Tags
Beech Creek, Camping, Childhood Memories, Comforts, Family, Hiking, life by the sea, Mountains, nature, Organizing Life, Pisgah National Forest, Realizing Dreams, Salt Life, Sea Shores
Well hello again, it has been so very long since I have allowed myself time to express my thoughts, here, on Walnut Cottage. Every time I intended to something else popped up and days turned into weeks and even months, but I am still here trying to organize my thoughts and life and make sense of my little world!
Let’s see since I last left you I have taken steps that are life changing, for me at least. We all love our little corners of comfort – we like our lives as they are and normally resist change of any kind even when it is positive for us and our families in the long run.
For over 20 years our family had dreamed of life by the sea shore and then all of a sudden the opportunity fell from the sky (take that as you will), and said, okay, here you go. What did we do? We packed up our life of 42 years in the same town and jumped on the boat for our next adventure. We made plans and adjustments to the lives and routines of our entire family, new home & neighborhood, new schools and sports teams, new friends (still kept the old ones too!), jobs, neighbors and even a new view.
Even though this was a lickty-split quick decision that we made, I didn’t do so without a little fretting, okay, a lot of fretting. I was not only leaving my home town, my momma and Little Mamaw, the comfort of knowing everything about where I lived like how to get to where I was going, and how far I was from the closest yarn shoppe, but I was also putting more distance between me and my beloved mountains.
My closest and dearest understand how very important my mountains are to me; you can read about them here and here. To begin with they hold so many memories from my childhood and a time when I spent a good part of my weekends and summers with my Papaw and Mamaw on the side of a mountain in Beech Creek. As I aged my trips to Beech Creek specifically became less frequent and as my family grew from one to two to three children we often found ourselves spontaneously packing the truck for a weekend trip of camping in Pisgah National Forest, still mountains, but not quite the four hour trek to Beech Creek.
I couldn’t begin to count our camping ~ hiking trips, the campsites we have made in the heart of the woods off the beaten path with no running water except for the babbling creeks and brooks beside our tents; the hikes we have made that were miles and miles and miles long, the sights we have seen, the nature we loved, the family time and closeness we treasured. Over the years my mountains have given me so much, taught me so much and making this life changing move has placed me even farther from them. Instead of a quick two hour drive my mountains are at least six hours away. Not quite such a quick trip any more.
I feel as if I have stepped back in time to a small degree as our new little world is much different from the one we left behind, but we are living the true salt life nestled right by the coast getting settled into our new home and life. We are close to so much but just far enough away to be quaint, and yes, we are loving it!