.

Swimming slowly, their long black necks held straighter than I ever stood, even though my Mom kept saying, “stand up straight”; they never look right or left, just straight ahead. The geese are looking for something. I don’t know what. Food? A sign their friends have been here? Room at the inn?

To my surprise, later, looking at the pictures big on a computer screen, the geese, as the glide along from one end of the small pond to the other, actually project ripples of water ahead of them, causing the refection of trees in the water to be distorted. The scene is impressionistic, like a Monet painting.

It feels right, standing still, making like a tree, fully focused on the geese. And there’s something else. Time stands still. There is nothing more important than the geese, the pond, the sun rising over the ridge, the now.

Is time standing still because we all turned off our cell phones? Or is it standing still because we left our regular lives to come here?

Maybe is it something about the mountains that embraces us as part of the landscape and we give in easily, not moving, just breathing, wanting to be part of this grandeur.

I don’t know the answer but I do know that I am deeply happy to have stalked the geese, walked to the high meadow, and smelled the early morning mountain air.

People are stirring now. The geese have gone on their way.
Breakfast is served. Eve, a marvelous cook, brings a plate with an omelet, ringed with flowers she just picked from the garden. The breakfast table erupts. Pandemonium as everyone fumbles for their cameras. There are shouts of “Don’t cut the omelet yet” as people get in position, clustering around the plate to take pictures.

Eve brought the outdoors inside, flowers on a plate, celebrating spring, bringing the dance of life to the breakfast table.
After breakfast, our mountain days are up. We reluctantly leave, friends who came for a reunion, going back to the flat lands and our separate lives. I want to bring the mountains back but they won’t fit in the car.

Upon returning home I meet a friend who is getting married in June. I tell her about the geese, the buttercups, and the mountain air. She confesses she’s never seen a mountain.

Never seen a mountain? Say it isn’t so. There should be a rule somewhere saying you can’t get married until you’ve been to the mountains. I tell her she should go, take that husband-to-be with her, that being in the mountains is a life experience that will change perspective. It is humbling, and empowering, all at the same time.

And if she is lucky, Canadian geese will fly by, bank, turn around and land at a nearby pond. The pictures may may or may not turn out but the memories will be hers for a lifetime.

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for further reference go to www.hawkandivy.com with James & Eve Davis as innkeepers.

Looking for your comments

Saturday mornings with Lucy will be on hiatus for two weeks. The next column is due on Friday, May 26 (yes, I know, it is weird, Saturday morning’s column is published on Fridays).

As always, your feedback and comments are welcome. I have topics that are pretty dear to my heart – helping the last, lost and least, responsible pet ownership, a healthy relationship with the environment are some of them. I would love to hear about topics you want to see addressed.

Some of the things on my heart these days are – the wounded in Iraq, service men and women coming home, often with severe injuries, their lives forever changed, but do we read their stories? The answer is no, at least in my part of the world (Florida).

How can we get involved, how can we help? Do we know how their families are impacted? I want to write on this topic. I want to follow their stories, make a difference in their lives, bring awareness to their communities so their neighbors can get involved. There’s a ton of research that has to be done, and doors yet to open. I could use help.

Other things – why do hummingbirds fly right by my beautiful feeder and go for the pentas instead? What’s wrong with the feeder that looks like a red apple? It caught me.

And, what are boundaries in our lives, what does that mean, and how do they bind us and set us free?

Your turn to talk to me. I’ll make the coffee, you bring the conversation.

Peace,
Lucy

A Letter to My Mom

Dear Mom,

If I lived nearer to where you are, I’d take this letter to your gravesite. They say that everything people leave at the National Cemetery, letters, mementos, photographs, all get saved.

It helps to write, to share emotions. I miss you. You were on my side. As a kid, that meant a lot. Sometimes it seemed like the world was a carousel ride that could dramatically and suddenly turn into a courtroom. Adults who wanted to press charges and impose penalties because I was late, got a bad report card, didn’t do the chores, missed church. Whatever. There was a long list of possible transgressions. It seemed to grow as I grew. Through it all, you sat at my table, my defense attorney and best witness.

Like when I was a teenager and inexplicably, through no fault of my own naturally, arrived home after my allotted curfew hour. You remember. Dad stood just inside the front door, arms folded, tall and imposing. Didn’t he ever sleep? Apparently not when I went out on a date.
“Where the hell have you been?” he’d say in his best Navy Captain’s voice, the one used while dressing down underlings. “Don’t you know what time it is?”

I think at this point I was supposed to start whimpering but I could never quite manage it because, yes, I knew EXACTLY what time it was and I knew I was toast.

You just said quietly: “Thank God you are all right.” Then hug me close. That hug made it possible to face the sit down talk with Dad that had to happen. It was part of the drill. But I was all right because your hug set all the priorities straight.

See, that’s what I miss, a lot. You walked a mile or two in my shoes. You gave me unconditional love. Well, not quite. There was that period, my college years, when you started striding ahead, trying to plan my life, the path with the signs that say “Marriage” and “Family”. Right this way, please.

I’d come home for summer break and you’d have a dinner party “Just a few friends”. Right. These “friends” would include total strangers who had never darkened our door before, like the single Lieutenant who happened to be the first cousin of some people who lived nearby on a Naval base years ago. Let’s see, what was their name?

You’d act real casual, like it was spontaneous, not a setup. My Mom the matchmaker. How humiliating. Come on, Mom. You simply don’t invite a single Lieutenant to your home for dinner on a whim. There’s only one reason he was sitting at our dining room table – to meet the Captain’s single, unmarried daughter, who wished she were ANYPLACE but here.

Naturally I thought I could do a much better job myself. I found the man I wanted to marry at the men’s college next door to mine.

But just before he was to come for a visit, you had a heart attack and five days later, died the day he came to meet the family, actually about two hours after you met him. Your sister came in your place to the wedding, pinning orange blossoms in my hair and telling me how happy you would have been. It was a beautiful wedding. I felt you were there.

Some things in my life would surprise you. I learned how to make bread, Mom. The aroma of baking bread fills the kitchen on Saturday mornings. You’d love it.

I wish you were here so I could serve fresh bread and hot tea and say “thank you” a thousand times over, for all the support and love you gave me. I didn’t say “thank you” nearly enough and then it was too late. In fact, I was really meager with the “thank yous”, too busy with my own agenda and plans.

There are many days when I’m sad that you never got to see your grandchildren born and then growing up. You’d like them, Mom. They’re not perfect adults but they’re fun and bright. Yes, well, I sound like a Mom.

I know now that I have my own family that Moms are may things – protector, planner, provider and the keeper of the essential truth – that love is the most important thing, everything else is static interference.

A sepia-toned photo of you in a lovely lace gown hangs by the front door. You are turning, looking over your shoulder at the camera and smiling.

When I first hung that photo, taken years ago, the most amazing thing happened. One morning light caught by crystals hanging in the kitchen came streaming through the wall opening between the two rooms and, for a few minutes, there was a rainbow of light across your face. It was beyond beautiful.

I felt it was your way of saying you never really left, that you will always be with me in my heart.

It must be true. Some friends came for dinner recently. As they were getting ready to leave, one of them walked over, patted your photo and said “Good night, Mom.”

And so I say the same.

Good night, Mom, and thank you.

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