Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Deliver Us From Deliverance
On Wednesday we left Kristin’s parents and traveled with them by convoy to cabin on Beech Mountain, the highest town in the Eastern continental United States.I truly do love the Appalachian mountains. It is such a change from the minor hilly terrain of northern Florida. In Florida, every road seems straight as an arrow, with little or no suprises to be found. When the road curves, as it does a lot in the mountains, you never know what you’re going to find.
We made a drunken bee line through Northern Georgia and western North Carolina to get to the cabin. The scenery alternating between scenes of gorgeous wooded mountain vistas, picturesque small towns wedged between rivers in steep valleys, and the sprawl and blight of modern life, which seems to be ever deeper when thrown against steep sloping hills. The names of roads became ever more long the higher into the Highlands we got – from the alliterative Cripple Creek Road, Crooked Creek Road, and Cove Creek Road, to the painfully obvious, such as Old Mill Creek Road and Mining Company Road, to the downright lyrical, such as Possum Trot Lane and Fox Grape Hollow Road. Two names really stood out – Ban the Blues Lane, obviously named by a person with certain musical tastes, and Hardscrabble Road, which encapsulates the whole mountain living experience in one word.In between gawking at the scenery and the occasional patch of snow, Parker was content to watch his borrowed copy of Little Einstein’s Big Huge Adventure. At one point in the film the children begin to sing to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, and we were amazed to hear Kira begin to la-la-la along with them – on time, and in key! She is growing up sooo fast.
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