Smoky Mountain Surprise: Chapter One

One

As the evening faded, the air was still and silent. Leaving the gravel road and densely covered woods, bright lights appeared in the sky.  They seemed to leapfrog from east to west, then south to north. The lights followed until the road became more circuitous as the Highlander followed the familiar road down toward the basin. 

Suddenly the sky darkened.  The ever-present sky lights as the canopy opened were conspicuously gone. Like an athlete being in the zone, fully involved, fully present, possibilities were everywhere. It was 9:40 p.m. on a comfortable July night in western North Carolina, just a half hour from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  Leaving Webster Road making the requisite u-turn on 441 south toward Franklin it hovered over the road.  

Janel could smell the fresh air and the honeysuckle alongside the road.  A bird out of a cage.  Everything seemed as though it was happening for the first time.  Like finding a Lady’s Slipper in the center of a path on an old logging trail.  She longed for simplicity. Honesty.  

After a twelve hour ride, she reached the Tennessee/North Carolina border.  The following morning, she meandered along Interstate 81 in small towns where crafts were abundant, some of the best work she had seen.  She picked up a few gifts for her grown children – pumpkin butter in a mason jar and a corncob pipe for a wall ornament.

The Great Smoky Mountains were everything her father had said they would be.  She remembered the stories he told of the beautiful blue mist in the distance.

The ride to her new home two thirds up the mountain, but not all the way to Ginny’s Knob, were lush and dense forests, abundant rhododendron, mountain laurel, flaming azalea and myrtle. Alongside the road flowered Solomon’s seal, red elderberry and black eyed Susans. She devoured the pages in her wildflower field guide stopping often to identify them.

Home to black bear, white-tailed deer, wild boar and turkey, the land was a few yards from the beaten path and entered a world that remained essentially untouched. There were no human voices, just the sounds of nature. Davy Crockett country.

She had just turned fifty, though she didn’t look a day over forty.  Slender, petite. A yoga body.  Her reddish brown straight haired, pixie gently coiffed her tiny features. Even her green eyes were small.  More casual than one would expect given her Ivy education.

Pretense and arrogance held no time with this one. She genuinely liked people. All kinds of them. Her parents had a lot to do with that.