Quote of the Week #68

Do you have a place, outside, that you love to go regularly? Somewhere you can go when you want to be alone or when you need to get away from the stresses of your life?

Since moving to western North Carolina I travel every spring to a place two hours away called Roan Mountain. In mid-June the pink blossoms of the Catawba Rhododendron color the hillsides, mixing with the brilliant orange flowers of Flaming Azalea bushes. When the stars align and all the conditions are perfect, this is an amazing spectacle! 

There are 3 balds in a row, two of which fall on the world-famous Appalachian Trail. When I was there during my thru-hike in 2008, I remember being blown away by the beauty. Imagine a grassy mountain top dotted with yellow, pink and orange, with layers of mountains falling away in the distance and jagged-edged rocks sitting silently, sentinels of Nature’s majesty.

This year my husband, 7-month-old puppy and I camped on the top of one of the balds, our tent tucked away in a Rhododendron thicket decorated with pink petals, like something out of a fairy tale wedding. After enjoying a spectacular sunset from our “front row seats” we drifted off to sleep under a ceiling of stars with lightning flashes visible behind the distant clouds.  Ahhh, is there anything better than camping alone at the top of a mountain?

And so, this week’s quote: (two actually, because I could not choose)

“Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt; she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.” –Oscar Wilde, De Profundis 

And:

“This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.”            –John Muir

Which one do you like best? Where is a place you return to every year in the same season?

Click HERE if you’d like to read last year’s post from Roan Mountain.